Europol on Thursday announced the closure of the Clearnet marketplace under the name Manson’s Market which has contributed to internet fraud on a large scale.
The operation, led by German authorities, led to the seizure of more than 50 servers linked to the service and the arrest of two suspects. More than 200 terabytes of digital evidence has been collected.
Manson Market (“manson-market(.)pw”) is believed to have been launched in 2022 as a way to distribute sensitive information that was illegally obtained from victims in phishing and vishing (voice phishing) schemes.
One such crime involved calling victims pretending to be bank employees to get them to reveal their addresses and security answers. In another case, a network of fake online stores was used to trick visitors into entering payment information.
“The stolen data was traced to a specialized online marketplace that operated as a central hub for trading illegally obtained information,” Europol said. said.
“The marketplace allowed thousands of users to buy stolen data, sorted by region and account balance. This setup has allowed criminals to carry out targeted fraud with greater efficiency.”
Manson Market was also found to have a presence on Telegram, with one of the channels transmitting credit card details such as number, expiry date and CVV code for free every day. Channel, no freestuffbymansonwas established on October 14, 2024.
Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland are among the states that participated in joint law enforcement cooperation.
In a joint effort by various authorities, a series of searches were carried out across Germany and Austria, and infrastructure linked to the market was dismantled in Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and Norway.
In connection with the operation, 27-year-old and 37-year-old men were arrested in Germany and Austria, respectively. Now they are in a detention center.
Development takes place against the background of a busy week of law enforcement actions which destroyed the Crimenetwork marketplace and the MATRIX messaging program used by criminals to trade drugs, weapons and money laundering.
