Suspected Bohemia dark web marketplace admins arrested by Dutch, Irish police

Two alleged administrators of the dark web marketplace Bohemia are now in custody, Dutch National Police said Tuesday. 

A 20-year-old British man appeared in court in Rotterdam this week following his arrest in June at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Another suspect, identified as 23-year-old Irishman Kevin Daniel Andrei, was arrested in August after an investigation by that country's Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau (GNCCB).

More than €8 million ($8.75 million) in virtual assets were seized during the arrests, police said. 

Bohemia and its sister market Cannabia have been under investigation in the country since the end of 2022, Dutch police said. Several of its servers were located in the Netherlands. 

Set up in 2021, the markets primarily sold drugs, with an emphasis on cannabis products, but also offered “a small number of advertisements for exploits and malware,” according to the dark web intelligence firm Searchlight Cyber.  

In September 2023, the marketplace had transactions worth €12 million (about $12.67 million), the Dutch police said. Some 67,000 transactions were placed every month. 

The market went offline at the end of last year when, according to police, the administrators carried out an “exit scam,” stealing users’ money and divvying it up among themselves. 

Bohemia Market’s page now displays a seizure notice from law enforcement, according to the site Dark Web Informer. On a “Frequently Asked Questions” page showing the logos of Europol, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.K.’s National Crime Agency, Germany’s Federal Criminal Police and others, investigators claim to have “mapped the entire infrastructure of Bohemia and Cannabia market in 2023.” 

“All data from the database server, crypto server and webserver have been seized and will be used for further investigation,” the page says.

The law enforcement operation is the latest attempt to curb cybercrime and crack down on online marketplaces. German police seized the infrastructure of a similar marketplace called Nemesis in March, four months after taking down the illicit emporium Kingdom Market. 

Last month, two men were indicted for allegedly running the Russian dark web marketplace WWH-Club, which sold stolen personal information and other services to cybercriminals.