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Eleventh of January 2014, from "sonofabitch."
That's the guy's name.
"I always order my crystal here too.
Then I shoot it up.
And when the first flashback comes,
I cook myself some crack out of the coke
and smoke a nice pipe!"
"A +++ stuff.
Guys, two of my teeth fell out straight away.
This stuff really fucks you up. Definitely recommended, you morons."
Seems like he was satisfied.
1 TONNE OF DRUGS IN A TEENAGE BEDROOM
[tense music playing]
[Dr. Hieronymus] I have never before come across a perpetrator like Mr. Schmidt.
[Petric Kleine] Maximilian went down in history
as the "children's bedroom dealer."
This is because he ran his online business out of his childhood bedroom.
I haven't been in this room in a long time.
It seems so small, but I guess the dimensions are right.
But what does small mean? I guess it's bigger than a prison cell.
The amount of drugs and the amount of money
was astounding.
And then for him to be such a young lad!
I can't tell you at the moment how much money he has.
Safety. Safety first.
Is he still proud of what he accomplished?
I think that goes without saying.
This is where…
Yeah, what can I say? This is where I began to develop.
Let's put it that way.
[techno music playing]
[techno music builds]
Police! Hands up!
[techno music continues]
RECONSTRUCTION OF CHILDHOOD BEDROOM
[lock clicks shut]
[message alert pings]
[Stefan Costebel] How does a "Max" become "Shiny Flakes"?
When does he reach the phase where there's no turning back?
"I'm not going straight anymore, I'm taking a turn".
Why? When? How? What for? I think that's fascinating.
[message alert]
He lived in the children's room at home with his mother and her partner.
That was his environment.
Friends? As far as I know, he had none.
A girlfriend? At this time, he also had none.
I have another 10 accounts. Interested?
How much was that again?
We can discuss the price
I lost over 3k last week
I was the annoying guy who always seems a bit awkward.
But…
also somehow calm.
Just this skinny guy who doesn't do any exercise,
but just sits in front of the computer.
During adolescence, when…
one develops a certain arrogance…
There wasn't much competition.
-THEN I CAN GET THE HDS -GOT SOME CC+SC, NO PROBLEM
YEAH
BEDROOM
HALL, BALCONY, KITCHEN, BATHROOM
[Max] So at the time, I was chatting with someone I know
by the alias "dumb_pig".
dumb_pig@jabber.sk
[Max] And…
you talk about a lot of things as the night goes on.
It always spills over.
You talk about all kinds of bullshit.
dumb_pig: I was just on Silk Road
[Max] And at some point it came up: "Hey, Silk Road…
What's on there?" Etcetera.
And I think at that moment, it was primarily about
what they offer in the area of Internet fraud.
Until I realised it's actually more about drugs.
Drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs…
From 100 tabs of LSD here,
to two grammes of crystal meth there.
dumb_pig: They have EVERYTHING
[Max] And so we talked back and forth.
And the conclusion we came to was, the reason there's so many drugs
is that the profit margins are so high.
And then I thought, "Yeah, that's true."
I crunched the numbers and did some research.
[8-bit music playing]
There was no moment where I thought, "Whoa, how crazy is this?"
It was more like: "Whoa, this is crazy!"
In a positive sense.
It didn't intimidate me, it made me want more.
[music intensifies]
The first impulse was: "This stuff is out there, but it could be better."
It ALL has to be improved
Website, support, images, everything
dumb_pig: That's some big talk. Nothing to back it up
Wanna bet
[Max] And the guy I was talking to, dumb_pig,
said: "It's not that easy. It's dangerous." Blah, blah, blah.
"You can't do it better just like that". And, "There's no other platform."
Fine, then somebody could make their own platform.
How can I ship better than them? How can I have a bigger profit margin?
How can I get more customers than them?
How can I get more satisfied customers than these guys?
Coke, hash and speed would work well Better than meeting a dealer in the park
There were a lot of different sellers,
and maybe one of them had the best customer support,
another one had the best prices…
But somebody who provides it all-in-one? There just wasn't anything like that.
This is the dumbest idea you've ever had Trying to compete with a 5 mil business
You don't even know a dealer
[fingers typing]
I can learn????
[Max] Many of the people selling come from a different background.
They come from the street, they have some contacts where they get drugs,
and then they would sell them.
But they have no technical knowledge about, "How can I protect myself?"
"How do I make my own shop and present it well?"
I'll start looking around for a supplier…
OK…
It wasn't necessarily that there was a decision: "Okay, I'm going to do this."
Rather, it was more like, "How could this be done?"
And then you think it through.
And in order to see how to reach the goal, you already start doing parts of it.
And then I just gave it a try.
Hey, how's it going? We don't know each other.
True.
I want to sell. Need 25g coke and 10 mdma. To test.
Can you give me a good price? I'll need it on the regular.
1700. Payment only with Bitcoin Delivery to Pack Station
[ominous electronic music playing]
[click]
[music continues]
[music fades]
[Max] When I placed my first order with redbull,
it was, I think, some stupid amount
like 25 grammes of cocaine
and something like ten or 20 grammes of MDMA.
And that was it.
Suddenly I had it there.
I had to see, what does it smell like? What does it look like?
Hmm. It was all very new and unusual.
What do I have to do with drugs?
It surprised everyone,
because everyone assumes that the kind of people
who are active in this area
also consume regularly.
And that's not Max.
[Max] I had to read up on it: "What does this stuff do?
What do people even do with it?"
When you watch a film, a typical film,
everything's cool except heroin. People say bad things about that.
But otherwise it's always, "Hey, party! It's just a bit of fun!"
