Crystal’s essential data aids the take-down of Hydra, the biggest illegal marketplace
Hydra was a darknet marketplace with around 17 million customers and over 19,000 seller accounts registered on the market. Its sales amounted to at least 1.23€ billion in 2020 alone. In particular, the Bitcoin Bank Mixer, a service for obfuscating digital transactions provided by the platform, made crypto investigations extremely difficult for law enforcement agencies.
Crystal’s team was instrumental in providing details related to key wallets related to Hydra.
The Hydra problem
Hydra, an illegal marketplace, was a Russian-language Darknet platform accessible via the Tor network since at least 2015. The platform’s focus was on trading illicit narcotics. In addition, stolen data, forged documents, and digital services were sold via the platform.
Legal action
Seizures carried out were preceded by extensive investigations conducted by the BKA (Federal Criminal Police Office) and the ZIT (Central Office for Combating Cybercrime). Since August 2021, several authorities have been involved.
Crystal liaised with law enforcement and provided details of Hydra’s active darknet wallets, and the VASP wallets that had received funds directly from Hydra.
Above: A visualization from Crystal’s solution which shows the flow of funds being seized from Hydra.
The enforcement action
This information was shared with German law enforcement, who, with other law enforcement agencies, used it to secure the server infrastructure in Germany and take down the Hydra market. Bitcoins, totaling EUR 23 million, were seized.
Above: A visualization from Crystal’s solution illustrating withdrawals from Hydra showing linked activity to a multitude of illegal activities.
Crystal’s investigation team provides comprehensive cryptocurrency analysis and investigates crypto fund flows. Our detailed reports offer deep insights into financial crimes to partners such as financial institutions, government agencies, and other linked enterprises.
- We help identify and track illicit activities, like ransomware payments and show attribution.
- We link pseudonymous blockchain transactions to real-world organizations, including exchanges and mixer services, and reveal the real-world names of those entities in a user-friendly format.
- We provide evidence for the legal pursuance of charges and law enforcement action.
If you have a case for us to look into, please book some time with our team at [email protected]
