The business idea with Flugsvamp 3.0 has been that drugs are brought into Sweden and then sold within the country’s borders.
The man who is now indicted for particularly serious drug crimes must have been responsible and administrator for the site.
– In the marketplace, there has been an extremely large number of transfers of various narcotic preparations such as benzodiazepines, cannabis preparations, central stimulants, hallucinogens, opiates and other narcotics, says senior prosecutor Henrik Söderman, who is the head of the preliminary investigation, in a press release.
“A complicated investigation”
Björn Eriksson, group manager at the National operational diversion, has led the work on the investigation.
– It was definitely a complicated investigation. We have had many different skills involved and it has taken a long time to investigate this. Crimes that take place on the Darknet are difficult to investigate and that is the purpose, he tells SVT Nyheter.
Used cryptocurrency
The prosecutor estimates that the crime has amounted to at least SEK 2.5 billion in the cryptocurrency bitcoin.
In addition to the administrator, two more people are charged with aiding and abetting an extremely serious drug crime. Prosecutions are also brought for serious money laundering offenses and serious accounting offences.
The perpetrators are said to have made a profit of SEK 75.5 million.
– If you look at Swedish buyers and sellers, the site has had a fairly large share of the internet trade in narcotics. There are extreme sums in circulation when it comes to the drug trade and the internet is only becoming a bigger and bigger part of it.
Using the site’s name as marketing
Flugsvamp 3.0 was active until November 2021. As the name suggests, it is the third version of the site, the first was shut down after a crackdown in 2014. A sequel, Flugsvamp 4.0 is already underway.
According to Björn Eriksson, the name Flugsvamp has been taken over by a new perpetrator who wants to exploit the site’s “brand”.
– I would say that in this case, we see no connection between Flugsvamp 2 and 3, for example. These seem to be new people who have caught on to the name.