Authorities arrested the suspected operator, a 35-year-old German citizen, at his home in Mallorca, Spain.
The operation was led by the Frankfurt am Main Public Prosecutor’s Office and the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), working alongside specialized international units.
This major bust proves that global authorities are actively tracking and destroying cybercriminal networks before they can successfully rebuild.
The suspect allegedly built a completely new technical setup to keep the German-speaking underground economy running.
This relaunch happened almost immediately after the original site fell and its previous administrator was arrested in December 2024.
Despite its short lifespan, the new platform grew at an alarming rate. It quickly gathered over 22,000 registered users and more than 100 active vendors.
These sellers offered a highly organized catalog of illegal goods and services. Criminals primarily used the marketplace to trade compromised data sets, illegal narcotics, and high-quality forged identity documents.
To hide their financial tracks, buyers and sellers relied strictly on digital currencies. The platform supported a mix of mainstream and privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, specifically Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Monero.
Threat actors favor these payment methods to obscure transaction trails and evade law enforcement tracking.
During its operational period, the relaunched site generated more than €3.6 million in revenue.
The marketplace functioned like a legitimate e-commerce business by using a strict fee structure.
The operator earned money by taking a commission on every illegal sale and forcing vendors to pay recurring monthly fees to maintain their selling licenses and advertising space.
During the international raids, police seized physical and digital assets worth approximately €194,000, which were directly tied to the platform’s daily operations.
Even more critical for future investigations, digital forensic teams secured the marketplace’s core server infrastructure.
They successfully extracted complete user databases, communications, and detailed transaction logs.
This massive collection of digital evidence provides law enforcement with a clear, unfiltered map of the entire criminal supply chain.
Investigators will use these vital intelligence leads to track down the platform’s predominantly German-speaking customer base and unmask major cybercriminal suppliers.
This successful takedown highlights the effectiveness of global law enforcement working together. The operation required seamless coordination between German agencies, the Spanish Policía Nacional, Moldovan cybercrime units, and Eurojust.
The arrested administrator now faces severe charges under the German Criminal Code for operating a criminal trading platform on the internet, along with serious drug trafficking charges.
This case closely follows the severe legal precedent set in March 2026. At that time, the operator of the previous Crimenetwork version received a prison sentence of nearly eight years, alongside court orders to confiscate over ten million euros in criminal profits.
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The post Authorities Unmask 22,000 Crimenetwork Users and Over 100 Illicit Vendors appeared first on Cyber Security News.
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