US authorities have sanctioned the operator of a shuttered online darknet marketplace, including his crypto addresses, which recently profited from Bitcoin price fluctuations.
Iran-based Behrouz Parsarad established the darknet marketplace Nemesis in 2021 and used it to facilitate the sale of drugs, false identification documents, professional hacking resources, and a variety of other illicit services for cybercriminals, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said in a March 4 statement.
Under the sanctions, US citizens are now blocked from dealing with Parsarad and any companies where he owns more than a 50% stake.
A US, German-Lithuanian law enforcement operation shut down Nemesis in 2024. Source: ChainalysisBlockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said the sanctioned property includes 44 Bitcoin (BTC) addresses and five Monero (XMR) addresses, which, between July 2022 and March 2024, received more than $850,000.
The total amount of cryptocurrency sent by Parsarad exceeds $1.6 million, which Chainalysis attributed to price appreciation.
Most of Parsarad’s transaction volume is with Nemesis, but he also sent over $12,000 to several other darknet marketplaces, such as ASAP Market, Incognito Market and Next Generation, and had “indirect exposure to mixers,” according to the blockchain analytics firm.
Parsarad interacted onchain with multiple other darknet marketplaces. Source: ChainalysisOFAC says that before a US German-Lithuanian law enforcement operation confiscated its servers in March 2024, the marketplace had 30,000 active users and 1,000 vendors and was designed with built-in money laundering features.
“In addition to providing criminals with a platform to conduct transactions, Parsarad laundered virtual currencies for narcotics traffickers and cybercriminals active on Nemesis,” OFAC said.
The government agency estimates Parsarad pocketed “millions of dollars over the course of the marketplace’s existence.”
Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith said Parsarad also “continues to try to re-establish” the operation.
Darknet marketplaces still booming despite enforcement actions
Darknet marketplaces generated over $1.7 billion in revenue in 2024, only a slight increase from the previous year, according to blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs 2025 Crypto Crime Report.
TRM Labs said Russian-language darknet markets continued to dominate the ecosystem, mainly due to Russian authorities’ “low risk of enforcement action.”
At the same time, Western darknet marketplaces struggled under increased enforcement and operational instability. In a March 4 blog post, TRM Labs said that in early 2024, several major exit scams occurred in the Western darknet market scene.
“Bohemia Market and Cannabia Market disappeared in January under suspicious circumstances, later revealed by Dutch authorities to be part of an ongoing investigation,” TRM Labs said.
In March, Incognito Market collapsed following a possible exit scam. TRM Labs says its administrator, known as “Pharoah,” attempted to extort users before shutting down the marketplace.
