Utopia Marketplace Seized by Dutch Police – 5 Arrested

Posted by: DeepDotWeb

February 11, 2014

12 Comments</span> </p>

Update 2: 5 People Arrested for running utopia and the sale of Drugs, Weapon and ammunition: Police also seized 900 bitcoins, worth about £363,000 or $610,900.  The Dutch authorities said their operation – codenamed Commodore – sent out a message that no-one was “untouchable” on Tor.Two Dutch men, aged 30 and 31, alleged to have run the service had also been involved in, Black Market Reloaded, which had closed towards the end of 2013, said prosecutors. the full public prosecution is here. Translated version here

The other suspects arrested on Friday are:

• a 29-year-old from Utrecht, who the prosecutors said they believed had been involved in several other unnamed black market marketplaces in addition to Utopia
• a 46-year-old Dutch national accused of illegal trade over the internet and an attempt to incite murder
• a 21-year-old German, arrested in Bad Nauheim near Frankfurt, accused of selling hard drugs and weapons

Update: it was confirmed by the Dutch police that the site is indeed seized, waiting for more information about any arrests if exist. further details on how the site was taken down will be available later this week.

This marketplace who just went live a week ago seems to have been seized by the dutch police, if you try to access the site you will now see this logo and a notice “This hidden service has been seized.by the Dutch National Police”:

The forums are still up at this time but no explanation was provided by the admins:

I’ve talked some hours with cosa and all was working good, now i wake up and see this banner by the politie.
Something doesn’t sound to me, i will be there all the day waiting for cosa, swim or jlaw to see if there’s any news from them.

It is yet unknown if the admins were arrested along with seizing of the site.

This information was later announced by one of the silk road admins (although it doesn’t contain any new info):

SR and Greater darknet community,

It is with great sadness that I announce it would seem that our budding competitor, Utopia Marketplace, has been seized by the Dutch National Police. This is a serious blow to the darkweb marketplace community as honest competition is our lifeblood.

I welcome any and all Utopia members to find refuge in our forums until you can figure out what has happened.

Unfortunately I do not have the capability to create a subforum for you as backopy did for us when our former home was seized by the US version of your national police, but please make yourselves at home here, regroup, and do it again. Show them that you, we, are a hydra – cut off one head and ten more spring up.

Yours in freedom,

Stealth

If you used Utopia and Silk Road or ANY OTHER marketplace, ensure you change your credentials on the remaining marketplaces immediately if you used the same ones at Utopia.

So far we do not have any more information but we will follow and update when we get new information, we are looking for some official confirmation from the media or authorities – some people are assuming it was a hacker who just defaced the site, but its highly unlikely that a hacker would use a dutch police logo rather than the FBI logo.

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Updated: 2014-02-11