Dubbed by German newspapers as the “Bedroom Dealer,” Maximilian S. was an aspiring drug kingpin who ran an entire operation for two years out of his mother’s flat.
Having sold a mixed bag of tablets, hashish and LSD (valued at around €4 Million) for bitcoin across the dark web under the screen name Shiny Flakes, Maximilian was finally caught when a neighbor illegally went through a package waiting on Maximilian’s doorstep.
According to Norbert Goebel, the presiding judge at the Saxony state high court in Leipzig, the teen had been engaging in “highly criminal activity” since 2013, and facilitated the movement of “almost a ton of narcotics.” Upon raiding Maximilian’s house in Leipzig last February, the police found an assortment of drugs weighing around 300 kilograms, along with €48,000 in cash.
The Bedroom Dealer’s one-man operation had been one of the most sophisticated in its nature. He had rented servers in Netherlands, used a group of IP addresses throughout Germany, and even opened multiple bank accounts under fake IDs to channel his profits through.
During trial, a psychiatric evaluation of Maximilian showed that he had signs of “disturbed social behavior”, lacking emotional security. His 48-year-old mother, who was not allowed to enter his room ever since he began his operation two years ago, added that he “was once a wild child, who became a loner, never went on holidays and had no girlfriend.”
The supplier of Maximilian’s drugs remains at large, and it’s unlikely they’ll be found, given the sophistication of drug trade over the dark web. Maximilian, meanwhile, is looking at a sentence between six years to eight years and eight months behind bars in juvenile detention.
"In the end this was about only one thing," said prosecutor Andre Kuhnert. “He wanted to be the greatest and best in the online drugs trade."
Dark web dealers who rely on high-tech encryption have rarely been caught due to the dark web itself. Instead, they are often busted due to human error or elements out of their hands – like nosy neighbors going through your mail, for example.
Although there is no clear consensus regarding the Bitcoin Community’s stance over drugs bought via the cryptocurrency, this man’s sentencing is one of a plethora of reasons where drug use advocates support legalizing drug sales on the deep web, due to it being much safer and of higher quality than having to trade with street dealers.
Nevertheless, authorities around the world have been cracking down heavily on various drug dealers ever since Silkroad’s Ross Ulbricht was caught and tried.