Founder of defunct Hydra Market subjected to life sentence

Hydra Market, which was once the largest dark web market for illicit drug sales and money laundering before being dismantled by a joint U.S. and Germany law enforcement operation more than two years ago, had its leader Stanislav Moiseyev jailed for life and given a more than $37,000 fine by Russian authorities, BleepingComputer reports.

Russia also moved to imprison Moiseyev’s 15 co-conspirators, who have been given jail times of eight to 23 years, as well as ordered to pay nearly $150,000. Operators of the Hydra Market were noted by the Moscow prosecutor’s office to have conducted malicious activity across Russia and Belarus between 2015 and October 2018, with law enforcement later sequestering nearly a ton of narcotics and psychotropic substances across those locations. Such a development comes as Russian programmer and ransomware affiliate Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev, also known as Wazawaka, m1x, Boriselcin, and Uhodiransomwar, was apprehended and charged by Russian law enforcement.