Authorities Shut Down Darknet Marketplace Sipulimarket

Last week, the major darknet marketplace Sipulimarket was shut down by Europol and Finnish Customs (Tulli). The authorities announced they seized all its content,” including bitcoins. 

Apart from Europol and Finnish Customs, Eurojust, the Polish Provincial Police Headquarters, and Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) all participated in the sting. 

According to the press release by Tulli, “Finnish Customs has seized the webserver and contents of the Silpulimarket trade site in its entirety.”

Following the closure, the message on the Sipulimarket webpage reads: “This domain has been seized” and “This hidden service has been closed by the Finnish Customs in conjunction with the Cybercrime Department of Provincial Police Headquarters in Wroclaw with the support of Europol and Eurojust for aggregated narcotics offenses.”

An official announcement from the authorities stated that the Sipulimarket webserver has operated since 2019, selling “Significant amounts of narcotics and other illicit goods.” Additionally, the statement pointed out that Sipulimarket was the only actual Finnish website offering narcotics in the Tor network after Silkkitie (Valhalla) was closed. 

In conclusion, the announcement reported that the investigation is still going on, however, at this point, the Finnish Customs and its partners “will not provide any more information on the matter.”