Raheim Hamilton, identified by the U.S. Department of Justice as a co-creator of Empire Market, was sentenced on 2026/10/08 to 40 years in federal prison in United States v. Thomas Pavey and Raheim Hamilton, No. 22 CR 323, in Chicago. DOJ had previously said Hamilton pleaded guilty to a drug-conspiracy charge and agreed to forfeit about 1,230 BTC, 24.4 ETH, and three Virginia properties tied to the case.

Hamilton received 40 years in Case No. 22 CR 323

The core development is straightforward: the Justice Department says Hamilton was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison on 2026/10/08 in United States v. Thomas Pavey and Raheim Hamilton, No. 22 CR 323. DOJ also said Hamilton pleaded guilty to a Chicago drug-conspiracy charge tied to Empire Market, the dark-web marketplace at the center of the case.

A key detail in search results is the crypto amount tied to the matter. On that point, DOJ’s earlier plea announcement said Hamilton agreed to forfeit about 1,230 BTC, 24.4 ETH, and three properties in Virginia. This is important because it links the sentence to a large crypto-related forfeiture commitment, while keeping the sentencing outcome separate from the final stage of asset forfeiture.

Field	Details
Federal case	United States v. Pavey and Hamilton, No. 22 CR 323
Hamilton sentence	40 years in federal prison
Guilty plea basis	Drug-conspiracy charge tied to Empire Market
Plea-stage forfeiture agreement	About 1,230 BTC, 24.4 ETH, and three Virginia properties
Alleged marketplace scale	About 4 million transactions and more than $430 million in total value

The main takeaway is that Hamilton’s prison sentence is confirmed, while the crypto and property component is best understood through DOJ’s plea-stage forfeiture language. That leads directly to the next question readers usually ask: what the Empire Market dollar figures actually measured.

Empire Market’s $430 million and $375 million figures are different

The official case materials distinguish overall marketplace volume from drug sales, and that distinction changes how the case should be understood. The superseding indictment filed in June 2024 described Empire Market as handling about 4 million transactions worth more than $430 million, while nearly $375 million of that was described as net drug sales.

That means the larger number refers to total marketplace transaction value, not only narcotics activity. The narrower figure captures the drug-sales component and helps explain why Hamilton’s guilty plea centered on a drug-conspiracy charge. The same charging materials also alleged that the operators retained portions of cryptocurrency transactions to pay themselves and Empire Market moderators, helping connect the platform’s operating model to the forfeiture allegations.

This is why the case remains notable in crypto enforcement discussions: not because it establishes a new rule for digital assets, but because court filings and DOJ statements outline how a large darknet marketplace allegedly generated crypto-linked proceeds at scale. With that point clarified, the remaining question is what the sentencing resolves and what it still leaves open.

What the sentence settles and what still needs a later filing

The sentencing resolves Hamilton’s criminal exposure in the most visible sense: DOJ says he has now reached the prison-sentence stage of the case. It also places the event within a longer enforcement timeline that moved from a superseding indictment in 2024 to a 40-year sentence in 2026.

What the documents cited by DOJ do not settle is every downstream asset detail. The available official statements support that Hamilton agreed to forfeit the BTC, ETH, and Virginia properties, but they do not by themselves answer every follow-up question readers may have about final asset disposition. The same caution applies to the broader case status of co-defendant Thomas Pavey, because the material used here does not establish a current docket-based sentencing update for him.

So the strongest conclusion is narrow but important: this is a concrete federal sentencing milestone in a major crypto-enabled darknet case, not a broad proxy for current trading or exchange risk. The next genuinely new development would be a court or DOJ update providing final forfeiture details or confirming Pavey’s next procedural step.