The Meshchansky Court of Moscow has arrested Dmitry Pavlov, whom the US authorities accuse of creating the largest darknet site HYDRA. In Russia, he is suspected of selling and shipping drugs on an especially large scale. This is reported by the telegram channel VCHE-OGPU. At the disposal of Rucriminal.info was the US indictment against Dmitry Pavlov, with which we introduce readers.

CHARGE 6 11.

Promservice LLC, Full Drive Hosting Company, All Wheels, 4x4host.ru (hereinafter referred to as Promservice) is a company located in Russia, which claimed to operate as a hosting provider. Promservice rented dozens of servers on behalf of Hydra and controlled and administered these servers.

10. LegalRC.biz and Wayaway.biz were among the first online drug forums in Russia. Around 2015, Hydra was created as a result of a reported partnership between Wayaway and LegalRC to compete with another darknet marketplace in Russia, which was subsequently closed.

From about 2013 to the present, DMITRY OLEGOVICH PAVLOV managed domain services for LegalRC.biz and Wayaway.biz.

From approximately November 2015 until approximately the date of this indictment, DMITRY OLEGOVICH PAVLOV managed and controlled Promservis. During this time, DMITRY OLEGOVICH PAVLOV and Promservice operated Hydra's leased servers, allowing the marketplace to function as a platform used by thousands of drug dealers and other illegal sellers to distribute large quantities of illegal drugs and other illegal goods and services to thousands of buyers and launder billions of dollars from these illegal transactions.

During the long operation of Hydra, DMITRY OLEGOVICH PAVLOV repeatedly received payments in cryptocurrency from Hydra wallets.

DMITRY OLEGOVICH PAVLOV supervised the activities of Promservice and acted as an active administrator in the placement of Hydra servers. He colluded with other Hydra operators to help facilitate the site's success by providing the critical infrastructure that allowed Hydra to operate and thrive in the competitive dark web marketplace. At the same time, DMITRY OLEGOVICH PAVLOV facilitated the activities of Hydra and allowed Hydra to receive millions of dollars in commissions received from illegal sales carried out through the site.

Defendant DMITRY OLEGOVICH PAVLOV was a Russian citizen residing in Russia. 2. The Hydra marketplace was the largest and oldest darknet marketplace in the world. Created around 2015, the Hydra program allowed users in predominantly Russian-speaking countries to buy and sell drugs and other illegal goods and services, including stolen financial information, fake identities, and money laundering and money-mixing services, anonymously and out of reach. law enforcement.

Hydra sellers could create accounts on the site to advertise their illegal products, and buyers could create accounts to view and purchase vendors' products.

3. Transactions on Hydra were carried out in cryptocurrency. Between about January 2016 and March 2022 or so, Hydra-controlled wallets received about $5.2 billion worth of cryptocurrencies.

In 2021, Hydra accounted for approximately 80% of all cryptocurrency transactions related to the darknet market. Hydra operators charge a fee for every transaction made on Hydra.

4. Hydra vendors offered a variety of drugs for sale, including cocaine, heroin, methadone, methamphetamine, LSD, and opioids. The perpetrators openly advertised their drugs on Hydra, usually including pictures of the drugs and descriptions of the drugs. Buyers rated sellers and their products on a five-star rating system, and seller ratings and reviews were prominently displayed on the Hydra website. Drugs were sorted into categories including marijuana (marijuana), stimulants (stimulants), iopetics (empathogens), psychedelics (psychedelics), entheogens (entheogens), ecstasy (ecstasy), dissociatives (dissociatives), opiates (opiates), chemical reagents, and Pharmacy ( pharmaceuticals ) .

5 . Hydra also showed many vendors selling fake ID documents. Users could search for vendors that sell identification documents, such as US passports or driver's licenses, and filter or sort items by price. Many sellers of fake IDs have offered to personalize documents based on photos or other information provided by buyers.

6. Numerous vendors also sold hacking tools and hacking services through Hydra. Hacking service providers typically offer access to online accounts of the buyer's choice. Thus, buyers could choose both victims and hire professional hackers to access victims' communications and take over their accounts.

7. So-called "cash out" services. They allowed Hydra users to convert their Bitcoin (BTC) into various forms supported by Hydra's wide range of providers.

8. With the exception of cash out sellers, Hydra has limited the withdrawal options for buyers. However, merchants can withdraw funds to crypto addresses outside of Hydra. Hydra has offered an internal mixing service called "Bioinbank Mixer" or "Bitcoin Bank Mixer" for laundering and post-processing provider withdrawals. Hydra's money laundering features were so sought after that some users created shell provider accounts specifically to transfer money through Hydra's Bitcoin wallets as a laundering method.

To be continued

Alexey Ermakov

Source: www.rucriminal.info