A Slovakian national admitted on Tuesday to helping operate a darknet marketplace that sold narcotics, cybercrime tools and services, fake government IDs, and stolen personal information for more than two years.
33-year-old Alan Bill (also known online as “Vend0r” or “KingdomOfficial”) pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute controlled substances for his role in running Kingdom Market, which operated from March 2021 through December 2023.
The investigation started with federal undercover investigators making purchases from Kingdom Market around July 2022, acquiring methamphetamine, fentanyl, and a fraudulent U.S. passport that was shipped to Missouri.
When it seized Kingdom Market’s domains and infrastructure more than a year later, in December 2023, the Federal Criminal Police Office in Germany (BKA) said the marketplace hosted 42,000 items for sale, and had several hundred registered sellers and tens of thousands of customer accounts.
The dark web platform enabled its users to buy and sell a wide range of illegal services and goods, including fentanyl, methamphetamine, stolen identities and credit card information, counterfeit money, computer malware, and fraudulent identification documents (including passports and drivers’ licenses), in Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero, and Zcash cryptocurrency transactions using anonymous or semi-anonymous accounts.
Authorities arrested Bill on December 15, 2023, at Newark Liberty International Airport after customs inspectors discovered two cell phones, a laptop, a thumb drive, and a cryptocurrency hardware wallet containing evidence that directly linked him to Kingdom Market.
According to court documents, Bill allegedly held an administrator role and served as a moderator on the market’s Reddit community.
“Bill admitted assisting others in maintaining or operating Kingdom by providing or procuring web-administration services,” the Justice Department said on Tuesday.
“He also admitted receiving cryptocurrency from a wallet associated with Kingdom, assisting with the creation of Kingdom’s forum pages on websites such as Reddit and Dread, having access to Kingdom usernames that made postings on behalf of Kingdom on social media accounts and communicating with others regarding certain Kingdom transactions.”
Under his plea agreement, Bill has agreed to surrender the Kingdommarket.so and Kingdommarket.live domain names (shut down by law enforcement) and to forfeit five types of cryptocurrency from a digital wallet.
Bill faces sentencing on May 5 on the drug trafficking conspiracy charge, which carries a mandatory minimum five-year prison term and a maximum 40-year sentence, and he could also be fined up to $5 million.
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