All of those apply to both the affiliates and the ringleaders.
Also, wiretapping a phone only captures future calls. A warrant against a website, or the website's hosting provider can provide message history, assuming it's not E2E encrypted. And it could even get the message history of every single user in one go if the site is e.g. hacked, or if there's a broad warrant against a crime website's hosting provider.
We can see from this article that tons of these criminal websites get hacked, and then people like Brian Krebs can investigate the leaked databases to see info about the criminals' accounts.
Also, wiretapping a phone only captures future calls. A warrant against a website, or the website's hosting provider can provide message history, assuming it's not E2E encrypted. And it could even get the message history of every single user in one go if the site is e.g. hacked, or if there's a broad warrant against a crime website's hosting provider.
We can see from this article that tons of these criminal websites get hacked, and then people like Brian Krebs can investigate the leaked databases to see info about the criminals' accounts.