U.S. authorities have introduced the shutdown of one other huge cybercrime hub amid an ongoing large crackdown on illicit websites. The Justice Department mentioned Tuesday that it had formally shuttered RaidForums, one of many largest darkish net locations for stolen information on the web, and arrested its alleged operator.

The feds say that 21-year-old Diogo Santos Coelho, of Portugal, personally bought stolen information by way of the positioning whereas additionally appearing as its “chief administrator.” Coelho (who glided by the hacker moniker “Omnipotent”) allegedly operated RaidForums from 2015 by way of January of this yr with the assistance of different, unnamed directors, in keeping with court docket documents. British police arrested Coelho within the United Kingdom on January 31 on the behest of the United States. He will stay in custody there till his extradition proceedings are labored out, officers mentioned Tuesday.

“The takedown of this online market for the resale of hacked or stolen data disrupts one of the major ways cybercriminals profit from the large-scale theft of sensitive personal and financial information,” mentioned Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division on Tuesday.

The demise of RaidForums comes amid a cybercrime crackdown on the a part of U.S. regulation enforcement. Last week, federal authorities helped shutter a number of different darkish net crime websites, together with Hydra, a big, Russian-language market recognized for drug gross sales and cash laundering. U.S. authorities additionally not too long ago labored along with police in Romania to facilitate the arrest of a variety of a males accused of working Besa Mafia, a long-running rip-off web site providing phony “murder-for-hire” companies. A botnet allegedly operated by the Russian hacker gang Sandworm was additionally disrupted by the FBI final Wednesday.

In addition to arresting Coelho, police additionally seized three domains and the person database for the legal market. RaidForums required cybercriminals to register nameless accounts to promote and commerce information utilizing cryptocurrency on its web site. At the time of its takedown, the positioning had greater than 530,000 registered customers, CNN reports.

For the higher a part of a decade, RaidForums has served as a large repository for stolen information. Hackers have used it to purchase and promote a variety of data—every thing from pilfered bank card numbers to routing numbers to stolen account credentials. Many corporations that suffered information breaches through the years would in the end discover their websites’ contents spilled throughout RaidForums for varied costs.

“This is another example of how working with our international law enforcement partners has resulted in the shutdown of a criminal marketplace and the arrest of its administrator,” Polite mentioned.