Dutch police arrest admin of 'Bohemia/Cannabia' dark web market

An international law enforcement operation led to the arrest of one of the three administrators of the dual dark web market 'Bohemia/Cannabia,' known for hosting ads for drug sales and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

The man was arrested at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam on June 27, 2024, and electronic devices containing incriminating data and access keys to Bitcoin wallets were seized.

A second administrator of Bohemia/Cannabia was arrested in Ireland in the context of the same operation, which leveraged data from the joint international investigation.

In total, the Dutch police (Politie) and partners in Ireland, the UK, and the US seized over 8 million euros ($8.77M) worth of cryptocurrency from the two administrators.

Politie says it has been investigating the darknet platform from late 2022 until the end of 2023, when it shut down, following several service disruptions and a feud with a supposed "rogue developer" who allegedly caused the outages.

When the admins "exit scammed" and split the money members had deposited to the platform, the police traced the amounts and identified the administrators.

The darknet market also had most of its server infrastructure in the country, which is now under the police's control.

Seizure banner highlighting previous arrests of darknet market users
Source: Politie

At its peak, in September 2023, Bohemia/Cannabia generated over 12 million Euros ($13.1M) in revenue. The marketplace reportedly added 82,000 advertisements daily and facilitated 67,000 transactions every month.

It is estimated that the administrators have made a profit of about 5 million Euros ($5.47M) from the operation of the dark web market.

For sellers in the Netherlands, the police's analysis shows that those performed at least 14,000 transactions totaling 1.7 million Euros in value ($1.86M).

Many of those members were previously identified and arrested, and the police expect that more arrests will follow as more evidence is unearthed from the seized infrastructure.

The admin arrested by the Dutch police earlier this year has appeared before the Rotterdam court today, but the litigation process is still in its early pre-trial phases.