
Bryan Connor Herrell, a 25-year-old from Fresno, California, pleaded guilty this week in the US to racketeering charges related to the now-defunct dark web marketplace Alphabay.
Before AlphaBay was shut down by law enforcement in July 2017, Herrell was a marketplace moderator known under the Penissmith and Botah nicknames.
Herrell confirmed that as an AlphaBay mod he was paid in bitcoins for his services as he "settled disputes between vendors and purchasers and settled over 20,000 disputes."
"He is also accused of serving as a scam watcher — providing a service dedicated to monitor attempts to defraud AlphaBay users," the Department of Justice (DoJ) press release says.
The defendant's sentencing is scheduled on May 18 and he faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison, with the actual sentence being at the discretion of the court.

AlphaBay: largest dark web marketplace of its time
"On AlphaBay, vendors, and purchasers engaged in hundreds of thousands of illicit transactions for guns, drugs, stolen identity information, credit card numbers, and other illegal items," the DoJ says.
Before being taken down, AlphaBay was considered the largest online drug marketplace, FBI Active Director McCabe saying at the time that it was ten times larger than Silk Road with more than 200,000 users and roughly 40,000 vendors.
"There were over 250 000 listings for illegal drugs and toxic chemicals on AlphaBay, and over 100,000 listings for stolen and fraudulent identification documents and access devices, counterfeit goods, malware, and other computer hacking tools, firearms, and fraudulent services," the Europol said.
"A conservative estimation of USD 1 billion was transacted in the market since its creation in 2014."
However, AlphaBay got shut down following coordinated law enforcement raids in the US, Canada, and Thailand on July 13, 2017, as part of an FBI and DEA-led operation called Bayonet.
Servers were seized by law enforcement in Canada and the Netherlands, while millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies were also frozen and seized.

AlphaBay creator arrested, dies in his cell
Canadian national Alexandre Cazes, AlpaBay's creator, was also arrested in Thailand at his Bangkok residence during June 2017 by the Royal Thai Police in collaboration with the FBI and DEA.
The FBI discovered Cazes' identity following a sequence of OpSec (operational security) blunders including the use of the AlphaBay admin's personal email address was used to deliver greeting messages to newly registered members on AlphaBay's forum.
AlphaBay helped Cazes accumulate more than $23 million in cryptocurrency, as well as real money in bank accounts from Thailand, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Saint Vincent among others.
Legal authorities also seized cars and real estate valued at roughly $12.5 million from Cazes, and he was also Cazes got his in-laws a villa in Thailand.
"At the time of his arrest, law enforcement discovered Cazes’s laptop open and in an unencrypted state," the DoJ details.
"Agents and officers found several text files that identified the passwords/passkeys for the AlphaBay website, the AlphaBay servers, and other online identities associated with AlphaBay."
While Cazes' indictment was dismissed after being found dead in his jail cell on July 12, the AlpaBay investigation is still active until all former administrators will be sentenced.
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