Operation Onymous
Verified core entry, last reviewed August 21, 2026
What was taken down?
Silk Road 2.0 hidden service seized; dozens of additional onion services seized or disabled; servers seized across multiple countries.[1][2][3]
See what happenedWhat happened to the people?
Officials reported 17 apprehended.
1 charged and 1 apprehended named in the public record.
Group accounted for: Partial
Did it stay down?
Not established in the public record. No later activity is recorded against this entry.
See what happened afterwardCoordinated multinational action seizing Silk Road 2.0 and dozens of additional dark-web marketplaces and hidden services.[1][2][3]
Announced November 7, 2014.
- Date
- November 5 to November 7, 2014
- Target
- Silk Road 2.0 and additional Tor marketplaces, tor hidden service marketplaces
- Activity
- Darknet market, Criminal hosting and proxies
- Operational lead
- FBI
- Partners
- EC3, USAO-SDNY, and 1 more[1][2]
- European Cybercrime Centre , coordinator
- United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York , charging
- European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation , judicial cooperation
- Jurisdiction
- United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, and France
- Outcome
- Silk Road 2.0 hidden service seized; dozens of additional onion services seized or disabled; servers seized across multiple countries.
- Status
- Completed
- Legal mechanism
- US seizure warrants (SDNY) plus parallel European judicial process coordinated via Europol EC3 and Eurojust
- Group accounted for
- Partial
Infrastructure
Onion services seized and servers seized, with no count in the record.
| Identifier | Recorded as | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Not published | Onion service | Seized | Silk Road 2.0 plus dozens of additional dark market hidden services. Counts reported range from 27 to more than 400 addresses depending on source. CONFLICTING and not harmonized.[1][2] |
| Not published | Server | Seized | Servers seized across multiple European countries.[2] |
Domains and onion addresses are shown defanged. Where the record gives a count but no identifier, the count is shown in place of one. This list carries only what appears in the cited sources.
- 1
- charged
- 1
- apprehended
Named in the public record: 1 charged and 1 apprehended.
Figures count individuals named in charging documents and official statements, each person once per outcome. People alleged to be involved but not publicly identified are not counted.
| Person | Role | Current public status |
|---|---|---|
| Alleged operator of Silk Road 2.0 | ArrestedCharged | |
|
||
Blake Benthall
Alleged operator of Silk Road 2.0. Current public status: Arrested and Charged.
- Charging authority
- United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York
- Main charges
- Narcotics trafficking conspiracy; Computer hacking conspiracy; Trafficking in fraudulent identification documents conspiracy; Money laundering conspiracy
- Case number
- Not established in the public record
- Arresting authority
- Federal Bureau of Investigation
- Arrest location
- San Francisco, CA, United States
- Extradition status
- Not established in the public record
- Conviction or plea
- Not established in the public record
- Sentence
- Not established in the public record
- Segment
- Core operator
- Sources
- [1]
- Full record
- Everything indexed for Blake Benthall
Rows expand to show charging authority, case identifiers, custody status, and sources.
Group accounted for: Partial
Arrests were made across several sites, but operator rosters for most seized services were never published.
Multiple independent marketplaces were targeted; no single finite operator group applies to the campaign as a whole.
Blake Benthall prosecuted in SDNY.[1][2][3]
Not established in the public record. No later activity is recorded against this entry.
Return class E. The class is a research grading carried in the source dataset and its scale is not published, so this page relies on the relationship and confidence values instead. How this index handles it.
Numbered markers throughout this entry link to the source that supports the claim beside them.
Official sources
-
[1]
Operator Of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged In Manhattan Federal Court
Silk Road 2.0 seizure, Benthall arrest and charges, seizure of additional dark markets
-
[2]
Global action against dark markets on Tor network
European component of Operation Onymous, arrest and server figures
Additional reporting and technical analysis
-
[3]
Contemporaneous reporting on Operation Onymous
Discrepancies in the reported number of seized hidden services
- Arrest count of 17 is an official aggregate reported at the time and is not reconciled with the single publicly named defendant record.
- The method used to locate the hidden services was never disclosed and remains disputed.