Funnily enough, I had this cool Xbox,
which had a kind of piano-black, reflective surface,
and I thought, "Hmm, if I put this in front of my TV,
and then put a cool fire on the TV,
then it would make a really good reflection on the Xbox."
[tense music playing]
[Max] And it was just a killer photo.
In the beginning, people complimented it and said:
"Hey, that looks so cool and classy, I want to order just because of that!"
[tense music continues]
At the very beginning, of course I was nervous about it,
like: "Maybe it's like in the movies, you do something and the police come!"
But once you understand the technical side of things,
all that goes away
and you're left with the endless possibilities of what you can do.
Like a game.
[pulsing electronic music playing]
Buy drugs with Bitcoin
Buy drugs easily with Bitcoin
People often asked me: "How is this shop different from other online shops?"
And I answered, "Not at all. It's just the products are different."
Payments were made in advance, the orders were processed and shipped.
But instead of shoes, it was drugs.
[pulsing music intensifies]
[Max] For people who weren't familiar with the material,
there was even a section for frequently asked questions.
Receive anonymously?
How fast can you ship to me?
You could read it and find out,
"How do you ensure everything is kept anonymous?"
Is it safe?
Yes!
Your address info is only recorded for shipping and is then deleted.
…DELETED…
It was also interesting that there was a minimum order value,
and it was even set up so that customers could give ratings,
so to speak, on how satisfied they were with the shop.
That was the fascinating thing. Something I had never seen before.
It was like Amazon.
I don't understand the comparison with Amazon.
Because with Amazon you have various merchants.
In my case, it was just me.
[computer bleeps]
[ping]
So I'm ready…
[Max] A lot of people who are good with tech will say,
"Okay, with a bit of thought and effort, I could have maybe done the same thing."
But the difference is just, you either do it or you don't.
[intense techno music playing]
Check out this new clearnet shop, shinyflakes.com
Didn't know you could do that online.
[Max] My shop was able to run totally normally on the Internet,
because with the right knowledge, it was simply possible.
[Ricardo Schultz] It's really no different from those people in glass buildings.
I mean, they're still doing illegal business,
they're just doing it in plain sight.
Yeah, it was pretty bold. Someone was feeling pretty confident.
Other people probably wouldn't manage it because they would be worried,
or because they would be afraid, or think:
"I can't do that, it's unthinkable to do something like that.
I could harm a lot of people."
He didn't have scruples like this.
And that's why he was able to behave in such a cold-blooded manner.
"I control everything. I'm above everything. I can do this."
That's dangerous.
The idea for the whole thing? December 10th, 2013.
Two weeks later,
I think it was the first day of Christmas, the shop was up.
And then I had a problem.
Okay, now I have a shop, and a better way of connecting with customers.
And then I forwarded it to dumb_pig so that he would handle the sales.
I wasn't up for doing it. It was too real for me.
So I thought: "Okay, look, you'll get all of this.
Follow my instructions and everything will be fine."
[ping]
dumb_pig - last online 2 days ago
[Max] I don't remember what his actual online name was,
but in any case I started calling him dumb_pig at some point.
[director] Why?
Because he's a dumb pig.
shinyflakes: Hey, where are you?
People are starting to put in orders!
last seen online 4 days ago
Yeah, dumb_pig bailed and then I thought, "This is bullshit.
I've worked so hard for the past 30 days and now it's just over.
But I don't want anything to do with the shipping.
It's all too close to home for me.
I'd rather just do stuff here on my PC and have my peace and quiet."
And then I thought, "No, now I've started and it's not…
I can't just stop halfway." So I did it myself.
[ominous electronic music playing]
[checkout scanner beeping]
[music continues]
[director] Were you worried your family would notice?
No family.
[director] No one noticed?
No.
At the very beginning, in January, February, March,
it was all very amateur.
There's no instructions online
about how to break up MDMA
or how to measure out cocaine.
So I had to try things out on my own to see what I could do.
And I mean even the simplest things.
In the beginning I had a knife
and I just dug around in the MDMA rock, which is actually like a real rock.
It was chaotic.
Hi, it all arrived safely
Told you so
[Max] Redbull was my first supplier.
He helped me a lot because he didn't just sell me stuff,
he also shared a bit of knowledge with me.
He was kind of a mentor, I'd say.
I could ask him any kind of dumb question
and at some point he'd answer.
How do I break up the MDMA????
Hammer, chisel, plastic box Just really pound it
And don't breathe in the dust
Really?
[key turns in lock]
[director] What would have happened if someone was standing here?
I was at the hardware shop.
Hammer, chisel. Stuff you need.
[director] That never happened?
Uh, no, they go to work, so…
Yeah, of course it was very practical
that I could come in just here and go in there and not have a long way to go.
[director] Didn't you ever make mistakes?
Not generally, no.
[rapid hammering]
[tense music playing]
[crows cawing]
LEIPZIG CORRECTIONAL FACILITY OPEN PRISON
[Max] So…
This looks so funny.
I would always mess with the social workers.
They come in at six in the morning to check that you're still alive.
And I would always put this Minion here at the computer.
They always looked confused.
A pro.
When the shop was up and running I never imagined that I'd go to prison.
So I had no idea of what was coming, that it would end like this.
INMATE ROOM
But now it's been four and a half years.
In four and a half years, other people go to university, they do other things.
Live the student life, etcetera.
Here, there's nothing. Wake up early, go to bed at night.
Very, very, very boring.
My motto has always been:
Stay as far away from everyone as possible.
I had a small group that I would see, a few people.
But it's not good to get too involved with people in general.
I don't know, it's not very social.
