The FBI – with the help of the Israel Police – has brought 2 criminals and their accomplices into custody, in a major seizure of the Deep Dot Web – a  Bitcoin-enabled dark web market listing site.

Announced via 2 tweets on the Israel Police official Twitter, after a cross-nation operation conducted by the FBI and the Israel Police, the individuals responsible for establishing and running Deep Dot Web were allegedly arrested. The site aimed to provide an information portal on illegal dark web markets, which allows the transactions of drugs, weapons or stolen credit cards.

“The owners of the site raked in millions of dollars through an ‘affiliate marketing’ method, thereby earning from every sale done through them. The payment for the transactions was carried out using bitcoin. The 2 suspects arrested in Israel will be brought before a judge for a hearing regarding their potential detention extension.” The tweet further stated.

Although the Israeli police only disclosed the successful captured of the 2 moderators of the site, in Tel Aviv and Ashdod respectively, local news outlet JPost, along with the tech-related website Tech Crunch further revealed that, an undetermined number of criminals related to the case have been arrested as well, located in various cities across the globe such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and even Brazil.

Users can gain access to the dark web market sites with the use of a technical feature of the Tor browser – onion routing – which was specifically designed to exchange data anonymously, as it helps users cloak their IP addresses.