{"id":66081,"date":"2026-08-03T16:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T16:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/66081\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T16:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T16:43:08","slug":"germany-charges-alleged-founder-of-major-drug-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/66081\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany charges alleged founder of major drug platform"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">German prosecutors said Monday they had charged a man alleged to have founded and operated a major drug-trading platform on the so-called darknet, the largest of its kind before it was shut down.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The \u201cArchetyp Market\u201d platform was closed in a major international operation in June last year, and prosecutors say that at the time it was the world\u2019s biggest trading site for narcotics, cannabis, new psychoactive substances and medication.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The 31-year-old German man charged on Monday, who has not been named, was arrested in June 2025 in Barcelona and extradited to Germany.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Prosecutors say that between November 2022 and June 2025 alone around 2.3 million orders were placed on Archetyp Market, with a value of 330 million euros ($380m).<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The payments were made in the Monero cryptocurrency with the accused allegedly taking a cut of around five percent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He is alleged to have earned around 20 million euros in various fees and commissions connected to the platform.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Investigators have seized around 10 million euros\u2019 worth of assets from the accused, including cash, cryptocurrencies and luxury cars.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the time the platform was dismantled, the EU anti-crime bodies Europol and Eurojust said it had more than 600,000 user accounts and around 3,200 vendors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They also said it was one of the only platforms to offer fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, which have driven an epidemic of deadly overdoses in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German prosecutors said Monday they had charged a man alleged to have founded and operated a major drug-trading&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,355,26489],"class_list":["post-66081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-germany","tag-international","tag-mna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}