Snook - Unknown Dark Web Websites

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Some corners of the web are so underground they operate in secrecy for years, and today we are diving into some Unknown Dark Web Websites. From a terrifying video ring, to someone who stole millions o...f dollars from unsuspecting victims. WARNING: This video contains descriptions and references to extremely disturbing content found on the dark web. Follow me on instagram and Spotify!Would you like to see another part in this series? Let me know down below. Thanks for watching and supporting the channel.Subscribe and like for more, thank you for watching, and stay safe...And yes, I'm a human voice.NEXT SUB GOAL - 100,000 followers and rate the show 5 stars! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 The dark web is where humanity's darkest secrets hide. Illegal marketplaces, unimaginable crimes, and things society tries to erase all thrive here, often without consequence. Some sites were short-lived, some highly profitable, and some so disturbing, even seasoned investigators couldn't handle them. And the people behind them, rarely ever face punishment. And today, we're skipping the Silk Road in the stories you've heard. heard a hundred times over. Instead, we're diving into some unknown dark web websites. Make sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel. And we're starting with one that is beyond disgusting.
Starting point is 00:00:43 Pink, and I can't say the other word because of YouTube's guidelines, so pink crystal. Think about the breaking bad substance they cooked up. So yeah, pink crystal. In 2015, the world's biggest adult content website. You know the one, implemented a method for people to report revenge videos on their site. From that point on, if you came across some illicit content of yourself, which I imagine is horrifying, one click will take it off the website. But not every website is so inclined to help you. In fact, some have made a business out of it. Revenge videos became a prevalent problem in the early 2000s. Before then, it wasn't unheard of. Many people were caught sharing illicit photos of their exes, but the difference is these incidences were
Starting point is 00:01:31 isolated, often shared among close friends, which is gross to say, but that's like max 20 people. Your standard loser didn't have the resources to humiliate their ex on the macro, but when the 2000s rolled around, people had more reach, social media, chat forums, emails, cell phones, and cell phone cameras. Gone were the days of professional, adult videos. Now, anyone could make one. And worse, anyone could share it. Not with a couple of people, but with countless thousands. Now, with every bad breakup loomed the possibility that private images or videos could be leaked onto the internet. And I hate to say this, but there's a ton of people who couldn't care less about consent. In fact, they enjoy non-consensual exposure. Now, thankfully,
Starting point is 00:02:26 this stuff doesn't survive on the surface web anymore. Most adult websites have safeguards in place to prevent it, but the dark web has no such rules. For the purposes of this video, I can't say the actual name of the website, so we'll refer to it as Pink Breaking Bad Crystal or Pink Crystal for short. Pink Crystal was a website dedicated to Revenge Videos. It was built in a similar way to 4chan,
Starting point is 00:02:52 designed as an image board, where users could post illicit photos. But like we just discussed, none of these photos were posted consensually. In fact, some of them weren't even acquired consensually. I'm not sure of the actual details, but essentially, Pink Crystal users would hack into people's accounts and steal their intimate photos. One example is a woman named Shelby. I won't say her last name for privacy reasons,
Starting point is 00:03:21 who actually sued Pink Crystal. She was a college student at the time, living in Texas and enjoying an uneventful life, but her days of peace were about to come to an end. According to court documents, Pink Crystal somehow gained access to Shelby's private photos, ones that had never been shared with anyone, and posted them. When Shelby found out, she was horrified, obviously. She contacted the administrators to take it down, and they not only refused, they harassed her.
Starting point is 00:03:53 How you might ask. Well, they had a Twitter page where they would post about people who were being exposed. I'm not joking. These people were demented. They would take non-consensual videos, post the links to Twitter, and then tag the person's social media pages, rallying their fan base to go harass these women. Shelby received death threats, threats of assault,
Starting point is 00:04:17 and by the time she had discovered the images, it was too late. The damage was, Done. Previously, she had dreams of joining law enforcement. Of her own, a minute's, the dream was made impossible by Pink Crystal. To make matters worse, the lawsuit failed. In similar cases, the defendant often receives a settlement from the people who operate the website, and those people typically receive jail time because revenge videos are criminal, but there was a problem with Pink Crystal. No one knew who was operating it. To this day, no known person has ever been charged for the indecency allowed on Pink Crystal.
