The Justice Department announced Thursday that it had shuttered an illicit Internet marketplace for drugs, firearms, and fake documents in what Attorney General Jeff Sessions said was the ‘‘largest dark Web takedown in world history.’’

AlphaBay was a site on the dark Web where users whose identities were masked could engage in substantial buying and selling of illicit goods.

The Justice Department said that one AlphaBay staff member claimed that it serviced more than 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors, and around the time of the takedown, there were more than 250,000 listings for illegal drugs and toxic chemicals, and more than 100,000 listings for stolen and fraudulent identification documents and access devices, counterfeit goods, malware and other computer hacking tools, firearms, and fraudulent services.

In addition to seizing AlphaBay’s infrastructure, prosecutors charged AlphaBay’s founder, Alexandre Cazes, with crimes including conspiracy to engage in racketeering and conspiracy to distribute narcotics. Cazes, 26, a Canadian citizen who had resided in Thailand, apparently killed himself while in custody in Thailand this month, the Justice Department said.

While the marketplace might have been little known outside of the shadowy world of the dark Web, officials said it produced real world consequences, such as overdoses.

In 2013, federal authorities shut down a similar online drug marketplace called Silk Road. Its founder, Ross Ulbricht, was sentenced to life in prison in 2015.

washington post