U.S. authorities arrested 132 people in a multinational investigation of online drug trafficking that yielded 354 arrests worldwide, the Justice Department said Thursday. The operation ran from May 2025 through October 2026, according to Europol, and included hundreds of searches. Thursday’s announcement brought together the results of separate investigations conducted over that period.

Federal officials reported seizing about 5.7 metric tons of illicit drugs worldwide, along with 209 firearms, 38 pill presses and more than $234 million in cash and virtual currencies. The weight includes multiple drugs, among them fentanyl, other opioids, methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine. The figures describe what authorities took into custody across the operation. The announcement did not estimate how much of the online market the seizures represented or how long any reduction in supply might last.

Earlier seizures led to separate investigations

The U.S. Justice Department said investigators used information gathered after earlier marketplace and vendor takedowns to identify suspected sellers. That led to separate investigations that authorities later grouped under Operation TorNado. The department called it the sixth internationally coordinated action since the creation of its Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement team in 2018. AFP reported that Europol coordinated the effort with law enforcement partners in 14 countries.

The distinction between a marketplace and an individual seller matters to the cases now going forward. Taking down a site can interrupt transactions on that service. The next step, as described by the department, was to connect individual accounts to people and assemble evidence for separate prosecutions. The federal government said investigators were still working to identify some account holders when it released the totals, so Thursday’s announcement marks the end of the reporting period for the operation while some of the investigative work continues.

U.S. cases span more than 20 federal districts

Federal prosecutors are pursuing cases in more than 20 districts, the department said. Its list includes courts in the Midwest, Northeast, South and West. The breadth of that list matters because the national announcement combines cases handled by different prosecutors in different courts, with charging decisions and proceedings that can move on different timetables.

The Justice Department published a separate collection of court documents with the announcement. The filings are where readers can distinguish the allegations in individual cases from the operation’s combined totals. An indictment or criminal complaint states the government’s allegations. Defendants are presumed innocent, and prosecutors must prove criminal charges beyond a reasonable doubt. The 132 U.S. arrests therefore describe an enforcement action, while individual court records will show how the cases are resolved.

That separation also matters when reading the government’s overall account of the operation. A figure released at a national press conference describes cases in aggregate, while a charging document describes the alleged conduct of a particular defendant. Some cases involve allegations of distribution and others include conspiracy charges, according to the department’s case summaries. Those distinctions can determine what prosecutors must establish in each proceeding.

What the seizure figures capture

The categories of evidence that investigators reported seizing capture different parts of the alleged trade. The drug total combines the weight of several substances with different risks. The pill presses are counted as equipment, and the firearms as a separate category. The cash and virtual currencies are grouped into a single dollar figure. Those measures show the operation’s reach across investigations, but the announcement does not give readers a basis for treating all of the seized drug weight as fentanyl or all of the funds as a single source of proceeds. UPI separately reported the worldwide seizure totals.

Europol published an asset figure of more than €210 million, while the U.S. department published its figure in dollars. Both agencies presented their figures as totals for Operation TorNado. A reader comparing the two releases should treat them as parallel accounts of the operation. Adding them together would count the same coordinated effort twice.

The test moves from seizures to court outcomes

For U.S. readers, the next set of measurable results will come from court proceedings. The filings accompanying Thursday’s announcement give a starting point for following charges, pleas, trials and other dispositions as they become public. Separate outcomes matter because the operation’s total counts arrests across jurisdictions under different legal systems and at different stages of prosecution. The headline number by itself cannot establish how many allegations will ultimately be proved.

A separate question is whether the seizures will produce a sustained change in the availability of illicit drugs. The Justice Department described the action as a disruption of the online opioid trade. Its published figures show what authorities seized and how many arrests they reported, while a durable effect would require evidence about what happened afterward. The announcement supplied no follow-up measurements of availability or overdose outcomes. For now, its most concrete U.S. result is the scale of the federal enforcement effort and the number of cases moving into district courts.