Starting point is 00:05:02 When an official investigation began, they tried to track down the owners. When they discovered that whoever was running it was functionally untraceable, domain registration, admin accounts, operator records, all purposefully obscured. How? Well, the host company, Katz Global Media, offered a service to register untraceable domains. Even they couldn't figure out who these people were. After the attempted lawsuit, Pink Crystal was under heavy screw-knit.
Starting point is 00:05:36 Before then, they operated on the surface web. But after a public backlash, the cowards retreated to the dark web to avoid a shutdown. Now, normally, a shutdown wouldn't matter too much. After all, they're just sick people looking for a rush. but Pink Crystal was different. Pink Crystal was monetized. Most of the time, these kinds of websites run banner ads and pop-ups. So even though we don't know an exact figure,
Starting point is 00:06:05 we can use similar websites like Is Anyone Up to approximate their earnings. Is Anyone Up was a similar revenge video site, the first one to ever hit the mainstream. And because of its shutdown in 2012, we know that the owner, Hunter Moore, was making $13,000 a month on ad revenue alone. For two more years, the site continued to torment its victims from the dark recesses of the internet, until 2014, when the FBI, inaction with Europol, successfully shut down Pink Crystal.
Starting point is 00:06:40 Over the years, the anonymous owners have attempted to relaunch the site to no avail. Luckily, today they are permanently offline. The Iron Troll website has archived some Twitter posts. All of the names and links have been redacted or are inactive. But scrolling through, it's easy to see how horrible this website truly was. I can only imagine the lasting impact it had on the people who were exposed. And unfortunately, I'm sure there are other websites just like Pink Crystal. Surviving Today.
Starting point is 00:07:16 Somewhere down deep in the dark web. archetype market now this might just be because i'm a YouTuber or i'm chronically online but from my perspective everyone and their grandma knows about the Silk Road by now we've talked about it before on the channel and for the few of you who haven't heard of it the Silk Road was a website running from 2011 to 2013 that operated as an online drug marketplace and frankly i'm sick of hearing about it i'm sick of writing about it and i think it's ties into a problem YouTube is having when it comes to dark web material. When the internet was new and scary, the websites hosted on untraceable browsers seem like
Starting point is 00:08:03 the most horrifying things online. But as the internet got older and I did too, I started to notice that most of the videos talking about dark web websites were the same old, tired, recycled ones we saw 10 years ago. It's interesting to say that something like the internet's first drug dealer market place, hidden from the surface web, feels more like history to talk about than an actual story. And personally, I don't like covering old news. So when I came across archetype market to my research, I was very excited to share it all with you. Let's start at the beginning. A boy is living his life in Germany. He was young when the Berlin Wall fell, five years old, and grows up in the shadow of
Starting point is 00:08:46 poverty it created. He's in close contact with drugs from an early age and begins experience. When I was younger, I thought I was invincible. I thought I was smarter than everyone else, so I skillfully ignored every warning and did what I felt like every day. Since I was a teenager, I've tried different drugs. But I have to say that alcohol was the worst drug for me. But this is probably also due to the environment in the circumstances. But like any young man, he wants to create something of his own. Him and his buddies get drunk and start thinking up ideas for a website.
Starting point is 00:09:22 something new, something that would bring them out of poverty, but it never gets anywhere. He stuck. Then, at the age of 20, he began his journey with hallucinogens. When I consumed hallucinogens for the first time, I felt like someone had just given me the gift of critical thinking. I started to question a lot of things. Firstly, why I'm drunk almost every day. I realize that I'm very far from what I imagined for my future, when I was still a child.
Starting point is 00:09:54 As a child, I always wanted to practice a social profession and do something good for the world and for my fellow human beings. But at that time, I actually did exactly the opposite. I showed anti-social behavior and got on everyone's bad side as best as I could. I think that was also my ego death. I realized and perceived many things that I did not perceive before.
