Reports are surfacing that Wall Street Market has apparently been seized by the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).
The site's homepage currently displays a seizure notice which translates, "The platform and the criminal content have been seized by the Federal Criminal Police Office on behalf of the Attorney General's Office in Frankfurt am Main in the course of an international coordinated law enforcement operation."
Below the message, several government seals are displayed-Europol, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (Openbaar Ministerie), the Dutch Police (Politie) and the U.S. Department of Justice, the Postal Inspection Service, the Internal Revenue Service, among other agencies.
This comes a week after speculation began to circulate that the market's admins are pulling off an exit scam.
While more than $30 million in escrow-held funds apparently disappeared, the site's homepage displayed a maintenance notice, blocking users from registering or logging in.
According to a report by Dutch news outlet NU.nl, unnamed officials with the BKA did confirm that the site is seized and that formal announcements will be made Friday.
While these reports have not been independently confirmed, it is difficult to decipher truth from fiction. The markets-and the darknet ecosystem as a whole-are in a state of turbulence after Dream Market suddenly announced it would be shutting down last month.
On another note, as Dark Web News reported last week, a Wall Street manager named "medi13n" claimed he'd obtained support request details and personally identifiable information from the market's systems.
He threatened to dox vendors and users, and also published the server's IP address -thereby leading law enforcement straight to the market's server location.
Interestingly, the seizure notice on Wall Street Market's homepage is posted as a jpg file, SeizureBanner.jpg. Circumstantially, this differs from the seizure of AlphaBay two years ago, when the notice was embedded into the website's code (still live on the AlphaBay's homepage today).
Some users have also shared skepticism about these inconsistencies.
Right now the community is rushing for answers. Is the seizure notice another plot in the exit scam? Or have law enforcement officially taken over?
No one will know for sure until a formal announcement is rolled out by law enforcement officials.