Markets: Sheep

Sheep Marketplace was launched during March 2013 and later shut down on November 30 in what became known as the largest exit-scam in history after it was announced that a vendor had stolen six million dollars worth of users’ Bitcoin. The market was a lesser known dark-net platform that gained popularity and user traction shortly after the seizure of the Silk Road. It was primarily focused on drugs but allowed other things such as firearms and fraud-related items to be sold.

Sometime during November, according to many sources, user withdraws were being blocked over one week before a vendor, “ebook101”, exploited a vulnerability in the market and stole approximately 5,400 Bitcoins, valued at roughly six million dollars during the time.

According to the market staff, withdraws were disabled due to the implementation of a Bitcoin tumbler, which was never implemented and likely either simply served as an excuse to disable withdraws while allowing deposits in order to steal as much money as they could, or they did plan to implement it but decided to exit-scam after ebook101 stolen millions worth of users’ funds. However, it was reported that several popular vendors were paid off by market staff in order to not cause concern regarding withdraws being disabled, meaning it is more likely that the market staff was preparing for an exit-scam before the vendor stole users’ funds. During the time of the markets’ shut down on November 30, it was estimated that it held approximately 100,000 Bitcoins, valued at roughly forty million dollars during the time.

In 2015, it was reported that the owner of Sheep Marketplace was identified as Thomas Jiřikovský, a 43 year old man from the Czech Republic, who was arrested and later sentenced to nine years imprisonment after a dark-net commentator, “Gwern Branwen”, posted a dox which described Thomas as the markets’ owner, which Thomas initially denied, but was later caught by Czech police, who were looking for money stolen from the market, noticed that a rather suspicious young programmer tried to buy a luxury house for $345,000 under his grandfather’s name which he later paid for entirely in Bitcoin, and in January of the previous year when a new bank account owned by Thomas’ wife, 26-year old Eva Bartošová, was found to have received a huge transfer of 900,000 Crowns from a foreign Bitcoin money exchange company. Eva failed to provide an explanation as to where she got the Crowns, and was later reported as helping Thomas transfer the stolen money.

Later during May of 2016, Sean Mackert and Nathan Gibson, two men who were both 21 years old from Florida, were arrested after transactions were traced through Coinbase. Roughly four million dollarS' worth of Bitcoin stolen by the two men had been seized by US government officials. They both plead guilty to Bitcoin wire fraud on the Sheep Marketplace and face up to a maximum of 20 years imprisonment.