Empire Market co-creator gets 40 years, forfeits 1,230 $BTC he really should've tumbled better 🪙

A co-creator of darknet marketplace Empire Market has been sentenced to 40 years in federal prison, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois said Wednesday. Raheim Hamilton, 30, of Suffolk, Virginia, was sentenced Monday by U.S. District Judge Steven C. Seeger in Chicago and fined $5 million. He pleaded guilty earlier this year to a drug conspiracy charge.

Hamilton co-owned and operated Empire Market with Thomas Pavey from 2018 to 2020, a period in which the site facilitated more than four million transactions between vendors and buyers worth over $430 million. Drug sales totaled nearly $375 million and included at least 13.3 kilograms of fentanyl, 447 kilograms of cocaine and 103 kilograms of heroin. The platform also trafficked in stolen account credentials and personal information, counterfeit currency and hacking tools.

Every transaction on the site was required to be conducted in cryptocurrency, and the operators encouraged users to route their funds through tumbling and mixing services. Buyers were also able to rate vendors on how effectively they concealed the drugs they shipped. Hamilton agreed to forfeit about 1,230 BTC and 24.4 ETH, along with three properties in Virginia.

Empire Market launched in February 2018, several months after the takedown of AlphaBay, and quickly became the leading Western darknet market ecosystem, according to blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs. It went offline in August 2020 in what users believed was a $30 million exit scam. The sentencing comes after Rui-Siang Lin, who ran darknet drug bazaar Incognito Market, was sentenced to 30 years in February over a platform that handled more than $105 million in narcotics sales.

Pavey, 41, of Ormond Beach, Florida, pleaded guilty last year to a federal drug conspiracy charge. He agreed to forfeit about 1,584 BTC, two boxes of 25-ounce gold bars, three cars and two Florida properties, and is scheduled to be sentenced by Seeger later this month.