Empire Market was founded / began operating in 2017
Assessment
The 2017 date traces to the government's own charging instrument: the superseding indictment and Hamilton's plea charge the drug, access-device, counterfeiting and money-laundering conspiracies as 'beginning in or about August 2017,' and say the pair 'agreed to create' Empire around then. That is accurate as the start of the charged conspiracy and the planning phase, which followed AlphaBay's July 2017 shutdown. But the same primary documents state the marketplace itself launched on February 1, 2018, and secondary coverage (e.g. CyberInsider) consistently gives February 1, 2018. Treating 'August 2017' as the date Empire went live conflates the agreement/planning phase with the launch — the recurring source of '2017 vs 2018' confusion.
Where this claim appeared
U.S. Attorney's Office, N.D. Illinois (superseding indictment) · 2024-06-13
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/media/1356056/dl?inlineWhat “Assessed, Not Confirmed” means
A named source states this as its own assessment, at its own stated confidence, rather than as established fact. Attribution to a nation state usually sits here. The assessment is real and reportable; treating it as settled is the error.
4 of 5 · rating scale
Assessed in
Empire Market co-founder Raheim Hamilton sentenced to 40 years for the $430M darknet marketplaceThink this assessment is wrong? Report an error.