Security News > 2022 > January > DeepDotWeb admin jailed for advertising illegal dark web markets
An Israeli citizen who operated DeepDotWeb, a news site and review site for dark web sites, has received a sentence of 97 months in prison for money laundering and was ordered to forfeit $8,414,173.
The DeepDotWeb site didn't host anything malicious or harmful but directly linked to various dark web marketplaces selling illegal goods.
Although the platform was seemingly operating within a legal context, investigators of the FBI found that it was receiving kickbacks for linking to dark web markets selling illegal goods, such as illicit firearms, malware and hacking tools, drugs, and financial information.
As the visitors of these sites bought illegal products and services, DDW was considered to be participating in criminal operations.
DeepDotWeb was a clearnet website, which means that it was easily accessible by a wider audience, but the sites it linked to weren't.
To find Tor links to dark web sites, one has to use specialized search engines, and none of these engines is powerful or sophisticated enough to index all Tor sites and check their status in real-time.
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