A Slovakian national has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to charges related to his involvement with a darknet marketplace that facilitated the sale of illegal drugs and stolen personal information.
Alan Bill, 33, from Bratislava, admitted on Tuesday to one felony count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. According to court documents, Bill was involved in operating Kingdom Market, a darknet platform active between March 2021 and December 2023. The market allowed users to buy and sell illicit goods such as fentanyl, methamphetamine, other drugs, stolen financial data, and identification documents using cryptocurrency and anonymous or semi-anonymous accounts.
Bill acknowledged providing or procuring web-administration services for Kingdom Market. He also admitted receiving cryptocurrency from a wallet linked to the site, helping create forum pages for Kingdom on platforms like Reddit and Dread, accessing usernames used for social media postings on behalf of Kingdom, and communicating about certain transactions.
Federal investigators began making undercover purchases from Kingdom Market around July 2022. These included fentanyl, methamphetamine, and a United States passport shipped into the Eastern District of Missouri. Bill was arrested on December 15, 2023 at Newark Liberty International Airport after customs officials discovered two cell phones, a laptop, a thumb drive, and a hardware wallet containing evidence related to Kingdom Market.
As part of his plea agreement, Bill agreed to forfeit five types of cryptocurrency coins stored in his wallet as well as the domains kingdommarket.live and kingdommarket.so. Authorities have since shut down these websites.
Sentencing is scheduled for May 5. The drug trafficking conspiracy charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison with a maximum possible sentence of forty years and up to $5 million in fines.
The investigation was conducted by IRS Criminal Investigation; the FBI; Homeland Security Investigations; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the U.S. Postal Inspection Service; the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General; the Bureau of Diplomatic Security; and the Missouri Department of Revenue. Foreign law enforcement agencies from Germany—including Bundeskriminalamt (the German Federal Criminal Police) and Frankfurt am Main Public Prosecutor’s Office – Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT)—as well as agencies from Switzerland, Moldova, and Ukraine also participated in the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyle Bateman is prosecuting the case.
