German police takes Hydra Market darknet offline

The German police have taken the marketplace on darknet Hydra Market offline. The police have seized the servers of the marketplace. In addition, around 23 million euros worth of cryptocurrencies was confiscated.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Frankfurt am Main and the Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany on Tuesday released the server infrastructure seized from Hydra Market and thus rendered inoperative. In addition, 543 bitcoins, currently converted about 23 million euros, have been seized.

Users who want to visit the marketplace via the Tor network will see a banner notifying the police about the action. According to the German police, the site had 17 million customer accounts and 19,000 seller accounts. The seizure of the Germany-based servers followed an investigation launched in August 2021 with US authorities providing assistance. Hydra Market went online in 2015.

Drugs, stolen data and falsified documents were traded via the marketplace, according to the claim of the Public Prosecution Service. The site is said to offer customers a Bitcoin Bank Mixer service to anonymize transactions.