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Perhaps the oddest thing about Empire Market is that, despite its home on the darknet, it’s surprisingly mainstream.

I’m nowhere near computer literate enough to track down secret websites or illicit trade online, but a quick Google search took me to a number of backdoor portals that would, before the marketplace disappeared, allow me to access its login page.

Even more bizarre are the YouTube videos with step-by-step instructions on how to buy drugs on the site. It’s a miracle it lasted this long.

Given the long, and public, dismantling of Silk Road, it was always going to happen.

Empire Market was popular for drug deals, and also offered fake documents, such as passports, and malware.

In other words, it’s criminal on so many levels, and yet the reports, such as the one put out by VICE, are looking at it as if it’s a legitimate company, that has fallen foul of corruption.

When markets similar to Empire Market are taken down they usually take pride in it, posting takedown notices on the homepage. In this case, that hasn’t happened.

Instead, insiders say that the site owners have allegedly stolen an estimated $30 million in Bitcoin from around one million users and thousands of dealers.

Major UK vendors told VICE News that they have been unable to withdraw funds from Empire since the 22nd of August, even using secret links only they know. “I’m down thirty grand,” one said.

This is being pegged as an “exit scam”, where admins suddenly shut down a website and make off with vendors’ and users’ money.

In recent weeks, Empire was victim to a large-scale cyberattack. The DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack happened a few months after analysts said that darknet markets were entering a new “golden age”.

Empire Market admin “Se7en” claimed in a post on an online darknet discussion platform, that an unknown user called ‘Gustav’ was extorting them.

“The market started having good uptime again after the EndGame links were added,” wrote Se7en. “The market was online because [bosses] agreed to make weekly payments to /u/SchwererGustav. [He] had been holding down the market brutally for a long time, and when the EndGame links were added, he took all those down, too. That was probably the closest the market came to a breaking point and a deal was made.”

“He must have been getting paid at least $10k or $15k a week,” he added.

No one knows for sure what happened, but users will probably just switch to another platform.

The market is so saturated that even without the largest one out there, supply will continue to be available to those who know where to look.

White House and Darkmarket look like fan favourites to take Empire Market’s place.

[source:vice]