Starting point is 00:10:16 After my first trip, I wanted to do it again, quickly, and took four more trips within a few months. After the fourth trip, I had a new self-image and didn't want to drink alcohol anymore. I stopped drinking alcohol overnight and haven't had to drink for over a year. I started to focus on the goals of my childhood, and of course I have also set myself some new goals. Q the Silk Road. The boy, now a man, sees the work of Ross Ulbryke, creator of the Silk Road, and is inspired. He starts to develop his own ideology.
Starting point is 00:10:51 They believe that drugs shouldn't be illegal. He believes that drugs in all forms aren't necessarily evil. They aren't good. They aren't bad. They just are. And he begins to believe that drugs shouldn't be criminalized in Europe. After all, it's a victimless crime. If he created a marketplace, it would be to further his political ideal.
Starting point is 00:11:15 That true freedom means illicit substances are legalized. But he doesn't like the case. actions of Ross Ulbrick. It was clear to our young man here that Ross was motivated by greed. He believed that a new website could do some good, give freedom to the people, and destigmatized the industry. All of what I just described was from a German interview conducted with our young man in 2021. He had developed an archetypal sense of manhood. He wanted to do what he believed was his duty. His name was Mark Hegemeister, and he founded Archetype Market, the longest running online drug
Starting point is 00:11:59 marketplace ever created. Launched in 2020, Arctype Market hit the ground running, wanting to be different from the Silk Road. Arms trafficking wasn't allowed. No personal listings. It was an unadulterated online store solely for drugs. The websites had six vetted distributors, covering a couple of different bases. I won't list what drugs were sold.
Starting point is 00:12:25 I don't want YouTube to flag me, but they sold most of the popular narcotics we see today. Mark studied the Silk Road and learned from Ross Ulbriks mistakes. He made sure no communications were done from personal emails, no identifying information was on the site, and everything was deeply encoded. He implemented a cryptocurrency, called Monaro for transactions to keep everything totally anonymous. Most other drug marketplaces today are taking down quickly, but because of his efforts,
Starting point is 00:12:59 archetype market survived for five years, which is basically unheard of in 2025, but it wouldn't last forever. Europe was hot on his heels. Agencies all over the continent were on the hunt for this new drug lord. Audiology or not, Good intentions or not, he needed to be taken down. The fact of the matter is, freedom or not, people die on drugs.
Starting point is 00:13:27 Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives to the free-minded ideology Mark Hegemeister supported, and unfortunately for him, he was the top marketplace on tour. And with that exposure, came his downfall. Operation Deep Sentinel was born. A Sentinel is a guard, a soldier. whose job is to keep watch over something and keep the people safe. Operation Deep Sentinel was a joint effort between Europol and police agencies from 44 different countries
Starting point is 00:13:59 to protect the people and clean up the dark web. And after half a decade, they finally seized the website and arrested Mark in June of 2025. Now, let's not get it twisted. Mark was a drug dealer, plain and simple. His actions probably resulted in deaths, countless families being damaged or destroyed, and I only wish he would have used his passion for something else. Because maybe he could have done the world some good. But today, Mark is in jail, awaiting trial.
Starting point is 00:14:35 And archetype market joins the graveyard of similar marketplaces, never to return. Welcome to Video. Of all the entries on this list, this one is the most significant. It was thickening, bar none. In June of 2015, a website launches on the Tor browser. And very quickly, it picked up traffic. Their service selling videos. Many videos.
Starting point is 00:15:02 Some had been circling around the internet for years. Some were brand new. But the owner wanted a place to keep them all, a marketplace for sharing these videos to the widest possible audience. And as you may have guessed by now, these videos were terrifying and about children. Now, I want to say really quickly, I read the comments, I hear you all, and I don't want to keep saying cheese pizza. But unfortunately, even the more respectful term you've all been recommending gets flagged by YouTube. I know many of you have been requesting.
