Drugs, guns and crypto seized, 288 arrested, in ‘unprecedented’ dark web crackdown

Published

3 years ago

May 2, 2023

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Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, Friday, April 14, 2023, on significant international drug trafficking enforcement action.

Susan Walsh | AP

A consortium of U.S. and international law enforcement made 288 arrests and seized over $53 million in cash and crypto as part of a dark-web drug “unprecedented” enforcement action called Operation SpecTor, Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference Tuesday.

“The Justice Department is cracking down on criminal cryptocurrency transactions,” Garland said, “and the online criminal marketplaces that enable them.”

Dozens of firearms and more than 850 kilograms of drugs were also seized in Operation SpecTor, an allusion to the dark-web browsing protocol. The operation was coordinated alongside Europol and resulted in the seizure of a dark-web marketplace called Monopoly Market, according to a press release from the European agency.

The operation began in Oct. 2021, Garland said.

The Justice Department said over 100 federal operations and prosecutions had been made in the U.S. Garland said 153 domestic suspects had been arrested, including a California man who allegedly sold nearly $2 million worth of fentanyl and methamphetamine on the dark web.

German police first seized the marketplace’s online infrastructure in Dec. 2021, and worked alongside Europol and international law enforcement agencies to target “high-value targets” who sold drugs and illicit goods around the world.

SpecTor is a continuation of the same efforts that disrupted darknet marketplace Hydra in 2022 and online identity-theft site Genesis Market in 2023.

“Our message to criminals on the dark web is this: You can try to hide in the furthest reaches of the internet, but the Justice Department will find you and hold you accountable for your crimes,” Garland said in a statement.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigative team were involved. Law enforcement from Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom were also involved.

Technology

Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup’s robots could ‘fracture a human skull’

Published

3 hours ago

November 21, 2025

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$Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup's robots could 'fracture a human skull'$

Startup Figure AI is developing general-purpose humanoid robots.

Figure AI

Figure AI, an Nvidia-backed developer of humanoid robots, was sued by the startup’s former head of product safety who alleged that he was wrongfully terminated after warning top executives that the company’s robots “were powerful enough to fracture a human skull.”

Robert Gruendel, a principal robotic safety engineer, is the plaintiff in the suit filed Friday in a federal court in the Northern District of California. Gruendel’s attorneys describe their client as a whistleblower who was fired in September, days after lodging his “most direct and documented safety complaints.”

The suit lands two months after Figure was valued at $39 billion in a funding round led by Parkway Venture Capital. That’s a 15-fold increase in valuation from early 2024, when the company raised a round from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and Microsoft.

In the complaint, Gruendel’s lawyers say the plaintiff warned Figure CEO Brett Adcock and Kyle Edelberg, chief engineer, about the robot’s lethal capabilities, and said one “had already carved a ¼-inch gash into a steel refrigerator door during a malfunction.”

The complaint also says Gruendel warned company leaders not to “downgrade” a “safety road map” that he had been asked to present to two prospective investors who ended up funding the company.

Gruendel worried that a “product safety plan which contributed to their decision to invest” had been “gutted” the same month Figure closed the investment round, a move that “could be interpreted as fraudulent,” the suit says.

The plaintiff’s concerns were “treated as obstacles, not obligations,” and the company cited a “vague ‘change in business direction’ as the pretext” for his termination, according to the suit.

Gruendel is seeking economic, compensatory and punitive damages and demanding a jury trial.

Figure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did attorneys for Gruendel.

The humanoid robot market remains nascent today, with companies like Tesla and Boston Dynamics pursuing futuristic offerings, alongside Figure, while China’s Unitree Robotics is preparing for an IPO. Morgan Stanley said in a report in May that adoption is “likely to accelerate in the 2030s” and could top $5 trillion by 2050.

Read the filing here: