Darknet market Evolution, one of the most popular markets on the darknet following the collapse of Silk Road and Silk Road 2, is offline Wednesday with reports the admins may have scammed users and stolen millions.

The site opened in January 2014, and like Silk Road before it dealt in drugs, as well as illegal weapons, counterfeit goods, stolen credit cards and guides to committing fraud. While impossible to confirm, some claim that it did far more business than either of the Silk Road incarnations did as well.

According to users on Reddit’s r/DarkNetMarkets, problems first surfaced late last week when the site stopped allowing users to withdraw Bitcoin, citing technical difficulties. Sometime Tuesday morning the site completely disappeared. At the time of writing (Wednesday morning EST), SiliconANGLE can confirm that the site remains offline.

User NSWGreat, who appears to have had some relationship with the site (he claims to have had admin access and appeared to be a seller as well) claims in a thread that the admins “are preparing to exit scam [sic] with all the funds.” He goes on to say that the admins, by the names Verto and Kimble “have fucked us all,” before noting the he had over $20,000 in escrow from sales now lost to the site.

On r/EvolutionMarket, a sub-reddit dedicated to the site, users, a combination of buyers and sellers, appeared to be panicked by the news, and at least one user claims his friend had committed suicide over his losses from the site closing its doors. Another claimed there were rumors of a $5 million bounty being put on the heads of the disappearing admins.

No honor among thieves

Darknet markets rely on an unspoken level of trust among thieves, an honor system if you like in markets that by their very nature in dealing with illegal items cannot be legally regulated like a traditional business or marketplace would be.

Clearly, here that unspoken leave of trust has been broken.

It takes either an extraordinary large amount of bravery or foolhardiness perhaps to run off with potentially millions in proceeds from drug dealers; perhaps, like Silk Road before the site owners were concerned about being caught and have fled in the face of the FBI? What is sure is that with some reports suggesting that they had over 30,000 items listed, and a similar number of users, not a single one of those people is going to be the least bit happy about the news that thieves among their own have run off with their money.

No doubt in the coming days more information will be available, and we’ll have updates if we know more.

Image credit: Reddit/ imgur