Starting point is 00:15:39 I begin using the other term and I want to. I want to be as respectful as possible when covering these cases, but unfortunately, YouTube doesn't like us even using those terms. And with that said, I think stories like these are very important to talk about. Exposing these disgusting people is one way to help combat the problem, and the only way I can do so is by using cheese pizza as the acronym. So I'm sorry in advance. I'm going to try to say it as scarcely as possible. Now, most websites that host cheese pizza are small. It's not very often we hear about one with more than a couple thousand articles
Starting point is 00:16:19 of cheese pizza material, which is crazy to say. Obviously, any cheese pizza material is terrible, but a couple thousand is unfortunately the standard. But it doesn't typically get above that because these kinds of websites garner ridiculous attention, which is disgusting to say the least, but law enforcement puts the boot on the neck of these sites with frequency.
Starting point is 00:16:45 Just this year, there was something called Operation Grace Skull, which executed an effort to shut down four dark web websites that hosted cheese pizza. In total, 18 people were arrested, receiving 300 years of jail time altogether. The assistant attorney general Matthew R. Galletti had this to say. Today's announcement sends a clear warning to those who exploit and abuse young people. You will not find a safe haven, even on the dark web. Thanks to the relentless determination of our prosecutors and law enforcement partners, we have exposed these perpetrators for who they are, eliminated their websites,
Starting point is 00:17:24 and brought justice to countless victims. So it's very clear. Law enforcement wants these people arrested, and they put a lot of effort and energy into shutting down these websites quickly. But welcome to video was different. I mean, it makes Operation Gray's Skull look like a shoplifting case because Welcome to Video wasn't just pushing a couple of videos. Like I said, this was designed to be a marketplace,
Starting point is 00:17:54 and Welcome to Video was a very successful, very insidious marketplace. They hosted over 200,000 videos. Yeah, you heard me correctly. a quarter of a million videos on one website. And those numbers don't turn up overnight. No, this website was active for years. And they had an unbelievable 1.2 million registered users. I wish I were making this up.
Starting point is 00:18:29 It makes me genuinely sick to say that out loud. But unfortunately, it's true. There were 1.2 million accounts on Welcome to Video. Just for reference, if a podcaster on Spotify had 1.2 million followers, they'd be in the top 15 most popular podcast on Spotify. The city of Philadelphia has a population of 1.5 million. That's how disgustingly large that number is. In researching this video, I also discovered that this website had memberships,
Starting point is 00:19:05 which is terrifying in and of itself, with most of these users having the free membership and 4,000 being paid members. Sick, absolutely sick. A lot of these videos were acquired from another site that was shut down called Aves No, but the growth that welcomed to Video Saw was undeniably massive.
Starting point is 00:19:29 As more users joined, they uploaded their own materials until an unfathomable, 45% of its videos were unique, over 100,000. That's unheard of. And it also means that these weren't recycled videos. The crimes were happening live. Active exploitation on the macro. When the U.S. government became familiar with this website, needless to say, they wanted to catch the monsters responsible.
Starting point is 00:20:00 And that's not to say other governments weren't angry as well. This website was a global issue, and its victims spanned continents, but the U.S. didn't waste a second. Homeland security and the IRS started working to identify them. Thankfully, the servers for Welcome to Video weren't very secure, and they were able to track the IP back to a rough location, South Korea. Now, this was a good start, but in order to pinpoint who exactly was running the website, they'd have to dig deeper. Now welcome to video took payments through Bitcoin. Bitcoin, as we all know, is an anonymous currency. And most people think it's untraceable, but it isn't. Not really. You see, if you try to track any cryptocurrency from the surface, it wouldn't go anywhere. You'd be chasing a ghost. But this is the IRS
Starting point is 00:20:52 and Homeland Security we're talking about. And they had an idea. The blockchain. If they could follow the transactions through the blockchain, through the dark web, by surveilling suspects with less secure networks, they'd be able to pinpoint who was receiving all the money. And in March 2018, three years after welcome to video was published, which is three years to goddamn late, South Korean resident Sun Jong-Wu was arrested for creating the now infamous website, along with 337 other people. Those 337 people weren't just, active users. During the investigation, they discovered that a lot of the videos were from active crimes of exploitation, and each of them was arrested. In this process, many children were saved.
