Finnish court sentences man to 7.5 years for running major dark web drug markets

A district court in North Karelia has sentenced a 36-year-old man from Joensuu to seven years and six months in prison for operating three of Finland’s largest dark web drug marketplaces since the shutdown of Silkkitie in 2019, Yle reports.

Tommi Petteri Kurki was convicted of aggravated drug offenses, aggravated doping violations, distribution of banned psychoactive substances, and medicine-related crimes. The North Karelia District Court ordered him to forfeit €414,000 in criminal proceeds, along with nearly €390,000 in seized cryptocurrency. Authorities initially estimated his total gains at €690,000.

Kurki administered Sipulimarket, Sipulitie, and Tsätti—Tor-network sites with a combined turnover of approximately €5.3 million, according to Finnish Customs. The platforms facilitated large-scale sales of drugs, doping substances, and prescription medications, with Kurki collecting a 4% commission on each transaction and an additional 1% on cryptocurrency withdrawals.

Finnish Customs and Eastern Finland Police arrested Kurki in a September 2024 raid at his Joensuu home, where he was logged into the Sipulitie server under an administrator account. He admitted during pretrial investigations to founding and operating all three sites, though he disputed the scale of his earnings, claiming profits of around €90,000 from Sipulimarket and €100,000 from Sipulitie.

The court reduced his sentence from a potential 11 years and six months due to his cooperation with investigators. Kurki, who had no prior criminal record, told authorities he began running Sipulimarket in 2019 “to try something new, for excitement, and maybe for money,” acknowledging in hindsight that he “should have started a legal service instead.”

Sipulimarket, the largest Finnish-language dark web marketplace at the time, was shut down in December 2020 after Customs and Polish authorities seized its server. Kurki later launched Sipulitie in late 2022, citing security concerns about competing platforms like Piilopuoti, which Customs dismantled in 2023. Transactions on his sites used bitcoin or monero, with illegal purchases delivered to buyers’ addresses or hidden drop points.

Three other men received convictions in connection with the case.