Very… primitive.
[checkout beeping]
[key turns in lock]
[Max] In the beginning it was all pretty relaxed.
You had your one order, then five, then ten orders a day.
The security precautions are relatively simple.
You don't meet with anyone.
And other than that,
make sure you don't get caught when you're doing the shipping.
Sometimes someone would come and want to post something.
So I'd stand to the side for a moment and say:
"You can go in front of me, I've got so many."
No one really cares.
[pulsing music playing]
At that time, sending drugs by post wasn't really heard-of.
That's the amazing thing,
that it's possible to use official shipping methods
to build a flourishing drug trade.
First you have to come up with the idea, then implement it.
[Max] Yeah, the German Postal Service and DHL did a very good job.
People went nuts because they would order at 3 p.m.
and the next morning it was there at eight.
And it's you they thank, but it's because the post was so fast and good.
In effect, the postmen were my couriers.
In January 2014, so in the first month,
I had maybe 10, 15 thousand euros in sales, which is a lot.
But it grew so much with time.
No one could have expected it.
Right from the beginning, it just took off.
[computer bleeping]
It kept on growing so much that in summer 2014,
I think there were 40 or 50 orders a day.
A lot of people found the shop through Google searches.
You can see clearly what people are searching for,
and one was "buy cocaine."
Boom, then they're on your website.
I had everything.
Aside from drugs, I also had various prescription medication on offer.
Alprazolam, bromazepam, clonazepam, diazepam,
nitrazepam, fentanyl, midazolam, tramadol, zolpidem.
A lot of prescription drugs.
[bleep]
[cash registers ringing]
[driving percussive music playing]
[cash registers ringing]
For every normal adult, it's all about the money.
And also, as is the case with all of my drug dealers,
it's all about living in the fast lane.
Whether it's buying hand-made shoes or tailored suits.
It's just all really about living it up.
Max didn't do that at all.
All that money…
he didn't spend any of it.
The most fun part was just watching it grow.
[upbeat dance music playing]
[Max] Big cities, small towns,
the tiniest Bavarian village…
[music continues]
[Max] Also Indonesia, China, Australia… Orders from all over the world.
When you've got an online drug business,
you have a bigger reach than you would just standing out in a park.
You can operate worldwide, even though you're just in one spot.
[music continues]
[Max] The strangest thing was one time when an order came from Colombia.
Where I thought they definitely have enough drugs.
AWESOME - doesn't get any better
Powder is the best. Very nice.
There's no better speed than Shiny's!
Super fast, well packaged, TOP quality
It's all about SHINY!!!
10/10 clean products
Super fast and super secure!
Ordered on 7.6, as of now still processing…
This scammer writes all the positive reviews himself!
Super fast and super secure!
[soft pulsing music playing]
In order to keep track of all the orders,
at first I made a list in Excel, very simple.
Because I had to try and work out how to organise it all.
He did things that didn't quite match up
with what he had previously promised his customers online.
[pulsing music intensifies]
[director] You said in your F.A.Q. that you don't save the customers' names.
Yeah…
That's another thing.
At some point I started using the spreadsheet, and…
of course I could have just selected the top row, and said,
"Now we can delete January through August, don't need it."
But I just didn't do it.
[computer whirring]
Maximilian felt safe.
The way he behaved showed that.
And it went well for a long time.
[ominous music playing]
[printer whirring]
SAXONY POLICE
[young woman's voice] June 26th, 2014.
I'm renting a flat in Leipzig.
Today I left my flat at 8:15 a.m.
At around 12:50 p.m. I came back home
and found two A5 envelopes had been left in my letterbox.
Both had "Leipzig Repository" as the return address.
Since I didn't know of a Leipzig Repository in the building,
I took them both up to my flat.
Then I called my neighbour and asked if he had ordered anything on eBay,
and he said he hadn't.
He took a look at the two envelopes and said:
"Let's open them up and have a look."
When the envelopes were open,
we could see several grey plastic bags inside.
At that point I immediately notified the police.
My colleagues found 100 grammes of amphetamines,
a large amount of cocaine and some ecstasy pills.
When it's one or two, you don't think much of it,
but there were similar findings all over the country.
Then it was established that the senders didn't exist.
The addresses were all made up.
…not registered with the Trade Licensing Office…
[Petric Kleine] Most of them had one thing in common:
They were all sent via the mail dispatch centre in Radefeld.
That was more or less the first sign:
"Mm-hm, could have something to do with Leipzig."
Shipments often get sent back,
you can't avoid that.
Then of course the police can find out where it was sent from.
But it doesn't lead to me.
Yes, that's correct.
But there were other factors.
Who had paid for the postage?
But we didn't get any further with that,
because Mr Schmidt made sure to cover his tracks.
Being relatively well-versed
and connected within the world of cybercrime proved to be an advantage.
You need the package pick-up stations to be able to receive anything.
You need a postage account to buy stamps.
You need bank accounts to convert the Bitcoin into cash.
How can I conceal my identity?
How can I avoid getting caught?
On the street, someone could see you,
but on the Internet it's more about, don't leave any traces,
and if you do, in what form?
Is there a whole group behind this?
Are there suppliers who procure the drugs?
Are there employees whose job it is to send the packages
and so on and so forth?
Their investigations had no direction.
I think the fact that he's analysing our investigations is a bit outrageous.
Because in the end it didn't do him any good.
[eerie music playing]
[deep rumbling]
[rumbling grows louder]
[intense bleeping]
[whirring]
[clank of machinery]
[downtempo beat playing]
[music continues]
One thing Maximilian had fun with
is that he would always put a little packet of gummy bears in the envelope.