Starting point is 00:21:42 Happy ending, right? Nope, the guy is free today. How, you might ask? Well, when he was convicted of the crime, South Korean courts gave him an 18-month sentence for the production and distribution of cheese pizza. That's it. Now, the maximum sentence for cheese pizza in South Korea was five to seven years, which is still unacceptably low, but he got a lighter sentence because he needed to support his family. I wish I was lying. The U.S. attempted to extradit him so we could charge him here, but South Korea refused.
Starting point is 00:22:22 When he was released after a year and some change, they charged him with fraud for gambling, with the cheese pizza money, giving him another 24 months for a total of 42 months or three and a half years in prison. Now, keep in mind, the maximum sentence at that time in South Korea was five to seven years. That's it. Nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Now, if this makes you ridiculously angry, you aren't alone. The citizens of South Korea were absolutely infuriated by how short this monster's sentence was. And eventually they took it to the Supreme Court of South Korea, who later raised the maximum
Starting point is 00:23:03 sentence time from 5 to 7 years to 29 years, which, yeah, glad they changed it, but that doesn't detract from the fact that this man is walking free today. He can't leave his country, or he'll be re-arrested, but he's free. I have nothing else to say about this website except I'm glad it's gone, and I wish the other 1.2 million people involved would face some consequences, but today, it looks like that isn't going to happen. But at least the laws got changed in South Korea, so maybe next time, more people don't have to get hurt. And more people like Sun Jong-Wu can be properly punished. As you all know, the United States and Russia have been strong allies for 80 years.
Starting point is 00:23:55 And nothing has ever impacted their relations negatively. If that joke wasn't obvious, here's the plain English. Our governments have been at odds since before they invented slice spread. And when it comes to issues online, including the dark web, neither nation sees eye to eye. And the story we're about to cover takes this conflict to a whole other level. We're talking about Roman Selsenev. Now, I wasn't familiar with this man either, or his website, Carter. Before researching this video, so let's discuss this man.
Starting point is 00:24:28 timeline, and I'll try to fill you in as best as possible. Roman Selzenev was born in 1984. The fourth son of Valerie Selzenev, a member of Russia's Duma. Now, the Russian Duma is essentially the country's parliament, established in 1993. For our U.S. listeners, it's like the House of Representatives. The Duma is responsible for debating and passing legislation that goes into law. so Valerie was a big deal, and still is. Not much else is known about his early life,
Starting point is 00:25:03 but being the son of a powerful figure, we can imagine he had a pretty all right childhood, and he really liked computers. Like, a lot. There are no official records of him until 2003, when at the young age of 19, he began his career as a multinational hacker. At one point in time,
Starting point is 00:25:24 there was a dark web website called Carter Planet, a form for selling and trading stolen information. Today we hear about this type of crime all the time. Servers are infiltrated, Facebook gets a data hack, and suddenly people are getting charged $10 for a drink they never bought. In a country, they've never visited. Now, Roman was an expert at stealing people's information. He would hack background check websites and retrieve their data,
Starting point is 00:25:52 stuff like social security numbers and criminal histories, and he would then sell them on Card Planet. He was making so much money. In fact, he hired an employee, but there wasn't a lot of business in Social Security numbers. No, the real money wasn't the plastic. Credit card numbers. Roman worked with his employee to develop a software
Starting point is 00:26:15 that would scan the internet for something called MSRDP open ports. Essentially, he was looking for weak security on administrative networks. works. Think of it like trying to break into a house. The front door has a state-of-the-art security system, but the back door has a cheap padlock. That cheap padlock was the MSRDP open port. He could connect to it remotely, break the lock, so to speak, and retrieve all the data without ever getting found out. And these networks had financial information, specifically credit card numbers. But there were a lot of networks to cover. Lots and lots of houses and most of them only had a couple of numbers.
