RARE CRACKDOWN Russian court sentences kingpin of Hydra drug marketplace to life in prison The underground marketplace distributed more than a metric ton of narcotics. Dan Goodin Dec 4, 2024 7:15 am | 6 Credit: Getty Images | Charles O'Rear Credit: Getty Images | Charles O'Rear Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreA Russian court has issued a life sentence to a man found guilty of being the kingpin of a dark web drug marketplace that supplied more than a metric ton of narcotics and psychotropic substances to customers around the world.On Monday, the court found that Stanislav Moiseyev oversaw Hydra, a Russian-language market that operated an anonymous website that matched sellers of drugs and other illicit wares with buyers. Hydra was dismantled in 2022 after authorities in Germany seized servers and other infrastructure used by the sprawling, billion-dollar enterprise and a stash of bitcoin worth millions of dollars. At the time, Hydra was the largest crime forum, having facilitated $5 billion in transactions for 17 million customers. The market had been in operation since 2015.One-stop cybercrime shopThe court established that from 2015 to October 2018, the criminal community operated in various regions of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus, the state prosecutors office of the Moscow Region said. The well-covered activities of the organized criminal group were aimed at systematically committing serious and especially serious crimes related to the illegal trafficking of drugs and psychotropic substances.In addition to the sentence of life in prison, Moiseyev was also fined 4 million rubles, or the equivalent of roughly $38,000. The court also convicted 15 other defendants of being accomplices in the Hydra operations and received prison sentences ranging from eight to 23 years and fines totaling 16 million rubles.Available over the Tor network, Hydra was a bazaar that brokered not just drugs but also fake documents, cryptocurrency laundering services, and other illicit goods and services. Nine months after Hydra was taken down, authorities came for Bitzlato, a cryptocurrency exchange that laundered a substantial portion of the cryptocurrency that Hydra received. In all, authorities said, Bitzlato processed roughly $4.58 billion worth of cryptocurrency transactions. Anatoly Legkodymov, a then 40-year-old Russian national residing in China, was arrested by US authorities in the 2023 takedown.The other defendants sentenced alongside Moiseyev were identified as Alexander Chirkov, Andrei Trunov, Evgeny Andreyev, Ivan Koryakin, Vadim Krasninsky, Georgy Georgobiani, Artur Kolesnikov, Nikolay Bilyk, Alexander Khramov, Kirill Gusev, Anton Gaikin, Alexey Gukalin, Mikhail Dombrovsky, Alexander Aminov, and Sergey Chekh.The sentencing follows the reported arrest on Friday by Russian authorities of Mikhail Matveyev, according to RIA Novosti. Matveyev has been linked to ransomware groups including Babuk, Conti, DarkSide, Hive, and LockBit. US authorities say he is wanted for ransomware attacks on thousands of entities worldwide, including hospitals, airlines, and government organizations. He faces charges for the creation or distribution of software intended to hack information systems.In May 2023, the US Treasury Department announced sanctions against Matveyev. At the same time, the US Department of State offered a bounty of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest.The stiff sentence of Moiseyev and the arrest of Matveyev are something of a rarity in Russia, which has long looked the other way when learning of Russian nationals pursuing cybercrime, as long as people inside the country and allied nations arent targeted.Dan GoodinSenior Security EditorDan GoodinSenior Security Editor Dan Goodin is Senior Security Editor at Ars Technica, where he oversees coverage of malware, computer espionage, botnets, hardware hacking, encryption, and passwords. In his spare time, he enjoys gardening, cooking, and following the independent music scene. Dan is based in San Francisco. Follow him at here on Mastodon and here on Bluesky. Contact him on Signal at DanArs.82. 6 Comments Prev story