[German]The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has announced the arrest of a 22-year-old man who is suspected to have been the administrator and operator of the German platform on the Deep Web, which has been active since November 2018. The platform was probably a contact point for trafficking drugs or other illegal activities on the Deep Web. If the accusations can be proven, it looks rather bad for the young man, who is still a student.
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The history of the platform
According to the BKA, the darknet marketplace of "Deutschland im Deep Web" (Germany on the Deep Web) was first published on the Tor network in 2013. In 2016, the perpetrator of the Munich rampage used the platform at the time to obtain the murder weapon and ammunition. As a result, the website was shut down in 2017 by the BKA on behalf of the Frankfurt General Prosecutor's Office. The operator at the time was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison in 2018..
Since 2018, two new versions of the platform appeared under the name Germany on the Deep Web, the BKA said. Drugs in particular were traded on the portal under the self-given motto "No control, everything allowed", it said. The darknet marketplace "Germany on the Deep Web" was for several years the main point of contact for the trade in drugs, investigators say.
Operator investigated and arrested
The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the Bavarian Cybercrime Center (ZCB) then began investigations to track down the operator. The investigation into the suspected administrator of "Germany on the Deep Web" led to a 22-year-old student from Lower Bavaria (Landshut). The latter was then arrested as the suspected administrator and operator of the platform on October 25, 2022.
As part of the police measures, two residential properties were also searched with the participation of a ZCB public prosecutor and numerous items of evidence, including computers, data carriers and cell phones, were seized. The measures carried out were preceded by months of undercover and technically demanding investigations to identify and ultimately arrest the suspect, who was operating anonymously on the Darknet.
The suspect was already known to the authorities beforehand, according to a ZCB spokesman, Golem reported. According to the report, he was convicted in 2019 for hacking into a school's network. He is said to have operated his platform under this name since November 2018 as the third version in total.
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The current criminal proceedings are directed against the operator of the third version of the darknet platform. According to the accusation, he is alleged to have administered this platform since November 2018. The defendant is suspected of having operated a criminal trading platform on the Internet pursuant to Section 127 of the Criminal Code. The law provides for a prison sentence of one to ten years for this.
Platform seized
The platform, which had not been accessible to users since March 2022, had around 16,000 registered users, including a total of 72 active traders. This made "Germany on the Deep Web" one of the largest German-language darknet platforms.
Germany on the Deep Web" seizure banner
In order to draw attention to the activities of the investigative authorities with regard to "Germany on the Deep Web", the above seizure banner has now been published under the original accessibility of the website.
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