Police shut down 'dark web' marketplace

Police in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, shut down a dark web marketplace and detained a suspect recently.

The suspect, surnamed Wang, ran the underground market, which traded in obscene material, the Wuxi police said at a news conference on Thursday.

Guided by the Ministry of Public Security and the provincial public security department, the Wuxi police had enlisted the aid of the country's top internet safety companies since July to crack the case.

The suspect, who studied computers in college, initially denied committing crimes, but he eventually confessed, the police said, when confronted with substantial evidence, including how he rented overseas servers to set up the website and used a foreign account for transactions.

More than 60,000 people had registered as members of the marketplace before it was shut down.