DeepDotWeb boss pleads guilty to laundering millions

DOJ had hailed the indictment of the man and a co-conspirator as "the single most significant law enforcement disruption of the Darknet to date."

The administrator of a website that served as a gateway to dark web marketplaces for purchasing heroin, firearms and hacking tools pleaded guilty to money laundering charges on Wednesday.

The Justice Department said that Tal Prihar administered DeepDotWeb, where he received $8.4 million in kickbacks from dark web marketplaces for providing prospective customers with direct links to those sites, which sold illegal goods but weren’t easily found via search engines. When law enforcement indicted Prihar and an alleged co-conspirator in 2019, authorities hailed it as “the single most significant law enforcement disruption of the Darknet to date.”

French law enforcement captured Prihar, an Israeli native who had lived in Brazil. Israeli law enforcement arrested the alleged co-owner of the site, Michael Phan, who handled day-to-day operations. U.S. authorities previously seized DeepDotWeb.

“For six years, DeepDotWeb was a gateway to facilitate the illegal purchase of items to include dangerous drugs, weapons, and malicious software,” said acting Special Agent in Charge Carlton Peeples of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office. “Prihar profited as a byproduct from other people’s dangerous transactions and today’s guilty plea sends a message to other cyber actors across the globe who think the dark web is a safe haven.”

DOJ said that Prihar and Phan received their payments via virtual currency, then concealed the source by transferring payments from a bitcoin wallet to shell company bitcoin and bank accounts.

Prihar faces up to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit money laundering.

In recent years authorities have had some success in shuttering dark web commerce, ranging from the September 2020 arrest of 179 alleged drug traffickers to other arrests carried out in connection with the 2019 shutdown of Wall Street Market and Valhalla Marketplace.

Clarification, 4/1/21: The description of DeepDotWeb was made more precise.

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

Technology

• European parliament members call for slowdown of Serbia’s EU entry over spyware use

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

Threats

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

• Jail time for Maine child in 764 marks turning point in federal law enforcement

• Dogged Russia-based botnet dismantled after 23-year run

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure