Historical — seized 2017
No .onion address on file
AlphaBay darknet market
AlphaBay is a historical catalog entry. The FBI and DEA announced a July 2017 takedown as part of Operation Bayonet. It is not an active market and has no live onion address in our files. This is an editorial profile, not a marketplace listing.
Catalog facts
- Reported launch
- Reported late 2014
- Public focus
- Historical — seized 2017
- Catalog status
- Seized — Seized July 2017 (Operation Bayonet)
About AlphaBay
Public reporting dates AlphaBay to late 2014, about a year after Silk Road fell. At the July 2017 takedown, the Justice Department described it as the largest criminal marketplace on the internet at the time: more than 200,000 users, 40,000 vendors, roughly 250,000 drug listings, and another 100,000 for stolen identities, malware, and fraud tools. Those are agency figures at announcement time.
AlphaBay went offline on 4 July 2017. Its founder, Alexandre Cazes, was arrested in Thailand on 5 July. Investigators said operational security errors, including a personal email address in welcome messages, led them to him. On 12 July he was found dead in his Bangkok cell; Thai authorities ruled it a suicide. The U.S. case against him ended there.
What made Operation Bayonet historic was the second move. Dutch police had already arrested Hansa’s two administrators and, from 20 June 2017, covertly operated that smaller shop. When AlphaBay went dark, Europol reported an eight-fold surge in new Hansa registrations. Both takedowns were announced together on 20 July 2017.
Those public reports treat the original shop as closed. Onion rows stay empty. A 2021 revival under the old brand also vanished. A reused AlphaBay name after a widely reported takedown is a common phishing lure — treat any address you find elsewhere as untrusted until you check a signed canary and a second independent source.
Reported history
- Late 2014
- Public summaries date the shop here, after the 2013 Silk Road seizure.
- 20 June 2017
- Dutch police began covertly operating Hansa after arresting its administrators — the trap that later caught AlphaBay refugees.
- 4–5 July 2017
- AlphaBay went offline. Cazes was arrested in Thailand the next day.
- 12 July 2017
- Thai authorities reported Cazes dead in custody. The U.S. prosecution ended.
- 20 July 2017
- The FBI, DEA, and Dutch police announced both takedowns together as Operation Bayonet.
Reported public features
- Historical entry only. Tags in our file: Historical.
- Justice Department figures at announcement time described a general catalog of drugs, stolen data, and fraud tools — not a single-category shop.
- Public accounts treat Cazes’s OPSEC errors (including a personal email in welcome mail) as the investigative opening, not as a how-to.
- The Hansa covert-control phase is the part later shutdowns are measured against: migration can land on a shop police already run.
What this page does not claim
- This is not an active market. There is no live onion in our files.
- User, vendor, and listing figures come from the announcing agencies. Registered accounts are not active users.
- Hansa was a separate shop. This card is the AlphaBay row; the Bayonet narrative is in the public sources below.
- Any “AlphaBay 2.0” or revival brand after 2017 should be treated as a clone until a signed canary and a second independent source agree.
Public sources
How TorBible records AlphaBay
Status, tags, and listing counts come from our catalog file. Editorial notes below the card come from open public reporting and are worded as reported when we have not verified them in-house. Treat every mirror you find elsewhere as untrusted until you check a PGP canary and a second independent source. See phishing detection and OPSEC fundamentals.