Alphabay Vendor Amsterdoomed Faces Four Years in Prison

A part-time taxi driver in the Netherlands faces up to four years in prison for selling drugs and firearms on Alphabay and other darkweb marketplaces. Officials revealed in court that the man had sold marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, and nine firearms. The vendor argued that he had never filled an order and had simply scammed his customers.

When not working as a taxi driver in Amsterdam, the defendant–a 31-year-old man living in the city of Zaandam–sold guns and drugs on a number of darkweb marketplaces under the usernames “Amsterdoomed,” “Merchantsofdeath,” and “Hells_Angels.” According to the OM press release, law enforcement became aware of the Amsterdoomed account on Alphabay in 2017 after the Federal Bureau of Investigation pulled the plug on the marketplace.

Law enforcement failed to identify the vendor using the data seized from the Alphabay and Hansa servers during Operation Bayonet. Investigators, more than one year after identyifing Amsterdoomed as a target for law enforcement in the Netherlands, learned that someone in Zaandam had ordered a firearm from a vendor on an unspecified darkweb market. The gun vendor–likely an undercover Homeland Security Investigations or the Federal Bureau of Investigations–relayed the information about the Zaandam buyer. Netherlands investigators identified and arrested a 44-year-old from Amsterdam. He “would have receieved” the gun, according to officials.

The recipient admitted that someone else had ordered something and that he had agreed to receive the package. He immedietly named the 31-year-old defendant from Zaandam as the person behind the purchase. The 44-year-old had agreed to receive only a package of drugs, according to the man’s attorney. The prosecutor is seeking a sentence of only 180-hours of community service. Authorities, after arresting the intended recipient of the gun, raided the primary defendant’s house.

During the raid at his house, law enforcement found ecstasy and cocaine. Authorities found evidence connecting the defendant to drug and firearm distribution since 2016. He sold “hundreds of ecstasy pills, more than one ounce of cannabis and nearly twenty grams of cocaine,” according to the official announcement. Investigators also said the vendor had sold nine firearms to customers on Alphabay and other markets.

The final sentence will be announced later this month.