PANews reported on March 5 that according to The Block, the US government disclosed in an announcement that it had added dozens of Bitcoin (BTC) and Monero (XMR) addresses to its entity sanctions list. On Tuesday, the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) confirmed 49 virtual currency addresses used by Iranian national Behrouz Parsarad, who is allegedly the administrator of the darknet market Nemesis. A total of 44 Bitcoin addresses and 5 Monero addresses were included in the sanctions list.
Parsarad became the target of an international law enforcement action in 2024. Nemesis reportedly had 30,000 active users before it was shut down and facilitated nearly $30 million worth of drug transactions during its three years of operation. "Parsarad profited by charging Nemesis users a fee for each transaction, and OFAC estimates that he made millions of dollars during the existence of the marketplace," OFAC wrote in a statement. "In addition to providing a trading platform for criminals, Parsarad also laundered funds for drug traffickers and cybercriminals active on Nemesis." Nemesis offered a range of drugs, personally identifiable data, counterfeit documents, ransomware, and cybercrime services such as phishing and DDoS tools.