[Max] Of course people liked it.
One person said, "Great! First gummy bears, then drugs."
Another person said: "I sell the drugs and then I've still got the gummy bears."
Basically it was just an idea…
to add another positive feature to the customer service.
It's so simple, but people talked about it.
At first, you could order anything.
Then someone ordered 17 grammes of MDMA,
which is of course totally stupid if you have to package it all.
Seventeen! You can't even prepare that much.
Unless maybe you take ten, five and two.
You've already got those prepared
because you pre-measure things that sell frequently.
I had to measure out one gramme, one gramme, one gramme…
Not one gramme here and 15 grammes there.
If you measure out that many in a row
you start to develop a feel for it.
Later, in prison, I was working in the kitchen
and one time I had to add 300 millilitres of cherry compote to the semolina.
That was pretty easy for me!
[downtempo beat continues]
For the duration of this year,
or a little over a year,
this person lived only to commit multiple crimes per day.
That means he got up every morning and said,
"I'm going to continue committing this crime."
And not just by selling one pill today,
or ten grammes of marijuana tomorrow,
but instead: "I'm going to do it on a large scale
and make money."
[director] Didn't you ever feel guilty about it?
In what sense?
[director] Did you worry that you might be harming people?
Uh, I didn't necessarily feel guilty about whether it might be harming anyone.
Because for me the logical reasoning was:
"If they don't get it from me they'll get it from someone else."
[message alert]
Yes…
In his case there is direct harm.
If I hit someone,
I see their injured face or their bruised eye, for example.
But with this case, the harm is anonymous.
And perhaps it's for that reason that the thought process is different here.
[ambient music playing]
XTC - green Chupa Chups SHINY FLAKES EXCLUSIVE
[Max] My low prices were the result of the fact
that I purchased extremely large quantities from my suppliers, and…
over time, I found the best suppliers out there.
[Max] I was in contact with, for example, Dutchmasters.
Whenever they brought out a new pill,
they would make maybe one to two million of them,
and I would order 100,000, 150,000 straight away.
[cash register ringing]
Is it even possible for such a young person,
19 at the time, and then later 20,
to run something like this on their own?
We had serious doubts right up until the end.
Simply because of all the effort that was required,
and because of all the logistics, which were enormous.
[pulsing music playing]
The courier couldn't have had any idea that he was delivering right to my house.
I said to him: "Hey, send your guy there. Then they'll meet."
Of course I always talked in the third person.
I couldn't say, "I'll come and meet you." That would sound very unprofessional.
And then if 200 kilos came at once,
which happened one time, you had to walk up to the fourth floor a few times.
Unfortunately there wasn't a lift.
No, I didn't worry that someone would steal it.
I mean, even if someone did,
they wouldn't say, "Hey, Officer, I found some drugs."
At least I don't think so.
[hammering in bedroom]
[Stefan Costabel] He led his own life in the flat.
And the mother knew nothing about her son.
She didn't know what time he got up, she didn't know…
She knew that he cooked.
The only thing she did for him was the laundry.
Which, however, he would fold in the laundry basket himself
and then take it to his room.
And it is true that the mother actually did not go into her son's room
for over a year.
The investigation showed that the son,
independently from his millions in revenue,
would actually return the family's recyclables
as part of the national recycling scheme,
and they had agreed
that he could then keep the money he got from that scheme
as a kind of supplement to his pocket money.
[Dr. Hieronymus] Mr. Schmidt was not very willing
to talk about his family or close relatives.
Perhaps it's because he wants to be seen as an individual
rather than as part of a family unit, or as part of a community of sorts,
because then that community would also have to deal
with these uncomfortable questions.
"How did you end up like this?"
And I think that he is actually ashamed of it.
[Ricardo Schultz] It's one of the peculiarities of this case
that someone who wasn't technically a criminal…
Not only "technically" but not at all a criminal…
this person, with the help of the Internet is capable, in a very short time,
of committing crimes on this scale.
If you sit down with a psychologist they'll ask this exact question:
"When was the moment you said to yourself, 'Hey, being a criminal is okay.'?"
But this question, at least for me as a 14, 15, 16-year-old,
didn't enter my mind.
It's not as if you're thinking, "Hey, I'll go rob a bank now."
It's more something you feel your way into.
When you first visit a website like this,
that's about hacking and Internet fraud,
it's definitely different to what people imagine.
Hacking a webcam???
[Max] My first experience on these boards was simply being among like-minded people.
At that time, I was just a boy who wanted to cause a lot of trouble.
How do I steal passwords?
Check out this tool
[Max] You feel yourself get pulled into the situation,
as if you were in another world.
Planting keyloggers or Trojans on people were the first steps.
And it would be like, "Ha, I did it!"
And now, I don't know, I can watch through their webcam or something like that.
That's just a stupid example.
Usually you'd get your hands on some kind of login data.
And then you could log in and delete the person's profile or something.
Just trolling around.
Or you'd get into their eBay account and post something just for fun.
When you're 14, 15, you do things like that.
Maybe. I mean, there are people like that. Maybe I was one of them.
It was really pretty pointless, but you just did it.
I mean, the goal wasn't to empty out someone's bank account straight away.
You would maybe start doing something like that later on,
when your interests changed and you realised: "I can make money with this."
This is his application. CV…
Yeah, his cover letter.
"Hardworking, punctual, conscientious."
CV
[Max] I finished school and thought:
"I have to do something now."
Then I started working as a waiter,
because that was a job you could get straight away.
I kind of had fun being a waiter, because on the one hand you're close to people,
and people always said to me, "Hey, that's not your thing."
