The administrator of the Sipulitie network boasted on public forums that the site’s turnover amounted to some 1.3 million euros.
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File photo. Image: Pyry Sarkiola / Yle
The Finnish Customs office has closed down the Sipulitie website and seized the contents of its network servers, the agency said in a Tuesday morning press release.
The statement described Sipulitie as an “online narcotics marketplace” which had been operating on the Tor dark web network since 2023.
“The site, operating in Finnish and English, was used for criminal activities, such as selling narcotics under the protection of anonymity. The administrator of the site has stated on public forums that the turnover of Sipulitie amounted to 1.3 million euros,” the statement said, adding that the operation was carried out in cooperation with police in Sweden.
Sipulitie was preceded by a webpage called Sipulimarket, which began operating on the dark web in 2018 before being shut by Finnish authorities in 2019 following a cooperative investigation alongside Polish police.
A preliminary investigation into the Sipulimarket case has uncovered evidence that the same operator ran the Sipulitie site. The same suspect is also under investigation for acting as an administrator of a chat-based drug sales site called Tsätti, which was launched in 2022.
Finnish Customs has also closed this site and has used the confiscated data to identify drug dealers and buyers active on Sipulitie.
Hannu Sinkkonen, Director of Enforcement at Finnish Customs, praised the cooperation between Finnish agencies and international partners.
“Seamless cooperation between the authorities at both the national and the international level plays a crucial role in combating online crime,” he said.
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Publish date : 2024-10-15 00:54:00
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