German Police Shut Down Darknet Marketplace Selling Drugs

An image of the message placed on the dark web site Archetyp after it was seized by police in Germany on June 16, 2025. Courtesy of Bundeskriminalamt

One of the world’s biggest darknet marketplaces for fentanyl and other drugs, Archetyp, has been taken down by German police as part of Operation Deep Sentinel. Its alleged creator and administrator has been arrested in Spain.

Eurojust, the European Union agency for criminal justice cooperation, said Archetyp had more than 600,000 users and about 3,200 vendors who had traded drugs worth at least 250 million euros (about $288 million).

Europol said eight people were arrested; they included a 30-year-old German national, who is believed to be the creator and administrator of Archetyp.

Operation Deep Sentinel involved five European police forces, assisted by U.S. law enforcement from the Department of Justice (DOJ), Homeland Security Investigations, and IRS Criminal Investigation.

Europol said of Archetyp, “It is one of the few darknet markets that allowed the sale of fentanyl and other highly potent synthetic opioids, contributing to the growing threat posed by these substances in Europe and beyond.”

The taking down of Archetyp comes three weeks after the FBI and the DOJ announced that 270 people had been arrested globally, and hundreds of pounds of fentanyl had been seized, in Operation RapTor, which targeted darknet vendors of narcotics.

The DOJ said Operation RapTor stemmed from the seizure of “darknet infrastructure” belonging to the marketplaces Nemesis, Tor2Door, Bohemia, and Kingdom Markets, all of which gave police around the world “investigative leads and evidence.”

Europol said Archetyp had been set up in 2020 and had about 17,000 listings online.

“With this takedown, law enforcement has taken out one of the dark web’s longest-running drug markets, cutting off a major supply line for some of the world’s most dangerous substances,” said Europol’s deputy executive director of operations, Jean-Philippe Lecouffe.

‘No Safe Haven’

“By dismantling its infrastructure and arresting its key players, we are sending a clear message: There is no safe haven for those who profit from harm,” Lecouffe said.

The German federal criminal police (Bundeskriminalamt, or BKA) said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times that a 30-year-old German citizen, who has not been identified, was arrested on June 11 by a special unit of the Spanish National Police at his home in Barcelona.

The BKA said Archetyp’s administrator, who operated under the username ASNT, has been charged with breaching Germany’s Narcotics Act.

Police searched his apartment in Barcelona, and his properties in Hanover, Germany, and Bucharest, Romania.

“Numerous items of evidence, including eight mobile phones, four computers/notebooks, 34 data storage devices, and assets totaling approximately 7.8 million euros [$9 million], were seized,” the BKA stated.

The BKA said its counterparts in the Netherlands had seized and shut down Archetyp’s server infrastructure at a data center.

It said 20 properties were searched in various parts of Germany, and one of the site’s moderators was arrested.

Additionally, a number of Archetyp’s biggest vendors were arrested in Sweden, and 47 smartphones, 45 computers, and a large amount of narcotics were seized, according to the BKA.

“International cooperation between authorities, financial tracking, and digital evidence analysis led to the identification of the people behind Archetyp,” the German police stated.

Investigators Discovered Servers’ Location

“Investigators discovered the location of the servers, moderators, and vendors on the marketplace. A coordinated action week was planned to dismantle Archetyp and arrest those responsible for selling and operating the platform,” German police stated.

In recent years, a number of websites have appeared on the darknet, providing a marketplace for vendors of narcotics and other illicit substances to sell to customers all over the world.

On Dec. 16, 2024, Rui-Siang Lin, who ran Incognito Market, pleaded guilty to charges of narcotics conspiracy, money laundering, and conspiracy to sell adulterated and misbranded medication.

Lin, 23, from Taiwan, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on May 18, 2024.

He has not been sentenced yet, but the narcotics conspiracy charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum potential sentence of life in prison.

In April 2025, Kidflix, a video-sharing platform on the darknet that allowed pedophiles to swap child abuse content, was closed down by Europol and police in the German state of Bavaria.

The term “darknet” is said to originate from a well-circulated 2002 report from Microsoft employees Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado, and Bryan Willman.

A small part of the darknet is made up of TOR hidden server websites. TOR, a tool often used for anonymity, routes traffic through a collective of volunteer servers around the world, making it difficult for authorities to collect IP addresses or see what a user is browsing.