Apparently, Hansa Market was not the only project of the admins

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:

http://info.arte.tv/de/afp/Neuigkeiten/ermittler-den-usa-und-europa-schliessen-zwei-grosse-darknet-plattformen

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?


Comments


[72 Points] RetroBoominOnDaTrack:

Thats crazy if they went to get them for a ebook site and ended up stumbling upon a major drug trafficking site


[24 Points] None:

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[9 Points] None:

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[7 Points] throwaway19214568:

Wtf why would they run that stupid ebook site while running Hansa that makes no sense whatsoever.


[5 Points] None:

No they knew these dudes were running hansamarket and the other site was just a plus. They knew exactly who these people were before they went and grabbed them. Now the real question is we're they planning on taking over hands before or after the arrest of the owners.


[5 Points] PM_ME_EGGNOG:

Why is this tagged specuation? OP is right. Unless the Dutch Pr doesn't count as proof. https://www.politie.nl/en/news/2017/july/20/underground-hansa-market-taken-over-and-shut-down.html -- bottom of the post, they link to Germany arrests. The arrests are the LuL[dot]to arrests.


[3 Points] seventhaccount7:

AK did say to launder your money through Ebooks lol.


[2 Points] wombat2combat:

lol because running a dnm is not enough heat.

I am wondering what role the tip from bitdefender exactly played. was it about that other site and law enforcement really just got lucky with hansa or was it about a connection between these two sites?


[1 Points] OpOnymousSurvivor:

clearnet site = low hanging fruit. probably coincidence