Was it an exit scam or wasn’t it?

That’s the question users of popular “dark web” marketplace Wall Street Market are asking after a statement appeared on the site purportedly from German police claiming that the site had been seized.

Wall Street Market, which had become popular after rival Dream Market announced it was closing, first started claiming it was suffering for issues with its “bitcoin server” in April.

Users of the site — which used an escrow service, in which funds to be moved between buyers and sellers are held in trust until a transaction is completed — started claiming that the funds had been stolen as part of an exit scam at the beginning of April.

In an exit scam, the owners of a given site stops providing the service promised and instead runs off with customer funds. In the case of Wall Street Market, about $30 million in cryptocurrency, primarily bitcoin, is alleged to have been stolen.

ZDNet reported that the site was allegedly seized by German police together with the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation and law enforcement agencies from the U.S., the Netherlands and Romania.

The unknown question is whether the seizure occurred before the alleged exit scam, or is it a case of authorities coming to the party weeks after those behind the site have already run?

Complicating matters further, it was alleged by some users of the service that customer support staff for the site attempted to blackmail them, threatening to share their details with law enforcement unless a payment of 0.05 bitcoin is made.

Regardless of the timeline and whether it was an exit scam or was closed down by authorities, the demise of Wall Street Market will be noted by history to be yet another speed bump in terms of illicit marketplaces on the dark web. Previously closed markets include Silk Road, Silk Road 2 and AlphaBay, to name a few.

U.S. authorities, in particular, like to gloat about cracking down on dark web markets, but  doing so is the ultimate game of “Whac-A-Mole.” Every single time a dark web marketplace disappears, three more appear to replace it.

Image: Wall Street Market