Starting point is 00:27:01 Roman needed a way to sift through the worthless ones and find the money. Large businesses with lots of recorded numbers. So we contacted another hacker, Bad B, and paid him to write an automated program that would look for credit card numbers across multiple networks. With this program, Roman and his employee scoured. the internet and after a couple of days, they received their first credit card dump, and he sold it to Bad B for thousands. They operated successfully for a year, stealing thousands of credit card numbers across multiple nations. Their target, businesses, banks, financial institutions,
Starting point is 00:27:44 eventually they developed malware that could crack even more sophisticated security, and they were raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars by the end of the year. But in 2004, the waters were getting choppy for Roman and Bad B. The operators of Carter Planet realized that law enforcement had caught their scent, and they shut down the website. Left without a way to make money, Roman looked for another home to sell his stolen goods. That's when he discovered Carter. Carter was the functional successor to Carter Planet, but now knew and improved. It operated like the eBay of credit card theft, with hundreds of vendors and thousands of buyers, selling millions of dollars worth of stolen credit cards.
Starting point is 00:28:30 If you ever watched the news and wondered where all those stolen credit card numbers were going, this was where? A dark web criminal syndicate orchestrating multiple million dollar heists across every nation on planet Earth operating on cards. operating on Carter. And Roman was a big player. He posted ads across the website, specifically on the card dump forum. He had a lot of money by this point and was considered one of the most trusted thieves on the site.
Starting point is 00:29:04 But he had a problem. Hacker Bad B. His longtime partner and friend was getting jealous. Roman was making a ludicrous amount of money using a program Bad B had devised, and before long, their relationship began to sour. Friendship curdled into bitter hate, and an all-out war began. Anywhere Roman posted his ads, Bad B posted more. They wrestled over the sale of stolen credit cards and tried to screw the other at every opportunity.
Starting point is 00:29:41 Talking bad about the other and their credibility, it was a nasty, drawn-out bad. between the two thieves and before long they were the only real players on Carter, the two master thieves fighting for the throne. Then in 2010, Roman caught a lucky break. Bad B. was arrested on a U.S. warrant in France and was extradited on charges of fraud. The battle was won. The war was over. And Roman, left with no competition, was the crown prince of credit card fraud. And for four years, Roman reaped the rewards. He traveled the world, hired more employees, and was richer than ever. The smallest estimate for how much money he made is $17 million.
Starting point is 00:30:32 He stole over 2.9 million credit card numbers. For a total cumulative theft of over $169 million, plucked from the pockets of every day's event. That's right, he was single-handedly responsible for the theft of over $169 million, making him one of the most devastating thieves in modern history until 2014. You see, the United States were made aware of Carter about two years before Badby was arrested, and this time they weren't watching from the backlines. They had a front row seat.
Starting point is 00:31:14 The Secret Service had infiltrated Carter and spent years following breadcrumbs to catch these criminals. They went undercover, buying credit card dumps, both from Bad B and from Roman. Eventually, they were able to track down Bad B. But Roman was more difficult. Roman was smart. He used multiple usernames to disguise his identity. Online, he wasn't Roman, Selzenev. He was N-C-U-X, Track 2.
Starting point is 00:31:44 Bulba. One name was literally just Tupac. By hiding his title, it made it much more difficult to pin him down. In fact, initially, they believed Roman was actually multiple people. But Roman made some mistakes along the way. Firstly, across all of his aliases, the pricing never changed. This was odd. Most vendors had different pricing to compete with the competition. Roman and Bad B had different pricing. Think of it like McDonald's and Burger King. They were trying to outdo one another to sell the most of their product, but these aliases always had the same pricing.
Starting point is 00:32:28 In over the years, the Secret Service tracked his writing style in communications with each of the four personas. All of this made it abundantly clear. These weren't four separate hackers. It was one man. operating a multi-million dollar business with very little help. So, how did they catch him? Well, after they'd buy a credit card dump,
Starting point is 00:32:54 they'd collect all of the institutions that had the cards saved online. When they did this, over the tens of thousands of instances, they were able to narrow it down to a couple of institutions. From there, it was clear this wasn't a team effort, again, reinforcing the theory that this was one man. And remember when I was talking about MSRDP open ports? The cheap padlocks that Roman used to infiltrate these institutions? Well, Roman was remotely connecting to the networks from his personal computer.
