FBI Says Global Operation Led to 270 Arrests Targeting Dark-Web Drug Trafficking

Arrests were made in Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, and the United States, officials say.

An FBI agent walks toward a crime scene, in this file photo. Mario Tama/Getty Images

The FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday announced that 270 people were arrested and that hundreds of pounds of fentanyl were seized as part of an operation targeting drug traffickers on darknet websites.

The arrests were made in Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States under “Operation RapTor,” according to the FBI. The name of the operation refers to the Tor software and browser that allows for anonymous web browsing and to access darkweb, or darknet, websites that are normally not accessible through standard browsers or search engines.

In a statement, the DOJ said that “more than $200 million in currency and digital assets, over two metric tons of drugs, 144 kilograms [317 lbs] of fentanyl or fentanyl-laced narcotics, and over 180 firearms” were also seized in the operation.

FBI officials noted that one kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of fentanyl has the potential to kill up to 500,000 people. That drug has led to hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths in the United States over the past decade or so, and it’s currently the leading cause of overdose deaths in the country, federal health officials say.

“By cowardly hiding online, these traffickers have wreaked havoc across our country and directly fueled the fentanyl crisis and gun violence impacting our American communities and neighborhoods,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement on Thursday. “But the ease and accessibility of their crimes ends today.”

An operation targeting an apartment in Los Angeles that was being used as a hub to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine on the dark web also led to the seizure of “large amounts of cash and suspected drugs,” the FBI said.

Four people who were arrested in the case are accused of operating around 10 dark web vendors on 17 different markets, it said, adding that they primarily sold meth, cocaine, MDMA, and ketamine in exchange for cryptocurrency. They also allegedly shipped drug-containing packages through the U.S. Postal Service, according to the FBI statement.

Aside from the arrests and seizures, U.S. officials noted that they placed sanctions on Iranian national Behrouz Parsarad for his alleged role as founder and operator of the Nemesis Market, which operates on the dark web. He was also indicted by a federal grand jury on drug trafficking charges related to that operation, the DOJ said.

Last month, the DOJ announced the charges against Parsarad, of Tehran, and said that Nemesis facilitated the sale of around $30 million in drugs between 2021 and 2024.

“Nemesis Market, through the darknet, was a borderless powerhouse of criminal activity that not only fueled the drug epidemic, but also a multitude of illegal acts with the capacity to harm our citizens and destroy our communities,” FBI Cleveland Acting Special Agent in Charge Charles Johnston said in a statement in April.

The announcements come just two years after officials in the United States and Europe arrested nearly 300 people, confiscated more than $53 million, and seized a dark-web marketplace known as the “Monopoly Market” in a separate case. A year before that, German and U.S. authorities took down the “Hydra” dark-web market.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.