And on the other hand it was so distanced
because it was this standard service procedure.
"There's a guest coming in." Be friendly, blah, blah, blah.
Show them to their seats, do this and that… It's a very simple job.
He only accepted other people's authority
when he was certain that they knew more than him
and that they could do more than him.
Otherwise he didn't accept any authority.
All the routine tasks that everyone had to do at a relaxed tempo
were boring for him.
It wasn't his thing.
He always wanted to be moving quickly, to get things done.
To be the first, to be meticulous.
For that reason he was annoyed by the colleagues who weren't perfect.
He would say, "It has to be perfect for everyone, for the whole team."
He couldn't stand anything being off.
If anyone did something different to how Max thought it should be,
I wouldn't have to do anything because Max sorted it out.
He'd say: "Fix it. Do it better." Yeah.
That's classic overconfidence.
[computer beeps]
We said: "What do you do in the evenings? Don't you go out, don't you go clubbing?
What do you do at home?" And he said:
"I sit at my laptop, and I do stuff."
Yeah. But of course he didn't say what is was that he was doing.
My profile picture on Crimenetwork was Kim Jong Un,
the North Korean dictator.
He's cool, I mean the way he looks.
As for what he does in North Korea, no idea!
On Crimenetwork, there are various levels.
There's these newly registered users,
and the first and second levels.
And you have the moderators, the administrators who run the board.
And then there's also an elite level.
I was practically a category unto myself.
[director] How did you achieve that status?
It's hard to say, because it involves these backstories.
And for me, what happened or didn't happen before isn't relevant.
This is about drugs, and that's where it will stay.
Learning the Basics
Make money with stolen credit cards
[Petric Kleine] It was a refuge for him. He was somebody important on there.
He meant something.
People talked about him on there.
He was seen as a big deal.
He was flattered by all that. He liked all that.
This was his world, where he got the recognition
that seemed to be missing elsewhere.
[director] Would you have liked to keep him on?
-Yes. -Of course.
[Max] I did it for about a year and half,
and then it happened that we were assigned tasks by the boss herself.
And I was already in a bad mood that day.
Then she came up to me and said,
"Mr Schmidt, if you don't want to work, you can go home."
So, "Okay, then I'll go." And I left.
Because at that moment I didn't exactly need the money.
And, since I was so young, it happened very quickly,
the thing that brings us here today.
Max will open his own wonderful restaurant one day.
Or a nice chic bar.
Max was… at least it seemed that way when he was here…
He was born to be a boss!
That should be his goal, we thought.
[director] He did get his own shop.
Yeah.
[machinery whirring]
[whirring intensifies]
[Petric Kleine] We took various approaches with the investigation.
A similar package was found in Baden-Württemberg.
And the investigations carried out by our colleagues there
indicated that the recipient of this package
browsed a particular site very frequently.
And so then we became aware of the site's existence.
We were shocked.
Here was someone brazenly dealing narcotics
on the freely accessible Internet.
We went through every single page on the website, front to back.
We weren't 't really expecting it to, but it's typical for online stores…
actually it's required by law…
It had a "company information" page.
Let's get the party started!
A company information page… has not yet been found.
[Petric Kleine] Where is this shop registered?
Where is the domain registered for the shop?
Always with the goal of finding a loose thread.
We found out where the server was.
The whole thing was connected upstream
with an encryption mechanism that's based in the USA.
[Max] The operator CloudFlare was mostly there
so that if the website is attacked by competitors or other people,
the website stays online.
It shows how incompetent they are when they claim it was used for concealment,
while actually it was for a technical reason.
[Petric Kleine] We asked them about it.
They stated that they would inform the person in question
about the police's activities.
Of course we didn't want that.
Investigation into this is futile.
PRINT
The investigation authorities weren't getting anywhere,
and then a letter came from California asking:
"Who are you? Leipzig public prosecutor's office? We really don't care."
Policeman or not, hacker or whatever,
if you didn't like it, there was nothing you could do.
The website was running.
Well, I admit,
I had to laugh, because it's a really impressive feat.
Not just anyone could pull this off.
Well, you feel really powerless.
You have to realise that there is no equality of arms
between the perpetrators and law enforcement.
The reason for this is because we don't have many legal options available to us,
and the perpetrators have better options available.
And yet we still always had leads that we could continue working on.
[techno music playing]
[Max] Around the end of December 2014, I got in a little over my head.
[phone ringing]
[many phones ringing]
[Max] Small details and server problems.
Mail traffic problems.
The device for sealing the aluminium bags would break.
Lost packages that you would worry about.
All of that messes with the rhythm of your process,
and slowly but surely, a backlog built up.
And so that led to me making these gigantic portions of spaghetti bolognese,
eating at six in the morning or four in the afternoon.
When you no longer have a steady daily rhythm
and you're just packing cocaine from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m.
it's neither healthy nor effective.
He said that sometimes, and this appeared in his statements,
that he only slept three or four hours so he could catch up with his packaging.
Whether or not at this point he still thought that it was a game,
I couldn't say.
[machinery whirring]
[intense bleeping]
[whirring and bleeping intensify]
[cacophony of message alerts]
In the end I had maybe 15,150 orders per day.
And at the height of everything,
I was making 100,000 euros in sales per day.
Who knows where that could have led. But in the end, I was just one person.
[eerie music playing]
[Max] It was just too much to manage.
And I didn't question whether it made sense.
There were no doubts or anything. There was no room for that.
I really didn't think about it at that time.
Only once I was in prison.
Yeah, it was like being on some sort of hamster wheel.
It just keeps going, no matter how fast you run, or how slowly.
