Sheep Marketplace
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Type of site | Darknet market |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| URL | sheep5u64fi457aw.onion (defunct)[1] |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Required |
| Launched | March 2013 |
| Current status | Offline |
Sheep Marketplace was a darknet market that launched in March 2013 and was one of the lesser known sites to gain popularity with the well publicized closure of the Silk Road marketplace later that year. It ceased operation in December 2013, when it announced it was shutting down after a vendor stole $6 million worth of users' bitcoins.[2][3][4]
In December 2013 Sheep Marketplace announced that one of the site's vendors had exploited a vulnerability to steal 5,400 bitcoins, valued at about $6 million at the time.[5][6] According to Forbes and The Guardian, several users reported the site had started to block withdrawals of bitcoins more than a week prior to the theft. Users furthermore suggested the site's administrators held far more than 5,400 bitcoins, pointing to records of a coincidental transfer of almost 40,000.[5][6][7] As users in the site's forums began to complain and discuss the possibility of connivance, administrators took the forum offline.[8]
Victims of the theft have attempted to identify the thief by sending "tagged" bitcoins to his accounts, using the public nature of bitcoin transactions to follow the coins through the blockchain. Within a couple of days of the theft, a large amount of bitcoins were noticed being processed by Bitcoin Fog, a tumbler used to launder bitcoins by shuffling them between many accounts for a small fee. The size of the transaction, 96,000 bitcoins, caused Bitcoin Fog to fail, leaving the money traceable.[9] Not long thereafter, the last known wallet of the user who had been presumed to be the thief was found to be a wallet owned by BTC-e, a large cryptocurrency exchange. This has led to speculation that the thief sent their money to the exchange in the hope of trading the coins for alternate cryptocurrencies or moving to new wallets to further obfuscate their path.[10]
In March 2015 Czech police arrested a man suspected to be the Sheep Marketplace thief when he paid for an expensive house entirely in bitcoins.[11][12] A nine-month investigation showed that he had made $800,000 of sudden purchases.[13] In October 2017 Tomáš Jiříkovský, the creator of Sheep Marketplace, was sentenced to serve nine years in prison for stealing bitcoins from the market's users.[14]
In May 2016 two men from Florida, then 21-year-old students Sean Mackert and Nathan Gibson, were arrested after tracing Bitcoin transactions via Coinbase.[15] Subsequently, the pair pled guilty to the crime of Bitcoin wire fraud on Sheep Marketplace in 2018 and are now facing a maximum prison time of up to twenty years.[16] About $4 million worth of Bitcoin stolen by Mackert and Gibson has since been seized by the United States federal government.[17]
References
- ↑ "Sheep Marketplace | Deep Dot Web". Archived from the original on 8 July 2017. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
- ↑ Adrianne Jeffries (29 April 2013). "Drugs, porn, and counterfeits: the market for illegal goods is booming online". The Verge. Archived from the original on 28 September 2017. Retrieved 2 December 2013.
- ↑ "Dark marketplace closes after theft of £3m in bitcoins". BBC. 2 December 2013. Archived from the original on 15 June 2018. Retrieved 2 December 2013.
- ↑ Mandala, Ravi (1 December 2013). "Silk Road-like Sheep Marketplace scams users; over 39k Bitcoins worth $40 million stolen". Techie News. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 2 December 2013.
- 1 2 Green berg, Andy (1 December 2013). "Silk Road Competitor Shuts Down And Another Plans To Go Offline After Claimed $6 Million Theft". Forbes. Archived from the original on 26 May 2017. Retrieved 2 December 2013.
- 1 2 Hern, Alex (3 December 2013). "Online drugs marketplace shut down after £3.5m bitcoin hack". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 21 April 2014. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
- ↑ "Block chain record". Archived from the original on 28 March 2014. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
- ↑ Sankin, Aaron (2 December 2013). "Sheep Marketplace scam reveals everything that's wrong with the Deep Web". Daily Dot. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 27 March 2015.
- ↑ Edwards, Jim (3 December 2013). "A Thief Is Attempting To Hide $100 Million In Stolen Bitcoins — And You Can Watch It Live Right Now". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on 7 December 2013. Retrieved 4 December 2013.
- ↑ Alex Hern. "Recovering stolen bitcoin: a digital wild goose chase | Technology". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 9 July 2019. Retrieved 22 December 2013.
- ↑ O'Neill, Patrick Howell (27 March 2015). "Suspected Dark Net master thief busted trying to buy luxury Czech home". Daily Dot.
- ↑ Blažek, Vojtěch (27 March 2015). "Jak se praly bitcoiny: Miliony z ciziny, vila napsaná na dědečka". Hospodářské Noviny.
- ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 1 September 2017. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 3 April 2018. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ↑ Shin, Laura. "Mystery Solved: $6.6 Million Bitcoin Theft That Brought Down Dark Web Site Tied To 2 Florida Men". Forbes. Archived from the original on 9 September 2017. Retrieved 30 August 2021.
- ↑ Scanlan, Dan. "Forefeited [sic] funds seized from 2 Jacksonville men awarded to agencies that helped investigate bitcoin theft". The Florida Times-Union. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
- ↑ "More Than $1.7 Million In Forfeited Funds Presented To Law Enforcement Agencies". www.justice.gov. 17 January 2018. Archived from the original on 30 August 2021. Retrieved 30 August 2021.
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