“Deutschland im Deep Web” is one of the largest German drug platforms on the Darknet. After months of investigation, Bavarian authorities are now arresting the alleged operator of the platform. The 22-year-old is not unknown to investigators. He faces up to ten years in prison.
Investigators have arrested the suspected operator of a large drug platform on the dark web. The Federal Criminal Police Office and the Central Office for Cybercrime Bavaria (ZCB) announced that the 22-year-old student from Lower Bavaria was suspected of operating one of the largest German-speaking Darknet platforms with the illegal marketplace “Deutschland im Deep Web”. The man was arrested in Landshut on Tuesday and is now in custody.
According to a ZCB spokesman, the man was already known to the authorities. He was convicted in 2019 for hacking into a school network. He is said to have operated the “Germany on the Deep Web” platform in the hidden part of the Internet since November 2018 as the third version under this name.
The operator of the first version, published five years earlier, was sentenced to several years in prison in 2018 after the assassin bought his weapon and ammunition from the Olympia shopping center in Munich. According to the investigators, a second version under the same name was only in operation for a short time in 2018. According to the investigators, the third version of “Germany on the Deep Web”, which the student who has now been arrested is said to have operated, was primarily used to trade in drugs. Around 16,000 users were registered there, 72 of them active traders. However, the platform has not been accessible to users since March.
During searches in the course of the arrest of the 22-year-old, investigators secured computers, data carriers and mobile phones, among other things. The man is now being investigated for operating a criminal trading platform on the Internet. According to the investigators, if he is convicted for this, he faces up to ten years in prison.