A young man from Neuburg is facing charges for trafficking illegal pills which he allegedly purchased over the dark web with virtual currencies. The accused is said to have bought ecstasy tablets which he sought to have delivered by mail to his parents’ home address.

As the proceedings against the accused teenager at the Amtsgericht Neuburg district court continue, the chief prosecutor has indicated that all those who have been arrested for dark web drug trafficking will finally be able to answer their charges in the trial before the court, following years of investigation. The suspect, whose identity was not revealed, is accused of ordering over 250 ecstasy pills from a dark web marketplace using bitcoins to pay; both the use of the dark web and of bitcoins provide significant anonymity, making it difficult for the law enforcement agencies to investigate.

According to Schanz, the prosecutor, the young man, now living in Essen, was conducting an illicit trade in narcotics which he bought online. More specifically, she told the court that the suspect had ordered over 250 illegal ecstasy tablets in December 2016. The illegal package was to be delivered to his parents’ home address where he was then living in Neuburger North. However, the package never got to its destination as it had not been well franked, before having been seized by the police.

The 19-year-old along with an employee of a call center disagreed with the prosecutor and denied the accusations. “I have never ordered drugs on the dark web in my name, and I did not ask anyone to do that using my name and address,” he denied. However, he accused two of his former classmates and another friend for ordering the illegal pills in his name.

In court, witnesses could not even bring light into the dark web trafficking. One man, who was a witness, was charged and sentenced to two weeks of recreational detention by Judge Ebner of the Neuburg district court. The man testified that the suspect had been supplying him with ecstasy pills, but he did not know where the pills were obtained from. “This was not so often, and hence I never bothered to know where the pills come from and there was no specific price,” said the witness.

The second witness, a former schoolmate of the accused, denied being involved in any way with the drug trafficking. “How could I have been able to purchase the bitcoins said to have been used in [the] order. I was only 17-years-old then,” he said. The witness is also being charged in court and is awaiting trial this November. One more witness was excused on medical grounds.

The accused repeatedly put on record that he had not bought the drugs from the dark web himself. After a review of the evidence presented by the prosecution and a lengthy interview with all the other participants in the court hearings, the judge terminated the proceedings. The accused spent 14 days in permanent custody in a similar court procedure in September earlier this year.

The prosecutor also noted that the accused could still appear in court for another lawsuit after a full review and investigation of his two phones and a laptop.