The FBI has seized the domain of Virtualine, a hosting company that U.S. prosecutors say helped cybercriminals stay online, ignore abuse complaints and hide their payments. A court authorized the move, which the Justice Department announced on October 27, 2026. Even so, Silent Push reports that one of the company’s brand names was not fully offline afterward.
Prosecutors say Virtualine also traded as Secury, Massgod, Spamhouse, Lanedo and Omegatech. In addition, it sold hosting, servers and domain registration, and it courted customers openly on cybercrime forums. Investigators also tie its services to child sexual abuse material, the sharing of intimate images without consent and international money laundering.
In September 2024, Virtualine allegedly told a forum user that customers could run phishing, card fraud, spam and port scanning, and it ruled out only child abuse content and terrorism. By March 2026, it was offering a protection plan for customers facing police requests. Under that plan, according to court records that prosecutors cite, the company would move a customer’s criminal setup to an unrelated shell company and switch the server back on. In other words, the service worked more like an escape hatch than a server rental.
Meanwhile, Chainalysis reports that Virtualine’s payment addresses connect to ransomware operators, infostealer infrastructure, crime forums and scam sites. Prosecutors also allege that Virtualine took Bitcoin through a payment option that skipped anti money laundering checks, then laundered the funds to hide where they came from. However, the announcement names no ransomware groups and gives no total for the transactions.
Another thread involves a forum that prosecutors call Vendor 1. They say it sold access to explicit images of minors and adults and promoted hackers who stole private material. Beyond that, warnings about child abuse material began reaching Virtualine in January 2026 from police in Germany, Canada and Australia, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and a victim’s lawyer. Despite that, prosecutors allege Virtualine kept the forum online and helped build a second site for uploading and selling content.
Behind the seizure, the FBI Washington Field Office led the investigation with German, Dutch and British authorities, alongside OverRIPE and Lumen. Still, taking control of a domain does not prove every related server went dark, and prosecutors’ allegations are not court findings.
