POLICE in Germany and Spain have moved to shut down a relaunch of the Crimenetwork dark web marketplace, with a 35-year-old German national arrested at his Mallorca home last week after liaising with the Frankfurt am Main Public Prosecutor's Office – Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT) and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).
The relaunched Crimenetwork facilitated a brisk trade in stolen data, drugs and forged documents, and had garnered over 22,000 users and more than 100 vendors, according to the BKA. The operation generated revenue of more than €3.6m, with the operator receiving a commission for each sale and sellers paying monthly fees for advertising and sales licenses; police seized €194,000 in assets connected to the site, as well as user and transaction data.
Most customers are said to live in German-speaking countries, according to the BKA, which noted that the relaunch had failed and that another administrator will have to answer for his actions in a German court. The administrator of the original Crimenetwork was sentenced in March to seven years and 10 months in prison, with the court ordering the possession of over €10m.
The BKA claimed that the site enabled sales of at least 1000 BTC and over 20,000 XMR between 2018–24, as it continues to cooperate with international partners.