[pulsing music playing]
[radio station chatter, indistinct]
[radio station chatter continues]
[Max] Because I was constantly shipping from different locations,
it's just impossible to trace that.
Even if you trace the postmark, okay, it was dropped in such and such a postbox,
but with 50 or 100 postboxes you have in a big city like Leipzig,
you can go to a different one every day.
What are the police supposed to do, monitor every postbox?
Unidentified Male Person (UMP)
UMP collecting a package from package compartment
UMP removing a further package from compartment
We were able to trace it.
It's certainly true that he was very careful with how he went about it.
But he also didn't know that he was under observation.
That's the point of observation.
UMP holding removed package in hands
As part of his psychological evaluation, I asked him why he got caught,
and his answer was, "It wasn't because of me,
it was because someone else did a bad job."
Someone he was associated with.
Here again we see this attitude of, "I can only rely on myself."
But he did in fact have a couple of contacts.
And that's where he tripped up.
[message alert]
They arrested Red Bull and his people
I assume they had been watching him over a long period of time
Who were the others?
Was one of them the guy who recently drove across Germany for us?
The cops held him for one day
and then let him go
I don't get it either
maybe as bait
Could be that the cops will lay off now
Because they think they arrested the main suspect
Maybe not though
Better safe than sorry.
[Max] I don't know what mistakes Redbull made
that got the police on his tail.
But I do know that they found me as a result of those mistakes.
In the files,
it said that they followed him to where he dropped off the post,
and saw a lot of large, suspicious packages there
that were being sent to Leipzig.
Then they followed those, because it was unusual,
and that's how they then got to the package station
that I would often use.
There were undercover investigations,
there were observations, there was telephone surveillance.
The whole shebang.
Time of recording: 18.02.2015, 4:57 p.m.
[Max] On February 26th, 2015,
I woke up relatively late.
I'd say around ten.
Because I had to work into the night.
And I think around 11 or 12
was when the courier came.
[Petric Kleine] Right up until the end,
we assumed that it must be several people.
One person handling all that on their own seemed to us relatively impossible.
It's assumed that criminal groups like this
usually tend to be armed.
[drill whirring]
[Max] I think at around 2 p.m. I heard drilling.
And I asked myself, who's drilling here?
It sounded pretty close. "Oh well."
Police! Police!
Police! Don't move!
Hands in the air!
It wasn't fear I felt.
More just a feeling of disbelief that it was happening.
How can this be? How did they find me?
Why should they be here for me?
[tense music playing]
[Max] But it became clear pretty quickly that they were here for me.
[assistant director] And cut! Thank you, cut.
-[Max] That was great. -[cop] Yeah, I thought so too, actually.
I'm glad it went smoothly.
But it was super unsettling, because it all feels so real in here.
You wait and you know what's coming. And it's a bad memory.
[cop] I think that's a great statement. "A bad memory." That's good.
But now I can laugh about it. Great.
Yeah, I don't know.
On the one hand it's unpleasant, but on the other hand it's also like…
Yeah, like confrontation therapy, I'd say.
Every time I hear the word "police" shouted, it's a bit less stressful.
Masked men with machine guns in my room.
They smacked the machine gun across my face.
They threw me to the floor and handcuffed me.
Then they walked over me several times.
Probably because there was so little room,
but also probably because they enjoyed doing it.
So yeah, and I just lay there for what felt like an hour.
That's how he sees it.
That's probably how he justifies it.
Some of it would have actually happened that way,
but it would be unusual for him to be able to remember it blow-by-blow.
An arrest doesn't just go something like:
"Lie down," and "Please be quiet,"
and "Place your hands on your back."
It's much more hands-on.
[newsreader 1] The dealer, a young man just turned 20,
sold these drugs over the Internet.
[newsreader 2] As well as marijuana, LSD and hashish,
also prescription medication.
Drug dealing 2.0. This is something unparalleled in Germany.
[newsreader 2] One of the largest drug busts ever to occur in Germany.
EXHIBIT 182
[pulsing music playing]
[Petric Kleine] At the time our colleagues reported back to us:
"Yeah, there's a large quantity of narcotics in the room."
And we of course asked: "What does 'a large quantity' mean?"
At first it was ten, 20 kilos.
Then 100 kilos.
And then 15 minutes later
when our colleagues requested a van,
we knew that more than 100 kilos had been seized from the flat.
Orders worth around 4 million.
A tonne. We're talking about a tonne.
I think that more than one champagne cork popped in Leipzig that day.
We were proud that our investigation had been a success.
I was still at home, and a police officer came into the room,
stood in the doorframe and just said…
"Ten years."
And then he walked out.
That was my first indication of where things were going.
[moderator 1] The judges have decided. What's the verdict?
[moderator 2] Seven years of juvenile detention
and he must pay the state three million euros
from the proceeds of his drug deals.
Max, the so-called "children's bedroom dealer"
will spend seven years in juvenile prison according to the Leipzig Regional Court.
The judge called it serious criminality.
He made a full confession, which favoured the 20-year-old.
Experts attested to his emotional immaturity,
which is why he's been sentenced as a minor.
When there is doubt about someone's moral maturity,
and in my view this was the case with him,
then it's appropriate to refrain from sentencing as an adult.
[ambient music playing]
[male voices echoing in hallway]
[slam]
[key turning in lock]
[Max] At first I was extremely impressed when I saw the prison.
Then I was overcome with a calm and relaxing feeling
and I was able to switch off for the first time
after months of non-stop working.
[ambient music continues]
I don't know where the feeling came from, but it was good.
He has not shown any remorse or guilt.
He seemed to me to be very calm
and also very in control of himself.
