Authorities in Germany on Tuesday announced the takedown of Crimenetwork, which they describe as the largest German-speaking online marketplace for the underground economy.
Crimenetwork has been around since 2012, being used to trade various types of illegal goods and services, including stolen information, drugs and counterfeit documents. Authorities said the platform had over 100,000 buyers and 100 sellers, most of them likely from German-speaking countries.
Investigators determined that nearly $100 million in Bitcoin and Monero cryptocurrencies were transferred through Crimenetwork between 2018 and 2024. Operators received a commission of 1-5% from each sale.
German police arrested an alleged administrator of the platform on Monday, seizing evidence, vehicles, and cryptocurrency worth roughly €1 million.
The unnamed suspect, who allegedly served as an administrator for the website for many years, faces charges related to operating a criminal trading platform on the internet and drug trafficking.
Authorities were able to take down Crimenetwork by shutting down its servers.
The news came on the same day that Europol announced the takedown of an encrypted messaging service used by thousands of criminals.
Named Matrix, the service promised end-to-end encryption and it was only available to users who received an invitation.
Before shutting it down, authorities hacked into Matrix servers and monitored users’ messages for three months. They intercepted 2.3 million messages, mostly related to drug and arms trafficking and money laundering.
Over the past few years, law enforcement has targeted several encrypted messaging services — including EncroChat, Ghost and Sky ECC — in many cases spying on their users before shutting them down.
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