Overview
- German-led and Europol-supported teams ran Operation Alice from March 9–19, coordinating 23 countries to target a vast network on the dark web.
- Investigators traced the scheme to one 35-year-old suspect believed to be in China, and an international arrest warrant has been issued.
- Authorities seized 105 servers and other devices tied to the operation, which at its peak used up to 287 servers and hundreds of thousands of short-lived .onion addresses accessible via the Tor browser.
- Police identified about 440 customers worldwide and opened more than 100 follow-up probes, with rapid actions taken where children were at risk, including a 2023 conviction in Germany.
- The sites advertised child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and cybercrime-as-a-service that did not exist, selling Bitcoin-paid “packages” priced €17–€215 and netting an estimated €345,000 from roughly 10,000 buyers.