The Finnish Customs office took down the website and seized the servers for the darknet marketplace ‘Sipulitie’ where criminals sold illegal narcotics anonymously.
The agency's announcement earlier today says that the site catered to both Finnish and English-speaking users, and that its operator claimed a turnover of 1.3 million Euros (approximately $1.42 million).
The operation was possible thanks to an international collaboration involving the Finnish Customs, Europol, the Swedish police, Polish law enforcement authorities, and researchers at
Bitdefender cybersecurity company.
Sipultie launched in February 2023 after authorities seized its predecessor, ‘Sipulimarket,’ in December 2020. Sipulimarket had made more than two million Euros since it started in April 2019.
Following the takedown, the same administrator created Sipultie and also a separate chat-based platform dedicated to drug sales called Tsätti, launched in 2022.
Authorities took offline both Sipultie and Tsätti and marked the website with a banner informing visitors of the take down operation.
