A 35-year-old man based in China allegedly created a massive network of 373,000 sites on the Dark Web, advertising illegal child abuse material and other hacking services. But the sites were actually a ruse to scam customers out of their money, according to law enforcement in Europe.
On Friday, Europol announced it had shut down the 373,000 sites, describing them as “one of the largest networks of fraudulent platforms in the Dark Web.”
According to Germany’s Bavarian Police, the network involved 32 platforms advertising child sexual abuse material (CSAM) across 90,000 .onion domains. A remaining 90 platforms that supposedly advertised stolen credit card data and access to compromised systems were available over 283,000 .onion domains.
“However, these were purely fraudulent sites where CSAM was advertised and previewed but never delivered,” Europol said, later adding: “The goal was always to persuade customers to make payments without receiving any service in return.”
(polizei.bayern.de)
Investigators estimate the suspect made about $400,000 in profit from about 10,000 customers over the years. Some of the sites worked by pretending to offer packages of CSAM content, spanning gigabytes to terabytes, in return for cryptocurrency payments.
Bavarian Police had been investigating the network since mid-2021. Police have now seized 105 servers that operated the sites, and also identified 440 customers who used them by tracing the cryptocurrency payments.
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European investigators didn’t name the Chinese suspect, but have posted a photo, saying an international arrest warrant has been issued. The suspect primarily rented servers based in Germany to host the sites, and his scheme had back active since at least 2019.
(polizei.bayern.de)
“The websites are now marked with a seizure banner,” added Bavarian Police, which noted the case underscores how vast the Dark Web can be. “By cloning 122 platform variants across more than 373,000 addresses, he created an infrastructure that was virtually invisible – too large, too scattered, too complex for traditional detection methods,” Bavarian Police said.
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About Our Expert
Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
Experience
I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. Earlier this year, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.
I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I’m now following how President Trump’s tariffs will affect the industry. I’m always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.
