French police dismantle Le Monde Parallèle, currently the largest French-language dark web marketplace

French authorities have seized a major hub of illegal activity on the dark web, a dark web trading marketplace that goes by the name Le Monde Parallèle. This is the third French-language dark web marketplace to be seized by French police, following Black Hand in 2018 and Deep Web Market in 2019.

This dismantling of Le MondeParallèle was the result of a long-term operation that lasted several months and was carried out by the Direction Nationale du Renseignement et des Enquêtes Douanières (National Intelligence and Investigation Agency). This dark web marketplace is quite young; it has only been active since early 2020. Here, its sellers offer a variety of illegal products and services to buyers, including stolen credit card data, drugs, forged documents and weapons.

The police operation revealed that the cybercriminals running the trading market also provided their customers with a support forum that, like the trading market, had thousands of registered users at the time of the seizure.

French police arrested two administrators of the platform and seized a large number of fake documents, credit, debit and prepaid cards and thousands of euros in cryptocurrencies, as well as computer equipment and the data contained therein.

French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire congratulated the more than 30 officers (operators, analysts and IT specialists) of the Customs Investigation Bureau who actively participated in the operation." Le Maire said, "By putting an end to the activities of the Le MondeParallèle website, Customs is fulfilling the government's commitment to fight all forms of crime, including cybercrime, which endangers France and the legitimate economy.