The dark web is a dangerous and shadowy place where many criminals and predators operate. We will examine the five most infamous dark web criminals in this piece, along with their exciting and intriguing backstories.
1. Peter Scully
One of the most well-known crooks on the dark web is Peter Gerard Scully. From 2011 until 2014, he held and mistreated children in Cagayan de Oro with his girlfriend, Lovely Margallo, and his two partners, Alexander Lao and Maria Durotiya Chia. Teenage girls, kids, and toddlers were among the victims. In addition, Peter recorded the girls from low-income households while he raped, tortured, and sexually assaulted them. He posts the recordings of child sexual abuse to the dark web porn website “No Limits Fun,” where they may fetch up to $10,000 per watch.
However, after being found guilty of 60 different crimes, he was given a life sentence in June 2018 and an extra 129 years in prison in the Philippines in 2022. Torture, murder, child abuse, human trafficking, child pornography, and rape are among the charges.
2. Vincent Ramos
One of the most well-known dark web crooks, Vincent Ramos, was a cyber prodigy who operated the Phantom Secure business, which sold customized, modified BlackBerry smartphones. These phones can send and receive encrypted messages since they are connected to an encrypted network. Across the world, including the US, Australia, Mexico, Canada, Thailand, and Europe, criminal groups used these phones to distribute cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines. The Hells Angels in Australia and the Sinaloa drug gang in Mexico were among his clients.
Nevertheless, Vincent Ramos was apprehended in February 2018 and given a nine-year prison sentence after losing USD 80 million in illicit income and having several assets seized. According to US officials, Phantom Secure’s services generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue. They claimed that Phantom Secure used Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to launder its earnings and laundered the proceeds of the sale of its devices and services through a number of shell corporations.
3. Ross Ulbricht
Ross Ulbricht, often known as Dread Pirate Roberts, is one of the most well-known offenders on the dark web network. He founded the notorious Silk Road dark web marketplace. This market is well-known for leveraging the Tor network for anonymity and Bitcoin BTC for payments while buying and selling drugs, firearms, or other illicit goods. As expected, illicit drug trafficking on the Silk Road totaled over $1 billion.
Ross has been detained since 2013 because of investigative methods and operational security errors, although this market is now closed. After being found guilty of money laundering, drug trafficking, and a scheme to traffic false identification documents, he was given a life sentence.
4. Joshua Schulte
Former CIA employee Joshua Schulte was found guilty of espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, lying to the FBI, and possessing pictures of child abuse. He was given a 40-year jail sentence. In 2017, he released some 8,761 documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, which resulted in the biggest data leak in CIA history. The CIA’s “Vault 7” tools, which enable intelligence officials to hack phones and utilize them as hearing aids, were also leaked by him.
Prosecutors also discovered tens of thousands of photos of child sexual abuse materials at his apartment during a search. However, Schulte’s activities did not end there. He attempted to give a reporter information about CIA cyber organizations via a phone he had sneaked into the jail. He used the fictitious intelligence agent Jason Bourne to create tweets that contained information regarding CIA cyber tools.
5. Lauri Love
Lauri Love, a British man, is another well-known criminal on the dark web network. He is accused of hacking dozens of US government websites, including those of the US Army, NASA, and the Federal Reserve. In addition, he vandalized many websites and stole the personal information of many workers. After a five-hour search, officers who raided his Suffolk home found 29 iPads, computers, and hard drives, among other electronic equipment. Lauri was taken to the local police station by the police. If extradited to the US, he would be subject to a 99-year prison term and $9 million in fines.
However, Lauri Love’s defense attorneys were successful in arguing that his health would deteriorate if he were extradited to the United States and placed under the jurisdiction of its criminal justice system. Love has been diagnosed with severe depression, Asperger’s autism, and drug-resistant dermatitis. He is currently serving his sentence in a UK prison.