Another darkmarket falls as Kingdom Market is destroyed by a joint international law enforcement operation led by German authorities

The investigation by the Central Office for Combating Cybercrime (ZIT) of the Frankfurt Attorney General's Office and the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) was partially successful. In an internationally coordinated operation, the Central Office for Combating Cybercrime of the Office of the Attorney General in Frankfurt (ZIT) and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) jointly seized the servers of the illegal darknet marketplace "Kingdom Market" and succeeded in shutting down the illegal darknet marketplace "Kingdom Market" on December 16, 2023, and in closing it down. On December 16, 2023, the illegal dark web marketplace "Kingdom Market" was successfully shut down.

The law enforcement authorities of the United States, Switzerland, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine cooperated closely with the German agency in the course of the investigation.

However, the administrators of the "Kingdom Market" dark web marketplace have not yet been apprehended. However, customers of this market should be worried, as the police will be conducting an in-depth investigation.

"Kingdom Market" is an illegal dark web marketplace that has existed since at least March 2021 and is only accessible via the Tor network and the Invisible Internet Project (I2P) on the dark web. The English-language platform is used to trade illegal goods. Its main focus is the drug trade.

In addition, malware, criminal services and forged documents are advertised through the platform for profit. More than 42,000 products are offered on the marketplace, of which about 3,600 are from Germany. There were tens of thousands of customer accounts and hundreds of seller accounts on the marketplace.

As a result of the investigation, the police established that thousands of accounts from different countries were registered on the criminal business platform Kingdom Market, and that users of the darknet marketplace paid for services using the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin, Litecoin, MonroeCoin and Zcash. "Kingdom Market administrators charge a 3 percent fee as a commission on all sales made on the platform.

A few days ago, an announcement to all Kingdom Market residents was posted on the Darknet's Dread forums by a suspected law enforcement officer or spoofing user under the nickname "FallenKingdom".

Residents of the kingdom,

We proudly announce that the kingdom has fallen!

Thank you for your cooperation.

To be continued…

At the same time, the administrators or promoters of some unknown dark web markets such as "Elysium Market", "Dark Matter Market", "SuperMarket", etc. started to post on the Dread forums that their markets welcome refugees (customers and vendors) from "Kingdom Market".

Some users suspected that the URL rotator was leaking the server's real IP address, which the forum had already warned about half a year ago.

The administrator of the Dread forum posted the thread "Kingdom Market has likely been seized by law enforcement" several days ago, saying:

Dread staff has received information from a trusted party that multiple individuals, which had sufficient server access to Kingdom's infrastructure, have been arrested by law enforcement with their systems seized. We do not know, and probably won't ever know, the extent of the compromise. It is a shame, but with the current information provided, the chances of Kingdom market returning is from being down is basically zero.

I'll leave comments open for a couple days and then I will archive this subdread pending any new information.

Things like these occasionally happen. Make peace with it. If you have properly followed OPSEC while ordering on Kingdom you shouldn't have much to worry about. Clean house if you didn't.

Paris (dread admin)

The BKA link was added after the news was confirmed by the German authorities: https://www.bka.de/DE/Presse/Listenseite_Pressemitteilungen/2023/Presse2023/231220_PM_Darknet_Kingdom_Market.html

"Kingdom Market" support administrator "OhLongJohnson" on the Dread forums has also posted the latest topic "Words from OhLongJohnson, KM gone forever." , which reads:

Beloved members

I regret to tell you that admin`s gone, market gone, seized.

I am okay for now, hopefully this will stay as it is now.

I want to apologize to the all community and our members that this has happened. Too bad nobody will ever see the new upgrade which we were developin. I was really looking forward to have the new upgrade released. It was my dream job.

Big THANK YOU to all of you, I love you and still will love you all, i will remember. I always beleieved in the goodness in every vendor and tried to support as much as I could. I beleived that every vendor which might think in "scammy" way can start be the real professional. I have built so many good relationships with many buyers and vendors, I appreciate you trusted me and I trusted you. I only rgret I couldn`t talk more and also more to new vendors which joined recently. I am so so sad this has happened.

I am also so sorry you lost money after the seizure of market servers. I am not able to tell what was seized, I was not aware where the database server has been located. Wish soon recovery for this.

Sorry the Kingdom disappointed you, sorry you lost money while the market was took down. At least wallets were at the different place than servers.

For those you hated me or still hate me, I respect you and your opinion.
I was not perfect but did the best I could, trying to be better and better. If I hurt anybody or made wrong decision on dispute, please, forgive me.

Maybe I could recommend you any other market which I find a good way to make the new home, but still it could be considered suspiciously from me to mention only one market.

I want to believe that this situation with KingdomMarket will make the darknet community stick together even more, make users of darknet nice to each other, and not to make laugh at newbies, I wish that from now on one market will make an exit scam and rather will retire in a professional and peaceful way. Many will think about my words as bullshits or something like that, but that`s okay, the variety of opinions are always good, I mean it from heart.

Unfortunately I am not able to tell you any details regarding how was our market set up as I was not in developing the whole market, the old one or new one. I was only communicating with others regarding opsec findings and so. I can say wallets were located in a different place at least it should be due to the security reasons.

I am really sorry for what happened.

I love you all be good at each other, stay safe and keep smiling no matter what. I will be going somewhere, hope they will not get me.
Thank you for being at KingdomMarket, being loyal and have trusted in us. I will remember you all until the end of my life.

Great experience, loved the mod job.

With respect and love

Yours OhLongJohnson

In addition, "ODN" found that the mirror domain name of "Kingdom Market" on Ming.com, kingdommarket.so, was also seized by the police, and after visiting it, it would be redirected to "http://kingdom-mkt-seized.com/".

Stay tuned to "ODN" for more news on the dark web.