OPERATING ON THE “DARKNET” BRINGS A PENALTY OF $209,144,554.
Larry Dean Harmon is a U.S. person residing in Akron, was the creator, administrator, and primary operator of Grams, a darknet website that operated on the onion router (Tor) network and advertised itself as the “Google of the Darkweb”. Grams served as a search engine and content aggregator allowing users to search for illicit goods sold on darknet markets, such as narcotics, illegal firearms, and stolen personally identifiable information (PII).
1. In 2014, Harmon began operating and administrating a convertible virtual currency exchanger called Helix through the Grams darknet .onion site that was the primary administrator and operator of Helix a service linked to and affiliated with Grams. Helix operate