Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the results of Operation TorNado on Thursday: 354 dark web drug traffickers arrested around the world, 132 of them in the United States, and over $234 million in cash and cryptocurrency seized in the largest internationally coordinated action of its kind ever carried out.
“Nothing will stop the Trump Administration from identifying and dismantling drug trafficking networks,” Blanche said. “Thanks to our partnerships with state, federal, and international law enforcement through the Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement (JCODE) team, Operation TorNado crippled Dark Web market vendors and will bring alleged drug traffickers to justice. The Department of Justice will continue protecting the American people from lethal synthetic drugs and identifying bad actors around the globe who threaten American lives.”
The haul taken off the market: approximately 5.7 metric tons of illicit drugs — fentanyl and other opioids, methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and MDMA — along with 38 pill presses and 209 firearms. In the United States alone, agents made 132 arrests and seized about 4.8 metric tons of drugs, more than $166 million in cryptocurrency and cash, 152 firearms and 38 pill presses; more than 354 kilograms of the drugs seized consisted of fentanyl or fentanyl-laced pills. After the United States, the biggest arrest totals came in the United Kingdom with 59, Hungary with 45, Germany with 41 and France with 23, with further arrests in Australia, Austria, Czechia, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Slovenia.
FBI Director Kash Patel called Operation TorNado “the largest interagency takedown of Dark Web drug vendors and buyers to date,” and added: “The success of the Operation TorNado makes clear that criminals cannot hide behind technology or geography – no matter where you operate, justice will find you.”
The operation ran from May 2025 to October 2026 and was coordinated by the FBI-led JCODE team with Europol — the sixth, and most extensive, internationally coordinated action since JCODE was created in 2018, building on last year’s Operation RapTor. It went after vendors and buyers who had been active on dark web markets already seized by law enforcement, including Archetyp, Bohemia, Nemesis, Kingdom and Tor2Door, and it identified vendor accounts on markets such as DrugHub and tied them to real individuals. The people arrested had engaged in tens of thousands of sales of illicit goods and services, and a number of investigations are still running to identify more of the individuals behind dark web accounts.
Among the dozens of federal prosecutions the operation produced: in Florida, brothers Stanislav Chernyshov, 30, and Vladislav Chernyshov, 35, were arrested for allegedly operating the dark web vendor “BarbaraWhite,” accused of selling counterfeit oxycodone M30 pills laced with nitazenes, synthetic opioids that can equal or surpass fentanyl’s potency. Lab analyses, covert purchases and surveillance tied the brothers to a pill-manufacturing and mailing operation allegedly responsible for over one thousand parcels shipped across 49 states, with multiple fatal and non-fatal overdoses identified among recipients of their products. They are charged with conspiracy to distribute Schedule I synthetic opioids, and each faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted.
In North Carolina, Alexander Green, 32, was arrested in June for allegedly operating the STARLABS trafficking organization on the DrugHub market; the organization has been linked to two overdose deaths in Ohio, and the June enforcement action seized about 200 grams of methamphetamine and more than two kilograms of counterfeit pharmaceutical pills with fentanyl present. In California, Jonatan Gonzales, 35, was arrested after being identified as the vendor “SpeedyPharma,” accused of shipping methamphetamine, black tar heroin, cocaine and other drugs to addresses in all 50 states; a search of his home seized 48 pounds of methamphetamine, 588 grams of cocaine, 386 grams of black tar heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil and $40,565 in cash. He faces a maximum of life in prison if convicted.
For American families, this is the point of the whole operation. These were not only street sales: they were pills and powders ordered on a screen and delivered by mail into ordinary communities — counterfeit pills made to look like real medicine, some of them tied to fatal overdoses. As DEA Administrator Terrance Cole put it: “Drug traffickers are exploiting the dark web to distribute fentanyl and other deadly drugs into American communities, profiting from addiction and overdose deaths.” Every vendor taken down, every pill press seized and every market closed is supply that will not reach an American home, and the $234 million seized is money that cannot fund the next shipment. Homeland Security Investigations’ John A. Condon made the same point from the enforcement side: “The dark web is not a safe haven for criminals.”
The charges set out above are allegations only. An indictment or criminal complaint merely alleges that crimes have been committed, and every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Federal prosecutions arising from Operation TorNado are being conducted in more than 20 federal districts, and with investigations still ongoing, the Justice Department says more of the people behind dark web accounts are still to be identified.
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