Raheim Hamilton, 30, of Suffolk, Virginia, will spend 40 years in federal prison for helping build and run Empire Market, a dark web marketplace. U.S. District Judge Steven C. Seeger also fined him $5 million. The sentence was handed down on a Monday, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office release for the Northern District of Illinois dated Wednesday, October 7, 2026.
Hamilton's co-founder, Thomas Pavey, has not yet been sentenced.
Scale of the marketplace
Prosecutors say Hamilton co-owned and operated the site with Pavey from 2018 to 2020. Over that period, vendors and buyers completed more than four million transactions worth over $430 million.
Listings included controlled substances, compromised or stolen account credentials, stolen personally identifying information, counterfeit currency and hacking tools. Drugs dominated. The DOJ puts net drug sales across the site's lifetime at nearly $375 million.
The release lists the following quantities of drugs sold, each prefaced by "approximately at least":
- Fentanyl: 13,314.23 grams
- Cocaine: 446,683.15 grams
- Methamphetamine: 71,992.33 grams
- Heroin: 103,396.21 grams
How the site was set up
The DOJ says Hamilton and Pavey built Empire Market so that customers could stay out of police view and clean the money they made. Only cryptocurrency was accepted for payment. The operators urged users to run coins through tumbling and mixing services and to encrypt their messages on the platform. Buyers could also score vendors on how well they hid drugs inside shipments.
Security Affairs, which covered the case on October 10, 2026, adds that the market took Bitcoin, Monero and Litecoin. The DOJ release does not list currencies.
Guilty pleas and forfeited assets
Hamilton admitted to a drug conspiracy charge in federal court in Chicago "earlier this year," per the DOJ; Security Affairs says January. He agreed to give up roughly 1,230 bitcoin, 24.4 Ether and three properties in Virginia.
Pavey, 41, of Ormond Beach, Florida, pleaded guilty "last year" to a federal drug conspiracy charge and acknowledged his part in creating and running the market. His forfeiture covers approximately 1,584 bitcoin, two boxes of 25-ounce gold bars, three automobiles and two properties in Florida.
Further details reported by Security Affairs
The Security Affairs article, which quotes the DOJ release, includes several points absent from it:
- The two men were charged in Chicago federal court in June 2024. Pavey went by "Dopenugget," and Hamilton used the names "Sydney" and "Zero Angel."
- The indictment, per the article, says they had previously sold counterfeit U.S. currency on AlphaBay.
- About $75 million in cryptocurrency was seized during the investigation, along with cash and precious metals.
- Empire Market closed in 2020 with no window for users to pull money out of escrow. Some blamed a long DDoS attack and others suspected an exit scam. The article presents these as what users said at the time, not as investigative conclusions.
Who announced the sentence
U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Boutros announced the outcome alongside Ryan Whalen of FBI Chicago, Nicholas Bucciarelli of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service's Chicago Division, and Pete Gizas of Homeland Security Investigations' New York Field Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Marie E. Ursini represented the government. Pavey is scheduled to appear before Judge Seeger for sentencing later this month, according to the DOJ. Security Affairs' report repeats that timeline.
