BKA and ZIT dismantle relaunched Crimenetwork darknet marketplace; German operator arrested in Mallorca on European Arrest Warrant

The German Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) and Frankfurt's Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT), with Spanish National Police support, arrested a 35-year-old German national at his residence in Mallorca on a European Arrest Warrant on 2026-05-08 and shut down the relaunched Crimenetwork (Bundeskriminalamt press release — Deutscher Betreiber von "Crimenetwork" auf Mallorca verhaftet, 2026-05-08; Help Net Security, 2026-05-11). Crimenetwork was the dominant German-language darknet marketplace; the platform was originally taken down in December 2024, and a new operator rebuilt the infrastructure under the same branding shortly afterwards. The rebooted platform reached ~22,000 users and 100+ vendors and brokered stolen data, narcotics, forged documents and illegal services in BTC / LTC / XMR for an estimated €3.6 million in commissions and vendor fees before being seized. Investigators recovered approximately €194,000 in assets and substantial user/transaction data, which the BKA states will drive a wave of follow-on prosecutions — the press release explicitly frames the seized infrastructure data as the operational value, not the headline arrest.