A co-creator of darknet marketplace Empire Market has been sentenced to 40 years in federal prison, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois said Wednesday in a press release. The announcement tagged the FBI's Chicago field office, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations New York.

Raheim Hamilton, 30, of Suffolk, Virginia, was sentenced Monday by U.S. District Judge Steven C. Seeger in Chicago and fined $5 million. He pleaded guilty earlier this year to a drug conspiracy charge.

Co-Creator of Dark Web Marketplace Sentenced to 40 Years in Federal Prison @FBIChicago @USPIS_CHI @HSINewYork — U.S. Attorney’s Office (NDIL) (@NDILnews) October 7, 2026

Hamilton co-owned and operated Empire Market with Thomas Pavey from 2018 to 2020. During that period, the site facilitated more than four million transactions between vendors and buyers worth more than $430 million, every one of them paid in cryptocurrency.

Drug sales dominated the marketplace, totaling nearly $375 million and including at least 13.3 kilograms of fentanyl, 447 kilograms of cocaine and 103 kilograms of heroin. The site also listed stolen account credentials and personal information, counterfeit currency and hacking tools.

Hamilton and Pavey required every transaction on the platform to be settled in crypto and encouraged users to run their funds through tumbling and mixing services. Buyers, in turn, could rate vendors on how well they concealed the drugs they shipped.

Under the terms of his plea, Hamilton agreed to forfeit roughly 1,230 BTC and 24.4 ETH, along with three properties in Virginia.

Empire's exit

Empire Market launched in February 2018, several months after the takedown of AlphaBay — at the time the largest English-language darknet market, dismantled in a coordinated international law enforcement operation in July 2017 — and soon became the leader of the Western darknet market ecosystem, according to blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs. The charges, per TRM Labs, stemmed from an investigation led by HSI New York.

It went offline in August 2020 in what users believed was a $30 million exit scam. At the time, analysts expected more crypto to flow to darknet markets.

In February, Rui-Siang Lin, who ran darknet drug bazaar Incognito Market, was sentenced to 30 years in prison over a platform that handled more than $105 million in narcotics sales. Hamilton's 40-year term exceeds Lin's, and arrives more than six years after Empire went dark — the kind of long arc from shutdown to sentencing that has followed the post-AlphaBay generation of darknet market cases.

Pavey, 41, of Ormond Beach, Florida, pleaded guilty last year to a federal drug conspiracy charge. He agreed to forfeit about 1,584 BTC, two boxes of 25-ounce gold bars, three cars and two Florida properties, and is due to be sentenced by Seeger later this month. Combined with Hamilton's plea, the two co-creators have agreed to surrender more than 2,800 BTC.