In a major operation dubbed “Operation Cookie Monster”, international police arrested 119 people from Australia, Britain, Canada, the United States and more than 10 countries in Europe.
Britain’s National Crime Agency said 24 people were arrested in Britain. Another 17 people were arrested in the Netherlands.
People trying to access Genesis Market on Wednesday saw a screen saying, “This website has been seized” and “Operation Cookie Monster”, along with a picture of a person in an FBI hoodie in front of a computer.
A criminal online marketplace selling millions of stolen identities for as little as 56p was shut down by the international police. The sting, led by the FBI and Dutch police with the involvement of law enforcement agencies across 18 countries, including the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), took Genesis Market offline on Tuesday evening.
Genesis Market sold the identities of over two million people for as little as $0.70, allowing hackers to target bank accounts and carry out online fraud, officials in several countries said.
Since its founding in 2018, Russia based Genesis Market offered access to data stolen from over 1.5 million compromised computers around the world containing more than 80 million account access credentials, the Justice Department statement said.