Cyber drug empire mogul to spend life behind bars

Stanislav Moiseev, a darknet platform runner, has received a life sentence in a Russian prison for setting up the Hydra platform.

Moiseev, together with 15 accomplices, heard their sentence in a Moscow court, with sentences ranging from 8 to 23 years, Russia’s news agency TASS reported. Moiseev received the highest penalty of life imprisonment.

The court had little pity for the darknet marketplace runners, confiscating their possessions, including cars, real estate, and land. Moreover, the court sent defendants to strict regime penal colonies. Russia’s penal colonies were set up after Stalin’s death, as a replacement for the Gulag labor camp system.

The defendants were found guilty of “organizing a criminal group, illegal production and sale of psychotropic substances and drugs, including via the internet.” The court claims that authorities discovered literally a ton of various drugs during Hydra’s takedown.

Hydra was busted in 2022 after German and American law enforcement shut down its infrastructure and took over the marketplace’s servers in Germany. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) estimated that in 2021, the Hydra marketplace accounted for a staggering 80% of all darknet crypto transactions.

At its peak, Hydra was home to 19,000 sellers and over 17 million customers, with total crypto transactions amounting to $5.2 billion.

It’s been a tough month for Russia's cybercrooks. At the end of November, authorities arrested the notorious hacker Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev, better known by his alias, Wazawaka.