And unperturbed.
Quite emotionally detached.
And I could also see a bit of pride in his eyes.
When the news came on RTL or whatever…
about something with 300 kilogrammes of drugs and a Maximilian,
who was now in custody in Leipzig,
the whole prison went mad,
and everyone started banging on the bars like…
"Hey! He's here! Who is it?"
But they all kind of celebrated it.
Legends must be free
Shame he got busted
For him it was about fame. It was about glory and honour.
"Commando" aims to get teen drug lord out of jail
"Free Shiny" commando wanted to free Maximilian from Leipzig prison
-Top man -Ridiculous he got such a long sentence
1 Tonne of Drugs in Teen's Bedroom
Now the drug baron's customers are quaking in their boots
[intense music playing]
[Petric Kleine] That was one of the aims of the search:
not just to secure the drugs or find the cash,
but also to find clues for how we could get into the computer.
And the perpetrator, or Mr Schmidt,
tried to do everything possible to prevent anyone from accessing the data.
It took an exceptional performance from the IT forensics team
at the Criminal Investigation Department to manage it.
[director] And how did they do it?
[Max] Well, it's an exceptional performance from the IT forensics team
to go through my stuff and find something where I'd written down a password.
If that's an exceptional performance, hurrah! It was just dumb luck.
Well, yeah, under a pile of rubbish, you could say,
there was a small piece of paper that, thank God, the investigators noticed,
and it ended up having the indecipherable password written on it.
It was very, very long.
I didn't answer the question in the press conference, that's correct.
The reason was simply that I didn't want to lead other perpetrators
to believe that we had run out of options and that we were helpless.
Of course things like this involve carelessness,
the human factor and human error.
[ping]
The shop was effectively online from late December 2013
until the end of February 2015.
SUSPICIOUSLY GOOD JOBS! SAXONY POLICE
From then on, the police had access to the website
and they used it to promote themselves.
I don't know if that's actually legal.
Maybe I should make a complaint about that.
Shiny Flakes got busted…
Is there a database with all the customers?
How could someone order drugs to their real-life address?
I ordered there but didn't pay.
I'm in Bavaria and I'm scared, can anything happen to me?
Orders.xlsx
[Max] The order list they found contained about 13,000, 14,000 data sets.
That means 13,000, 14,000 shipments.
[Ricardo Schultz] It was a great stroke of luck for the investigators.
There was concrete data.
It was possible to see addresses, to see names.
It was also possible to see what these individuals had ordered.
Of course they were happy about it. They were thrilled.
[Max] At first I didn't realise the extent of it,
because no one said to me,
"Hey, we've now begun about 4,000 criminal proceedings."
Instead, at some point court orders started coming in.
They said, "You are summoned as a witness."
Even before my own trial was over, I had been summoned as a witness.
For every court hearing he attended,
a separate form had to be filled out.
This is the sixth volume.
You can see how much paperwork he produced while in detention!
JUNE 2019
WITNESS APPOINTMENT FOR CUSTOMER TRIAL
-Hello. -You have an appointment?
-Yep. -Good.
Hello, Mr Schmidt. I'm afraid the hearing is already over.
He gave a full confession so we no longer need your testimony.
Great.
-It was not foreseeable. -Yeah, as always.
-Of course you've travelled a long way. -Yeah.
-But you will receive compensation. -Super.
If you give me the summons, I can sign it.
I'll need to have a new copy printed out, I'm afraid.
-You don't have the summons with you? -No, I lost it.
-Okay, we can create a new one. -Super.
Where do I have to go?
You just walk over here. And then turn right.
-And who am I looking for? -You'll have to sign in downstairs.
Great.
You were summoned as a witness for a proceeding?
[Max] I can't understand a word.
You were summoned as a witness for a proceeding?
-Uh, yes. -And where is the summons?
I lost it. That's why I need to request a new witness compensation form, please.
Who told you that?
The guy at the entrance over there. By the court.
-The guy? -Yeah, I don't know his name.
-Okay. -Someone in a uniform.
You have to have the form printed out from the corresponding department.
You can't print it? I'm running around because you guys are disorganised?
That's handled by the service department.
Fine.
So annoying. This sucks.
Was that anything to do with my crime?
[Max] I was called as a witness for hundreds of proceedings.
In the end that meant that I was always travelling.
I couldn't receive visitors, couldn't do my laundry,
couldn't receive any letters since I was away from my facility.
I was completely isolated.
I'm tearing up!
-[director] No sympathy? -No.
One day you'll know why.
[man] I saw a TV crew, Googled him to see what he looks like,
and I saw that was his face, yeah.
I knew he was coming here because of me. And they couldn't cancel you so late.
I admitted to everything, that's why. It only lasted half an hour.
[Max] Okay. And what did they give you?
[man] Three years' probation. 1,000-euro fine.
-[Max] Not too bad. -[man] Not too bad.
Yeah, they say, "It was such a long time ago, won't happen again."
-That's what it looks like. -"Nice guy. Doesn't cause trouble."
Yeah, they couldn't prove I was selling, anyway.
It was more of a purchasing cooperative.
What quantities are we talking, in the trial?
Four kilos of speed, 100 grammes of MDMA, cocaine…
-Then you got off easy. -I did get off really easy!
Yep, yep…
"Purchasing cooperative?"
That's why they couldn't… I mean, "personal use" is what they said, yeah.
Great.
[man] I was really lucky, yeah.
-And you're on day release now? -Yeah, I get out next month.
Okay. So it was worth it, right?
I think so!
Did they find all the Bitcoins in the end?
I don't know. They say there's more, I say there's no more…
It's kind of a standoff.
