The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added 44 Bitcoin and five Monero addresses linked to the now-defunct darknet marketplace Nemesis Market to its SDN list.

According to a press release, these wallets were controlled by Behrouz Parsarad, an Iranian national who is believed to have been the administrator of the platform.

On March 20, 2024, the BKA seized the infrastructure of Nemesis Market in Germany and Lithuania, disrupting its operations. The police also confiscated digital assets worth €94,000.

The investigation started in October 2022.

Created in 2021, Nemesis Market traded in drugs, stolen data, credit card information, and cybercriminal services, including ransomware, phishing, and DDoS attacks.

Before its shutdown, Nemesis Market had 30,000 active users, who conducted transactions involving illegal substances worth around $30 million.

Parsarad earned millions of dollars in transaction commissions and facilitated the laundering of digital assets, according to OFAC.

The administrator remains at large. According to the agency, he may have been “discussing the creation of a new darknet marketplace” with former suppliers.

As a reminder, in April 2022, German police confiscated the servers of the Hydra darknet marketplace and seized 543 BTC, while the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on the platform.

In the same month, a U.S. court charged Dmitry Pavlov, a Russian national, in absentia for administering Hydra, providing hosting services, conspiring to launder money, and distributing drugs. At the same time, the Meshchansky District Court in Moscow arrested Pavlov on other charges.

In December 2024, the Moscow Regional Court sentenced Stanislav Moiseev, the founder of Hydra, to life imprisonment and a fine of 4 million rubles.