Thomas Jiřikovský, the alleged owner of one of the most popular darknet websites, Sheep Marketplace, has been arrested for laundering approximately $40 million.Sheep Marketplacewas one of the largest scams in the history of the darknet.
After the arrest of Silk Road owner Ross Ulbricht in 2013 – Sheep Marketplace became the next famous website on the anonymous underground Darknet marketplace, which specialized in selling illegal products, mainly drugs.
A few weeks ago, Sheep Marketplace suddenly disappeared and was shut down by its owner, who was suspected of stealing of Bitcoins, when Bitcoin was at its peak.
Shortly after this Bitcoin scam, a darknet, Gwern Branwen, revealed the owner, resulting in the suspected owner of the website being identified as Thomas Jiřikovský. Jiřikovský forgot to hide his identity and home address from the Internet when his Facebook page was exposed.
However, immediately after his identity was revealed, Jiřikovský denied his involvement in Sheep Marketplace.
And while investigating the stolen money from the online marketplace, Czech police noticed a strange move by a suspicious young developer who attempted to buy a luxury home worth 8.7 million Czech crowns ($345,000 USD) in Lusatia, a region in the Czech Republic, in his grandfather's name.
Further investigation revealed that in January of last year, a new bank account belonging to 26-year-old Eva Bartošová received a whopping sum of almost 900,000 crowns from a foreign Bitcoin exchange. However, the young woman was unable to justify the origin of the money.
According to Czech media, Eva Bartošová is the wife of Thomas Jiřikovský, who helped him transfer the stolen money through her newly created bank account.
A branch of the Czech police dealing with financial fraud investigated Jiřikovský and found that the house had been purchased “entirely with Bitcoin.”.
And let's not forget that two weeks ago, another major Deep Web trading site called Evolution disappeared with rumors saying that its owners may have defrauded thousands of their customers and stolen $12 million in Bitcoin.
Source: secnews.gr
