DOJ's Operation TorNado Seizes $234 Million in Dark Web Crackdown

354 Arrests Across 14 Countries

The Justice Department said in its announcement that a coordinated crackdown on dark web drug trafficking, codenamed Operation TorNado, has produced 354 arrests and the seizure of more than $234 million in cash and virtual currencies. The FBI described the sweep as the largest takedown of dark web drug vendors and buyers to date. Neither the Justice Department nor Europol split the $234 million between cash and cryptocurrency, and neither named a specific coin in the official totals.

The operation ran through the Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement team, or JCODE, an FBI-led unit formed in 2018, and officials called it the sixth and most extensive internationally coordinated action since the team's creation. It built on last year's Operation RapTor and ran from May 2025 through October 2026, drawing on agencies in 14 countries. Investigators targeted vendors and buyers active on five markets already seized by police: Archetyp, Bohemia, Nemesis, Kingdom and Tor2Door, along with accounts on DrugHub, forums, single-vendor shops and encrypted messaging services.

Physical seizures reached about 5.7 metric tons of illicit drugs, including fentanyl and other opioids, methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and MDMA, alongside 38 pill presses and 209 firearms. Europol put the European share at more than €60 million in cash and cryptocurrencies, 950 kilograms of drugs and 57 firearms. The US share came to more than $166 million in cash and cryptocurrencies, more than 4.8 metric tons of drugs and 152 firearms. Arrests broke down to 132 in the United States, 59 in the United Kingdom, 45 in Hungary and 41 in Germany, with the remainder spread across France, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Austria, Ireland, Czechia, Australia and Finland. FBI Director Kash Patel called it the largest interagency takedown of dark web drug buyers and vendors on record, and IRS Criminal Investigation chief Jarod Koopman said the networks “cannot operate without money.” Prosecutions are underway in more than 20 districts.

Court Papers Point to Monero and Bitcoin

Where the money moved shows up only in the underlying case files, and the documents posted with the announcement give the clearest picture of how vendors were paid. A criminal complaint in the Southern District of Ohio charges Alexander Green, a 32-year-old from Jacksonville, North Carolina arrested in June, with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances including fentanyl. Prosecutors allege he ran a vendor account called STARLABS on DrugHub, which the complaint describes as a Monero-only dark web market, and that the group is linked to two overdose deaths. The filing states that undercover purchases from the account were made in exchange for cryptocurrency. He faces up to 20 years if convicted.

In a separate case, brothers Stanislav Chernyshov, 30, and Vladislav Chernyshov, 35, are charged in the Eastern District of Virginia with conspiring to distribute Schedule I synthetic opioids. Prosecutors say they ran the vendor BarbaraWhite, selling counterfeit oxycodone pills laced with nitazenes and shipping more than 1,000 parcels across 49 states. A search-warrant affidavit filed in that case describes bitcoin transfers tied to the account and to the Nemesis market. Both brothers face a maximum of 20 years.

The sweep also drew on follow-up from earlier takedowns: when police shut several dark web markets in the previous operation, the resulting intelligence helped identify vendors for this one. The same department runs a second crypto-focused unit as well. US Attorney for Washington DC Jeanine Pirro said on October 27 that the Scam Center Strike Force, formed in November 2025, has frozen more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency belonging to scam organizations. Europol added that its forensic and blockchain analysis teams traced illicit transactions, following flows across wallet addresses as part of the work.

The combined $234 million headline leaves the crypto share unstated, and that gap shapes how much of the haul touches digital assets at all. The court record shows both rails in use: a Monero-only storefront in one complaint and bitcoin transfers in another affidavit. Bitcoin's public ledger lets analysts cluster flows by address, while Monero is built to obscure them, and cross-chain tools such as atomic swaps can move value between the two without a custodial intermediary. Whatever the government ultimately controls turns on who holds the private keys to seized funds, which the filings do not say. Liquidating forfeited coins through spot trading would come only after courts resolve the cases, so most of this total stays frozen rather than sold for now.