The immediate ripple effects of the explosion of conviction data passing through so many agency records are not easy to track. But over the next few years, Grant Rabenn, who served as the Justice Department’s custodian of documents collected from Operation Bayonet, said he received offers as part of dozens of cases that agencies across the U.S. are still pursuing. request for this information.
A series of large-scale, high-profile dark web busts followed. These operations are all being carried out by a new organization called JCODE, or the Joint Criminal Opioid and Dark Web Enforcement Agency, which brings together experts from the FBI, DEA, Department of Homeland Security, US Postal Inspection Service and half a dozen other federal agencies. Agents: 2018, Operation Disruption; 2019, Operation Disruptor; 2020, Operation DisrupTor. According to the FBI, these enforcement efforts would ultimately lead to more than 240 arrests, 160 “knock and talk” people, the seizure of more than 1,700 pounds of drugs, and $13.5 million in cash and cryptocurrency.
But Lufthansa’s actions are not without cost. In addition to the massive manpower and resources required for the bayonet operation, it also required a group of Dutch police to be the backbone of the dark web. For nearly a month, they facilitated the sale of untold quantities of the deadly drug to unknown buyers around the world. Even if they compromised Hansa, Hansa had compromised them.
Did the Dutch police feel that sense of taint – the taint that any undercover job can bring? Some, at least, say they feel surprisingly unambivalent about their roles. “Honestly, it’s mostly exciting,” said team leader Petra Haandrikman. After all, Dutch prosecutors had reviewed the case, weighed its ethics, and given them the green light. Afterwards, the police involved in the case felt that they could push forward the operation as far as possible with a clear conscience.
Dutch police pointed out that they did ban the particularly deadly opioid fentanyl under Hansa to minimize the harm they could cause — a move Hansa users actually applauded. In fact, however, the ban came just days before their covert operation ended. For more than three weeks prior to that, the site continued to offer the highly dangerous opioid without guaranteeing that all of its orders would be blocked.
How do the police feel about the decision to monitor these drug sales instead of shutting down Hansa and preventing the trade altogether?
“They’re going to happen anyway,” Getlas said without hesitation, “but in different markets.”
in these years Since then, observers of the dark web have tried to determine to what extent bayonet operations have actually disrupted the market’s endless interchangeability, the constant cycle of raids, rebuilds and repeats. Could a highly coordinated global takedown of AlphaBay — or anything else — end or even slow down the perpetual scam that law enforcement agencies have been playing for years, with a new marketplace ready to absorb the last user?
At least one study suggests that the AlphaBay and Hansa busts had more lasting effects than previous darknet takedowns. The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (abbreviated TNO) found that when other marketplaces, such as Silk Road or Silk Road 2, were captured, most of their drug suppliers quickly appeared on other dark web drug sites. But the hawkers who fled the Hanseatic after the one-two punch of the bayonet never reappeared, or if they did, they were forced to wash their identities and reputations and re-create themselves from the ground up. “Compared to Silk Road’s closure, or even AlphaBay’s closure, Hansa Market’s closure stands out in a positive way,” the TNO report reads. “We’re seeing the first signs of game-changing police intervention.”
