The story revolves around Alexandre Cazes, a Canadian who creates and operates AlphaBay, a massive dark web marketplace for illicit goods and services. Under the pseudonym "Alpha02," Cazes builds a luxurious life in Thailand, but his empire is eventually dismantled by an international law enforcement operation. The investigation, led by the FBI and DEA, uses a combination of online sleuthing and old-fashioned detective work to identify Cazes and track him down. After a cleverly staged car accident, Cazes is arrested and his devices are seized, allowing authorities to gain access to AlphaBay's servers. The shutdown of AlphaBay is followed by the closure of another major dark web marketplace, Hansa, which had been secretly taken over by Dutch authorities. The operation is hailed as a major success, but the dark web continues to evolve, with new marketplaces emerging to replace those that were shut down.
Here are the key facts:
1. The story begins on July 5th, 2017, with a man known as Alpha02 sitting in front of his laptop in his villa in Bangkok.
2. Alpha02 is a multi-millionaire who lives a luxurious life and drives expensive cars.
3. He is the founder of the dark web marketplace AlphaBay.
4. On July 5th, 2017, a woman crashes her Toyota Camry into Alpha02's front gate, and he runs out of his house to the scene of the accident.
5. The driver of the Toyota Camry is an agent of the Royal Thai Police force.
6. FBI and DEA investigators have been waiting for this moment for months.
7. Authorities from seven countries have worked relentlessly towards this day.
8. The Silk Road is considered the most legendary dark web marketplace to date.
9. The Silk Road platform went live in February 2011 and became incredibly popular, but the operator of the site was caught and the Silk Road went offline in 2013.
10. The Silk Road founder received a life sentence.
11. After the closure of the Silk Road, the number of darknet markets exploded.
12. AlphaBay was founded in July 2014 and quickly became one of the largest darknet markets.
13. AlphaBay had over 300,000 items on their website and over half a million dollars in sales every day in 2017.
14. Alpha02 was making money with every single transaction, receiving a share between 2 to 4%.
15. Alpha02 is a Canadian who lives in Thailand.
16. He is 23 years old when AlphaBay was founded.
17. Alpha02's real name is Alexandre Cazes.
18. Cazes was a freelance software designer and ran his own tech company called EBX Technologies.
19. He was also active on a pickup artist forum, where he published conservative family values and kept a quasi-sexist live blog about his "successful" sex life.
20. Cazes was arrested on July 5th, 2017, and his laptop was seized by investigators.
21. The laptop was still on and not in standby mode, and Alpha02 was still logged into the server hosting AlphaBay.
22. Investigators searched the laptop and found multiple passwords for the AlphaBay website and servers.
23. Cazes had a fortune of $23 million.
24. Authorities confiscated his luxury cars, houses, and millions in cryptocurrency.
25. Cazes' wife was charged with money laundering.
26. Alexander Cazes committed suicide while in custody on July 12, 2017.
27. The shutdown of AlphaBay by authorities was being purposely kept secret for the time being.
28. The Hansa Market was shut down by Dutch authorities on July 20th, 2017.
29. The US Department of Justice announced the end of AlphaBay and Hansa on July 20th, 2017, a gigantic success for global authorities.
30. The dark web itself is not an evil technology, but a necessary place for whistleblowers and journalists to be relatively safe.
31. The demand for illegal drugs, weapons, counterfeit money, and malware is too high, and the global game of cat-and-mouse is far from over.
32. The Russian Darknet market Hydra was at times more than twice the size of AlphaBay and was shut down by German and American authorities in 2021.
33. DeSnake relaunched AlphaBay in 2021 and still runs the darknet marketplace to this day.