No one really knows what… Yeah, well.
-So, this is my stop. All the best. -Take care. Stay out of trouble!
[both laughing]
[man] See you.
[Ricardo Schultz] That was one of the questions
that was asked during the investigations, of course,
and afterwards as well:
"What happened to all the money?"
Income, "Shiny-Flakes" From 12 wallets
[Petric Kleine] The revenue from the opened wallets
amounted to 350,000 euros.
At the end of it all, yeah, we admit we couldn't open two wallets.
What's inside them, we don't know.
The fact that many people can't imagine
that this money somehow disappeared,
but rather that it was hidden somewhere,
is very understandable.
They form their own opinion and say, "Of course there's something in there."
No one can prove it, no one can trace it.
If I had access, I could say, "Here, look, there's nothing in there."
And if there was something in there, I wouldn't necessarily reveal it.
Max isn't rich, no. I don't think so.
[director] So what is stopping you from saying,
"I don't have a single cent of it?"
Yeah, one could say that.
-[director] Is that true? -Yeah, one could say that.
Well, one could put it that way.
[director] We only report things that represent the truth.
-Yeah. -[director] So is there any money left?
Well, in that wallet, there's definitely not one cent.
I know that much.
-[director] Do you still have any of it? -I don't think so.
All I got from the business was experience and lost time.
-Not a cent? -Not a cent.
We'll see what the future brings.
[director] What does that mean?
Well, we are indeed watching him
to see if he commits further offences.
He's out on probation after all.
There might be opportunities.
He might, for example, use his knowledge
and the financial means that certainly still exist
to commit further offences.
-[director] You already have suspicions? -I won't comment on that.
[director] So, yes?
JUNE 2020
ONE YEAR OF FREEDOM
[Max] After my arrest,
I spent a total of four years and seven months in prison.
There are procedures where they can decide,
"Okay, his behaviour has been good, he has good social prospects."
Then there's an assessor who says, "Okay,
he seems to be heading in the right direction.
We'll give him a chance to get out earlier."
[director] Do you have any plans?
At the moment I'm working in a car park.
-[director] Is that true? -Yeah!
[director] What do you do there?
These are detailed questions.
Car stuff.
Yeah, well… office stuff at the car park.
[ambient music playing]
[laughing]
[Max] "Eat & Meat." Not sure what that is.
[Max] We're going to go to the Reichstag.
[babble of conversation]
At first Max swiped left on me but he came back because he thought,
-"Oh, she's really cute." -I have Premium. I could go back.
I could say, "Oh, shit, yeah. I do like her."
I was like, "Ahh, gone. Ahh, actually no."
We went for ice cream, and then we went into a stationery shop
because my girlfriend needed stamps to send an important letter.
And that was the first time I could shine with my postage knowledge
and I said,
"For the large-format envelope this small stamp won't be enough."
Right! I thought about that afterwards, like, "He knows a lot about this stuff."
That was something!
How can it be, that he didn't say anything about it the whole time?
Well, you don't always have to rush into things, do you?
Sooner or later that kind of thing will come out.
It definitely always comes up in conversation.
Who Max is, what he's been through.
It always goes down really well.
-Thank you for having such a good story. -My pleasure. Happy to help.
Do you have a story that you tell people when they ask what you do for a living,
or do you just say… nothing?
-Yeah, of course. I work at the car park. -Really? That's your story?
-Yeah. -Okay!
[everyone laughs]
He tends to beat about the bush and he doesn't want to tell very much.
And that's okay, I mean… I'm not going to keep prying.
He doesn't have to tell me if he doesn't want to.
[director] How important is it for you to have friends?
Uh, kind of important.
Wow!
[friend] I can give a better answer than that!
Do you have a template?
When you're with Max, he always asks, "Do you want anything else to drink?
Do you want an ice cream? I'll get it. What do you want to eat? "
Yeah, it's really nice. Yeah.
But we still have to teach Max to ride a bike.
So that's still on the list for this summer.
Yeah, I mean, some things you save for later.
And… this year I'll be learning how to ride a bike.
I've never owned a bike, that's why.
[director] Do you worry that something could happen?
No. I mean, he's a sweetheart.
I don't think anything will happen again.
He'll stay with me!
His mother would probably say that, too: "He's the sweetest person in the world."
I think he will be extremely careful
when considering what risks he takes in the future.
In my opinion he won't be committing a second offence.
And the next question, which at this point is of course speculative:
"Will he even need to engage in criminal activity again?"
[ambient music playing]
[music intensifies]
[moderator] August 26th, 2020.
In a raid conducted by the Leipzig police,
large quantities of narcotics and cash have been seized.
Four men and one woman aged between 22 and 41
are suspected of drug trafficking.
According to the authorities investigations are still ongoing.
They're currently focusing on the examination and evaluation of evidence
such as the seized computer technology.
MARCH 2021
Good afternoon.
I have some news.
I am able to inform you today that…
Mr. S… is under investigation.
He has, once again, together with others,
begun operating an online shop which sells illegal drugs.
The site is operating under a different name,
but the overall approach and the design are similar to Shiny-Flakes.
Mr Schmidt knows that he is under investigation
and that he is a suspect.
I think that the evidence is solid,
and I anticipate that the prosecution will issue an indictment.
Yeah.
-[director] Don't want to talk about it? -No.
-Why not? -Because this has nothing to do with it.
[pulsing electronic music playing]
[electronic music intensifies]
The public prosecutor's investigation into Maximilian Schmidt is still ongoing.
In the event of an indictment
he will be presumed innocent until the conclusion of a court case.
[electronic music continues]