The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control has sanctioned Nemesis operator Behrouz Parsarad, an Iranian national who allegedly had full control over the darknet marketplace and its cryptocurrency wallets.
Parsarad took a percentage of every transaction on Nemesis, enabling the sale of almost $30 million in narcotics between 2021 and its closure in March 2024.
The sanctioning of Parsarad includes the designation of 44 Bitcoin addresses and 5 Monero addresses, with research from Chainalysis revealing that the BTC wallets identified by OFAC received around $850,000.
Action taken against Parsarad reflects increased efforts by enforcement agencies to detect, disrupt, and dismantle illicit cryptocurrency-fueled ecosystems in darknet marketplaces.