Starting point is 00:33:30 And in doing so, he left behind key information, the digital version of a physical footprint. He left behind his IP address. Even when he used VPN's systems for obscuring his IP address, he would reuse the same systems, hosting companies and domains all under the same aliases. And with this information, the Secret Service was able to get a name and a location. Roman Selzenev. The Maldives. In 2014, in coordination with the Maldives government, he was arrested by local Maldivian authorities and extradited to the United States. The dark web mecca of credit card fraud, Carter was finally
Starting point is 00:34:17 shut down, and the crown prince of credit card fraud was finally in custody. But the story isn't over yet. So far we've talked about the U.S. interest in catching Roman, but what about his home country? Russia. Well, although the war between the two thieves was long since over, the war between the nations was just beginning. News broke all over the world. The United States made another arrest on a dark web kingpin and another website shut down. The people were safe once again. But when Russia got word, they had a different story to tell. They called it an illegal kidnapping by the United States. According to them, Roman was their concern and their citizen. So the United States had no right to imprison him without Russian due process.
Starting point is 00:35:08 They asked where Roman was being held or where he had even been arrested. And the U.S. refused to give up the information. The Russian government was pissed. To them, this was an incredible disrespect. Eventually, through the American legal system, the Department of Justice eventually revealed that Roman had been arrested in the Maldives, and this continued to exacerbate the national conflict. You see, the Maldives doesn't have an extradition treaty
Starting point is 00:35:38 with the U.S. And still doesn't to this day. The government of the United States negotiated with them specifically to arrest Roman and shut down his dark web enterprise. But the Russians considered this a departure from international legal norms. However, the U.S. was prepared to defend itself. Back in 2009, when they discovered Carter, they believed Russian citizens might be involved. So they reached out to the FSB, which is essentially, essentially Russia's FBI and requested assistance in capturing the criminal who would later steal
Starting point is 00:36:14 hundreds of millions of dollars from basically every nation on the planet. Roman Selsenev. But Russia denied the request. They refused to help. In light of this, the U.S. stated, we had no other option. You didn't want to arrest him. So we did. So for years, he was held in the United States awaiting trial until 2016. When Roman was found guilty, of wire fraud, device fraud, credit card fraud, illegal access to protected computers, in the compromise of over 2 million credit cards. He was charged with 27 years in federal prison, but he didn't spend 27 years in prison. Don't forget, Roman's father was a Russian politician.
Starting point is 00:37:03 This wasn't some random kid. This was the Russian equivalent of a. senator's son, and they wanted them back. Over the years, the Russian government continued to make a stink about the arrest, calling it politically motivated and unjust. But Russia knew they had an ace in the hole. Russia had a couple of prisoners we wanted back, among them two journalists, a handful of activists, and a U.S. Marine named Paul Wellen. Wellin was arrested in 2018 in Moscow and charged with espionage, a charge the United States vehemently denied. In fact, Paul was initially told upon his arrest in Russia that he was being detained for the express purpose of a prisoner exchange.
Starting point is 00:37:48 In exchange for these prisoners, Russia wanted a couple of people, including Roman, a business fraudster, a couple of spies, and the famous Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov. In 2024, the In 2024, the exchange was agreed upon, and Roman was released to Russia. When he arrived by plane in Moscow, he was met by Vladimir Putin himself. And to our knowledge, he now walks free. And all right, guys, that wraps up some unknown dark web websites. I really enjoyed this video. This was a little bit different than the previous dark web websites, like the title even says.
Starting point is 00:38:30 These were unknown. These were a little bit more obscure. These were more unique, so hopefully enjoyed. if you did find this video interesting please like the video and subscribe to the channel it helps more than you know and if you enjoyed this video I'm sure you'll enjoy others so check out some other videos on the channel I appreciate you guys
Starting point is 00:38:45 watching it means the world thank you so much for watching and this was snook and I'll see you next time bye

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