Security News > 2022 > October > Student arrested for running one of Germany’s largest dark web markets
Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office has arrested a 22-year-old student in Bavaria, who is suspected of being the administrator of 'Deutschland im Deep Web', one of the largest darknet markets in the country.
The platform had already gone offline in March 2022, with 16,000 registered users, 28,000 posts, and 72 high-volume sellers of prohibited goods, including weapons and drugs.
The suspect now faces criminal charges for operating an illicit trading platform, which incurs up to ten years of imprisonment.
In 2017, soon after that incident, the website was shut down by law enforcement, and its operator was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison.
In 2018, two new versions of the platform appeared on the dark web, using the motto "No control, everything allowed," implying the new operators no longer cared about masking illegal activities on the site.
Identifying the operators of darknet platforms that have gone defunct for several years isn't uncommon, as cybercrime investigators work on these cases for extended periods.