DeepDotWeb co-admin sentenced to 8 years in prison

One of the two administrators of the DeepDotWeb portal was sentenced this week to 97 months in prison for receiving money from illegal dark web marketplaces to promote their sites.

Tal Prihar, 37, was detained in May 2019 in France and subsequently extradited to the US. He was charged with running DeepDotWeb, a website on the public internet that advertised and reviewed dark web marketplaces that sold illegal content such as drugs, firearms, and forged documents.

US authorities said that Prihar, together with his partner, ran a kickback scheme where they provided links to the marketplaces in exchange for a commission.

Their scheme earned the two approximately 8,155 bitcoins, worth approximately $8.4 million at the time of the transactions, money that was subsequently laundered to disguise its origins.

Prihar, who was an Israeli citizen residing in Brazil, pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in March 2021.

Prihar's partner, Michael Phan, 34, was detained in Israel and is still fighting his extradition.

The DeepDotWeb website was seized by the FBI following their arrest, but other websites that review and provide links to illegal dark web marketplaces have appeared since Prihar and Phan's arrest.