Anonymous online marketplace that replaced Silk Road VANISHES... taking $100MILLION of users' money with it

Sheep Marketplace, an anonymous marketplace accessible only with the help of software that hides its users' identities, virtually vanished Sunday taking its vendors' money with it



Sheep Marketplace became the go-to 'dark web' site for drugs, illegal arms, and other shady deals after Silk Road was famously shuttered by the FBI in October

The site claimed they'd been hacked but cache of 96,000 Bitcoins, the equivalent to nearly $100 million, has been traced back to the site



A shady online marketplace that anonymously sold drugs and guns has virtually disappeared, leaving illegal vendors believing they’ve been scammed out of as much as $100 million.



Sheep Marketplace emerged as the go-to replacement to Silk Road, a similar bazaar shuttered by the FBI in October.



Now users of the site, which operated outside the law to begin with and dealt only in anonymous Bitcoins, fear it was a scam all along.



Fleeced: An illicit online bazaar where drugs, guns, and even hit men could be purchased went offline Sunday. Now its vendors and users fear they've been bilked out of as much as $100 million, all in anonymous Bitcoins through what may have been a scam website

Shielded from authorities and using special software to access the so-called ‘Deep Web’ site, buyers could find drugs, guns, and even hit men.



Buyers would put their Bitcoins into the marketplace, where sellers would withdraw them, with all the transactions moderated by the website.

Which is where the issue first arose.



In the days before the site shut down, vendors suddenly found themselves unable to access the Bitcoins tied up in the site’s wallet.

Down, but is it out? Sheep Marketplace posted a note claiming it was they who were the victims of a scam. But users have their doubts and fear no one will ever get refunds of their nearly untraceable, illicit money

As they complained, reports RT, they found their comments suddenly yanked from the site’s forums.



Buyers also began to see suspicious things in the time leading up to this possible scam. Some vendors, though not all, began to list their drugs and other goods at prices far lower than ever before.



Now, many believe they were being bilked out of as many of their Bitcoins—a difficult to trace form of online currency currently worth over $1,000 a piece—as possible before taking the money and running.



On Sunday, visitors to the site found a note in place of the homepage that claimed a vendor called EBOOK101 had stolen from the site’s cache of Bitcoins.

Shoddy replacement? The illegal bazaar rose to prominence after Silk Road was shut down by the FBI in October. While other marketplaces exist, users must now fear that each one is a scam like Sheep Marketplace appears to have been

‘This vendor found bug in system and stole 5400 BTC,’ reads the brief note. ‘Your money, our provisions, all was stolen.’



However, according to a post on Hacker News, a wallet of far more Bitcoins has been traced back to the site.



THE DEEP WEB: OUT OF GOOGLE'S REACH

Tor - short for The onion Router - is a seething matrix of encrypted websites that allows users to surf beneath the everyday internet with complete anonymity.

It uses numerous layers of security and encryption to render users anonymous online.

Normally, file sharing and internet browsing activity can be tracked by law enforcement through each user's unique IP address that can be traced back to an individual computer.

The Tor network on the Deep Web hides the IP address and the activity of the user.

Most of the Web's information is buried far down on dynamically generated sites, unable to be found or seen by traditional search engines - sites or pages don't exist until created as the result of a specific search.

An Internet search is like dragging a net across the surface of the sea - a great deal of information is caught, but a majority is deep and therefore missed.

Valued at $45 million, 39,918 in Bitcoins could now be in the hands of a those behind the site after scamming untold numbers of hopeful drug users and gun toters out of their hard earned virtual cash.

Or perhaps even more.



According to the Daily Dot, one Redditor claims to have engaged in a virtual chase with Czech computer programmer Tomáš Jiřikovsky, who user sheeproadreloaded2 claims is behind the site and has absconded with 96,000 bitcoins, or about $95 million dollars.



Despite a claim by Sheep Marketplace that they intend to refund users’ money to their ‘emergency addresses,’ none of the commenters on Reddit’s r/SheepMarketplace forum appear to have received any money thus far.



Some, however, do seem to be seriously worried their money will never come.



A commenter using the handle wrote: ‘I am a large vendor on Sheep Marketplace, or I was until recently. I sold hard drugs in reasonably large quantities. I have around $90k locked up in the site. I owe some money to some very nasty people,



‘I have until monday evening. They have already threatened me with death. I have no doubt that they have killed before...I am 26 and I don't want to die.’



Whether this is a true story or not remains unclear.



However, with no way to track what illicit money belongs to whom, it seems clear that no one will be getting their Bitcoins back even if the alleged thief ever gets caught.

BITCOINS, MONEY IN A DIGITAL AGE - WHAT IS THE VIRTUAL CURRENCY?

Bitcoins are a type of online currency that can be exchanged for dollars and vice versa.

The main idea behind it is to facilitate cheap, anonymous transactions policed by its community of users.

Much like gold, there are a finite number of Bitcoins - 21 million exist and are predicted to last until 2140.

This number was designated by the inventor (or inventors) of the virtual coinage when it first came about in 2008.

Also like gold, Bitcoins are mined. But instead of digging in the ground, Bitcoins are extracted online via complex algorithms like virtual pickaxes.

The value of Bitcoins fluctuate like gold, too.



