[4] Investigators from several law enforcement agencies including the FBI, DEA, and Europol located Canadian Alexandre Cazes, the alleged founder of AlphaBay, due to a series of operational security errors: Law enforcement took at least one month to obtain a US warrant, then over one month to obtain foreign warrants, prepare for and execute searches and seizures in Canada and Thailand:[5] Dutch police discovered the true location of the Hansa onion service after a 2016 tip from security researchers who had discovered a development version.
Their plan, in coordination with the FBI, was to absorb users coming over from the upcoming AlphaBay website shutdown.
During this time, law enforcement allowed the Hansa userbase (then growing rapidly from 1000 to 8000 vendors per day[18]) to make 27000 illegal transactions in order to collect evidence for future prosecution of users.
[15][19] Dutch local cybercrime prosecutor Martijn Egberts claimed to have obtained around 10,000 addresses of Hansa buyers outside of the Netherlands.
Most of the involved countries are part of the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT), however additional law enforcement agencies played a role.