German BKA arrested the alleged operator of Deutschland im Deep Web darknet market

German police arrested a student that is suspected of being the administrator of ‘Deutschland im Deep Web’ (DiDW) darknet marketplace.

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has arrested a student (22) in Bavaria, who is suspected of being the administrator of ‘Deutschland im Deep Web’ (DiDW) darknet marketplace.

The darknet marketplace has gone off early this year, with more than 16,000 registered users, 72 of whom were active traders.

The Darknet marketplace was a crucial service for drug trafficking in the cybercrime underground for several years. 

“The arrest took place on Tuesday, October 25. 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 mobile phones, were seized.” reads the press release published by BKA. “The measures carried out were preceded by months of undercover and technically demanding investigations in order to be able to identify and finally arrest the suspects who were acting anonymously on the dark web.”

The DiDW Darknet marketplace first appeared on the threat landscape in 2013. In 2016, the perpetrator of the shooting spree in Munich claimed to have bought the murder weapon and ammunition on the platform. As a result, the darkweb marketplace was shut down in 2017 by the BKA also arrested its operator and sentenced him to seven years in prison in 2018.

Since 2018, two new versions of the marketplace have been published under the name “Deutschland im Deep Web “, on which drugs in particular were traded under the self-imposed motto “No control, everything allowed”.

“The current criminal proceedings are directed against the operator of the third version of the Darknet platform. He is said to have administered them since November 2018. The accused is suspected of operating a criminal trading platform on the Internet in accordance with Section 127 of the Criminal Code.” continues the announcement. “The law provides for a prison sentence of one to ten years.”

This week, the British hacker Daniel Kaye (aka Bestbuy, Spdrman, Popopret, UserL0ser) (34) was charged by the U.S. DoJ for allegedly running the ‘The Real Deal’ dark web marketplace.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Deutschland im Deep Web)

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