I found this very interesting in the whole Hansa affair: Apparently, the two germans who ran Hansa also had a little side project they were making money with:
Die Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Frankfurt am Main teilte am Abend mit, Anfang Juli sei im Zusammenhang mit Hansa-Market ein Haftbefehl gegen einen 31-Jährigen aus Köln und einen 30-Jährigen aus dem Landkreis Siegen-Wittgenstein erlassen worden. Beide Beschuldigen sind demnach seit 21. Juni 2016 in Untersuchungshaft. Sie gelten als Betreiber der Plattform und stünden zudem im Verdacht, das illegale Portal LuL.to zum Verkauf urheberrechtlich geschützter Medien betrieben zu haben.
(Crappy Google) translation:
The general public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt am Main said in the evening that, in early July, an arrest warrant against a 31-year-old from Cologne and a 30-year-old from the district of Siegen-Wittgenstein had been issued in connection with Hansa-Market. Both accused have been investigating since 21 June 2016. They are considered operators of the platform and are also suspected of having operated the illegal portal LuL.to for the sale of copyrighted media.
Lul.to was a fairly popular clearnet site in Germany, where you could download almost every e-book illegally. You only had to pay a fraction of the original price for a book. For this you had to charge your account with Amazon vouchers or Bitcoin.
What is interesting is that lul.to went down on June 21, the day after the two admins got arrested and one day after the whole operation concerning Hansa was started by the feds.
So my guess is that the takedown of lul.to was plain luck. Or was it the other way around? Did they actually go after lul.to and then found out about Hansa? What do you guys think?
Thats crazy if they went to get them for a ebook site and ended up stumbling upon a major drug trafficking site