Empire Market co-creator sentenced to 40 years, forfeits $100 million in Bitcoin

According to Recorded Future News, the co-creator of Empire Market, a dark web marketplace, has been sentenced to 40 years in federal prison. Raheim Hamilton, 30, pleaded guilty earlier this year to a drug conspiracy charge.

U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger handed down the sentence on Monday along with a $5 million fine. Hamilton also agreed to forfeit more than $100 million worth of Bitcoin and several properties in Virginia.

What the platform did

Hamilton ran Empire Market with Thomas Pavey from 2018 to 2020. The site let users buy and sell drugs, stolen account credentials, stolen documents, fake currency and hacking tools. More than 4 million transactions passed through it, totalling $430 million. Drug sales made up most of that figure, about $375 million, according to prosecutors. Dealers used the site to move fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin.

The marketplace relied on encryption for communication and on cryptocurrency mixers to launder proceeds. Those two tools are what let a $430 million marketplace operate for two years without its buyers and sellers ever meeting.

How it ended

Empire Market did not get shut down by police in the way BreachForums or Archetyp later were. It collapsed on its own in the summer of 2020, when its operators vanished with an estimated $30 million in Bitcoin that belonged to users. The people who ran the marketplace robbed the people who used it, before investigators ever caught up with them.

Hamilton and Pavey had worked together before Empire Market, selling counterfeit U.S. currency on AlphaBay, another dark web marketplace. When AlphaBay was shut down in 2017, the pair started Empire Market in February 2018. The indictment states that counterfeit currency was sold on the platform at least once directly to a law enforcement agent.

What the sentence changes

The Justice Department has already seized $75 million worth of cryptocurrency from the investigation, along with cash and precious metals. Pavey pleaded guilty last year and is due to be sentenced this month.

The case sits alongside other recent dark web takedowns the Justice Department has pursued, including BreachForums, BidenCash and Archetyp. On the same day Hamilton's sentence was reported, the department also announced a plea deal with a 42-year-old who ran Your Mule Cashout, a laundering operation that used a network of 15,000 money mules to move at least $10 million stolen from 750 bank accounts. He faces up to 50 years.

For anyone who used Empire Market and lost funds in the 2020 collapse, the sentence closes the case against one of the two men who built the platform, though it does not return the $30 million that disappeared when the site went dark.