The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Iran-based Behrouz Parsarad, the sole administrator of Nemesis, an online darknet marketplace that was subject to an international law enforcement operation and was shut down in 2024.
Nemesis was used by drug traffickers and cyber criminals to trade illegal drugs. Before it was shut down, Nemesis had more than 30,000 active users, 1,000 vendors, and facilitated the sale of almost $30 million in drugs around the world.
Behrouz Parsard established Nemesis and had full control over the market and its virtual wallets. On March 20th, 2019, U.S., German and Lithuanian law enforcement seized Nemesis’ servers in a joint operation following an investigation with the FBI, US Drug Enforcement Administration, and Internal Revenue Service.
Since the takedown of Nemesis, Parsarad has been discussing setting up a new darknet marketplace.
