FBI Seizes Virtualine Domain Over Alleged Criminal Hosting and Bitcoin Money Laundering
Summary: The U.S. Department of Justice announced the FBI's seizure of the virtualine[.]net domain, tied to a bulletproof hosting provider that also operated as Secury, Massgod, Spamhouse, Lanedo, and Omegatech, in a coordinated operation with Hessen State Police, the National Police Corps of the Netherlands, the U.K. National Crime Agency, OverRIPE, and Lumen Technologies. Court documents allege Virtualine hosted a forum identified as Vendor 1 that sold explicit images of minors and promoted hack-for-hire, accepted unhosted bitcoin payments to avoid compliance checks, and continued hosting despite notices from law enforcement in Germany, Canada, and Australia, NCMEC, and a victim's attorney; Dutch police seized dozens of physical servers in Limburg, taking hundreds of virtual servers offline and obtaining data on more than 3,000 customers.
Key Takeaway: TRM Labs found Virtualine received more illicit-attributed cryptocurrency than any other labeled bulletproof host in 2026, with a Russian drug marketplace accounting for nearly 44% of direct inflows and ransomware groups including Qilin, INC, and DragonForce among its payers - and as TRM's Ari Redbord noted, seizing a domain does not erase the blockchain record of who was paying and who was getting paid.
Read the original at The Hacker News ↗
- Topics
- Cybercrime & Law Enforcement
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