The U.S. Secret Service, working with a coalition of international law enforcement agencies, has taken down and seized the website of Garantex, a Russian cryptocurrency exchange accused of being associated with darknet markets and ransomware hackers.
On Thursday, the official Garantex website was replaced with a notice saying the exchange’s domain has been seized by the Secret Service following a warrant by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
This is the latest action taken by Western governments against the Moscow-based exchange.
Last month, the European Union also sanctioned Garantex as, saying it is “closely associated with EU-sanctioned Russian banks.” This was part of a package of sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
In 2022, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Garantex, alleging that more than $100 million in transactions done on the exchange “are associated with illicit actors and darknet markets,” including the notorious Russian ransomware gang Conti, and the darknet market Hydra.
Nate Herring, a spokesperson for the U.S. Secret Service, confirmed to TechCrunch in a statement that the agency “seized website domains associated with the administration and operation of Russian cryptocurrency exchange, Garantex as part of an ongoing investigation,” while declining to provide further comment.
The takedown notice, seen by TechCrunch, said that the operation was conducted in coordination with the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Europol, the Dutch National Police, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt or BKA), the Frankfurt General Prosecutor’s Office, the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, and the Estonian National Criminal Police.
TechCrunch reached out to all these organizations for comment. At the time of writing, only the FBI responded, declining to comment.
TechCrunch also reached out to Garantex via the official email addresses listed on the site before the seizure, as well as through the company’s Telegram account. Garantex did not respond to these messages.
TechCrunch verified the website seizure notice by analyzing Garantex’s internet-facing domain records. As of Thursday, Garantex’s web domain is now pointing to servers known to be controlled by the Secret Service. The same server is also host to several other website seizure notices carried out by the Secret Service in recent years.
Following the seizure, Garantex made no mention of the law enforcement operation in its official Telegram channels. On Thursday morning, Garantex announced that it was “suspending all services, including cryptocurrency withdrawals,” according to a machine translation of the announcement.
The decision came after stablecoin issuer Tether froze $28 million worth of its cryptocurrency on Garantex.
“We have bad news,” Garantex wrote. “We are fighting and will not give up! Please note that all [Tether] in Russian wallets is currently under threat.”
