Investigators have arrested the suspected operator of a large drug platform on the dark web. The 22-year-old student from Lower Bavaria is suspected of having operated the illegal marketplace for drugs under the name “Germany on the Deep Web”, the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Central Office for Cybercrime Bavaria announced on Thursday. The man was arrested in Landshut on Tuesday and is now in custody.
The platform was first released on the hidden part of the internet in 2013, according to investigators. Five years later, the then operator was sentenced to several years in prison after the attacker bought his weapon and ammunition from the Olympia shopping center in Munich in 2016. The student who has now been arrested is said to have operated the third version of the platform under the same name since November 2018. According to the investigators, around 16,000 users were registered there, 72 of them active traders.
The 22-year-old is now being investigated for operating a criminal trading platform on the Internet. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison, according to investigators.