An Israeli citizen who ran DeepDotWeb (DDW), a news website and a review site for dark web sites, was sentenced to 97 months in prison for money laundering and was ordered to pay $8,414,173.
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The conviction of Tal Prihar, 37 years old, was announced yesterday by the US Department of Justice and the US prosecutor Cindy K. Chung for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Prihar had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in March 2021, almost two years after his arrest and the seizure of the website.
Connection to cybercrime
The DeepDotWeb website did not host anything malicious or harmful, but it is directly linked to various dark web markets that sell illegal goods.
It also had a news section that informs visitors about the status of various Tor sites, about what is hot in each area of interest, and presented site reviews.
Although the platform ostensibly operated within a legal framework, FBI investigators found that it was accepting kickbacks for connecting to dark web marketplaces that sold illicit goods, including illegal firearms, malware and hacking tools, drugs, and financial information.
Καθώς οι επισκέπτες αυτών των sites αγόραζαν παράνομα προϊόντα και υπηρεσίες, το DDW θεωρήθηκε ότι συμμετείχε σε εγκληματικές επιχειρήσεις.
Prihar received a total of 8.155 bitcoin from his affiliate marketing agreements with market entities, which were subsequently laundered through various shell companies and bitcoin accounts.
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DeepDotWeb was a clearnet website, which means it was easily accessible to a broader audience, but the sites it linked to were not.
To find Tor links on dark web sites, you need to use specialized search engines, and none of these engines is powerful enough or advanced enough to index all Tor sites and monitor their status in real time.
Therefore, the process of locating reliable, modern, or specialized gateways is arduous and tiring, which in itself acts as a barrier.
Having said that, the curated entries of DDW and the rich information about what to expect from each platform served as a gateway to an otherwise hidden world of cybercrime.
The announcement from the Ministry of Justice also mentions a co-defendant named Michael Phan, 34, also an Israeli citizen, who is believed to be the co-owner of the DDW site.
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Phan remains abroad and is currently undergoing extradition proceedings in Israel.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
