Haha lol, pretty sure it was all improvisation from LE. The Germany authorities surely only found out that this eBook site (lul.to)was hosted in Germany, and they tried to hunt it down.
With success.
But when they figured out that these two bois were hosting Hansa, they totally freaked out. They needed to improvise, they told US LE and europol about it, and voila, a day later all the intelligent heads in FBI thought about the Honeypot mission, to control Hansa.
This could be a reason why they took it down a day later (da eBook site) I think they hadn't the resources to hunt down Hansa in any way, it was probably only, plain luck. And if they'd get resources, it would be after the AB Takedown, the btc they got from there and admin02 personal cash. After that they could start a new hunt.
But to make LE look like a boss, ofc they tell the story all way around. (They were hunting Hansa and found lul.to luckily) it's my opinion.
I see it very difficult to hunt down 2 such big markets in that short period of time. And nor would it be an intelligent move, as hunting 2 is always more difficult than to hunt 1.
I think the whole thing was only fucking luck. But who knows, only LE nows, we will never. Just think about it.
what i think. theres no way these 2 markets jsut went down due to tor or l33t h4ck3rs LE was on to other shit stumbled upon all the failed lazy opsec and bam ez
but....what about investigating fent deaths?