The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reports that Israeli citizen Tal Prihar has been sentenced to eight years in prison for his participation in the administration of DeepDotWeb (DDW), a platform for connecting dark web users with the conventional Internet, facilitating the sale of drugs, weapons, hacking tools and other illegal products.
Prihar, 37, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in March 2021 and to administering and operating DDW in complicity with another individual. Broadly speaking, this platform provided users with direct links to black markets on the dark web, since it is not possible to access these sites using conventional web browsers.
The maintenance of this platform guaranteed the defendants profits of up to $8.5 million USD in cryptocurrency. In an attempt to eliminate the trace of these transfers, Prihar transferred the payments to other bank and cryptocurrency accounts in the name of shell companies.
After the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ordered a thorough investigation in 2019, DDW was seized and Prihar was seized for a total of $8,414.00 USD. The defendant was arrested and is in the process of extradition from Israel.
This announcement was revealed by Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Cindy K. Chung for the Western District of Pennsylvania made the announcement. The investigation was conducted by agents from the FBI’s Pittsburgh Field Office.
The case was filed in conjunction with the Joint Criminal Opiate and Darknet Enforcement Team (J-CODE). Established within the FBI’s High-Tech Organized Crime Unit, J-CODE is a U.S. government initiative aimed at targeting drug trafficking, especially fentanyl and other opioids, operations conducted on dark web platforms.
To learn more about information security risks, malware variants, vulnerabilities and information technologies, feel free to access the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) websites.
He is a cyber security and malware researcher. He studied Computer Science and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2006. He is actively working as an cyber security investigator. He also worked for different security companies. His everyday job includes researching about new cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in enterprise security implementation.