The American secret service, together with a coalition of international law enforcement agencies, has removed and seized the Garrantex website, accused a Russian cryptocurrency exchange of being associated with darknet marketing and ransomware -hackers.
On Thursday, the official Garrantex website was replaced by a notification that the domain of the stock market was seized by the secret service after an order of the office of the American lawyers for the eastern district of Virginia.
This is the latest action taken by Western governments against the exchange -based exchange.
Last month, the European Union also sanctioned Garrantex if, proverb It is “closely linked to Russian banks sanctioned by the EU.” This was part of a package of sanctions against Russia for his invasion of Ukraine.
In 2022, The American treasury punished Garrantexclaim that more than $ 100 million in transactions on the stock exchange are “associated with illegal actors and darknet -markets”, including the notorious Russian ransomware -gang conti and the Darknet Market Hydra.
The Takedown knowledge, seen by JS, said that the operation was carried out in coordination with the US Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Europol, the Dutch National Police, the German Federal Criminal Police Pureau (Bundeskriminalamt or Bka Nationale Bureau, the VANTIGT, and the Optish, and the Optish, the VAN DE OFFISTOR, and the VAN DE OFFISTOR, and the VAN DE OFFISS, National Criminal Criminal Police.
Techcrunch presented all these organizations for comment. At the time of writing, only the FBI responded and refused to comment.
Techcrunch also reached Garrantex via the official E -mail addresses stated on the site before the seizure, as well as via the company’s telegram account. Garrantex did not respond to these messages.
Techcrunch verified the notification of the website by analyzing the internet -oriented domain records of Garrantex. From Thursday, the Webdom van Garrantex now points to servers that are known to be checked by the secret service. The same server is also host for various other website -gestation knowledge that has carried out the Secret Service in recent years.
After seizure, Garantex did not report the law enforcement operation in its official telegram channels. On Thursday morning, Garrantex announced That it “suspends all services, including cryptocurrency recordings,” said a machine translation of the announcement.
The decision came after Stablecoin -Emittent Tether froze for $ 28 million to his cryptocurrency on Garantex.
“We have bad news,” Garrantex wrote. “We are fighting and will not give up! Keep in mind that everything [Tether] Russian wallet is currently threatened. “
