Two Men Sentenced for Building Dark Web Sites to Falsely Sell Contraband for Profit

After being deceived for shopping on the dark web trading platform, he sniffed the "business opportunity" and actively built a dark web trading platform website to falsely sell contraband products such as guns, drugs and illegal electronic products for profit. On October 25, the Liangshan County Procuratorate in Shandong Province filed a public prosecution. The court sentenced the defendants Zhang and Wang to one-year imprisonment and fined 10,000 yuan for illegal use of information networks.

Zhang likes to hunt for strange things, and learned some dark web related techniques while browsing the dark web daily. Occasionally he would buy goods from the dark web, but sometimes he paid but couldn't receive the goods. After Zhang was deceived, he was very unbalanced. He did not expect that this also made him smell a "business opportunity."

The users and visitors of the dark web cannot be traced and are difficult to investigate. Zhang contacted Fa Xiaowang to discuss building a dark web trading platform to cheat some money. In December 2019, the two used their own network technology to create websites such as "Dungeon-Dark Web Trading Platform", and downloaded some guns, mobile phones, birth certificates, drugs, personal information and other related products from other dark web sites. Post the picture on my website. The products on the trading platform only have pictures, not physical objects.

Zhang also produced and published more than 60 video files on how to use circumvention tools and how to use Bitcoin to trade on the dark web to promote his website. Wang's task is mainly to maintain the website, act as a customer service, modify or add website comments and sales. According to statistics, during the operation of the "Dungeon-Dark Web Trading Platform" website, there were more than 100 user registrations per day, with a total of more than 3,000 users.

In April 2020, Zhang and Wang were arrested, and the two confessed to their crimes. From December 2019 to the incident, the two released a total of more than 100 information about prohibited and controlled items, and illegally made more than 40,000 yuan.