Accused Shiny Flakes Customer: “Everyone Could Use My Address”

 

In June 2017, a 26-year-old from Gilching went to court on ecstasy charges. His name appeared on of Shiny Flakes “meticulous” lists. But because the prosecution could not prove that someone else had placed the orders and used the defendant’s address, the judge ordered that the case be dropped. Not even a week later, a 31-year-old from Nördlingen faced six similar charges, per the Shiny Flakes list. Likewise, the verdict was the same: not guilty.

Between July 2014 and January 2015, the 31-year-old ordered cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, and amphetamine, according to Prosecutor Alexandra Körner. He had purchased the drugs in various amounts and throughout six different orders. According to the Shiny Flakes list, someone—using the defendant’s last name—ordered the packages to the defendant’s current address. While the last name was the same, the first name varied per order, the prosecutor said.

Police raided his house and found small amounts of methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana. The drugs, he said, belonged to his friends. However, in court, he confirmed that police had, in fact, found the drugs at his house. But to the drug delivery from the darknet, he denied all but a basic knowledge of darknet drug markets. (The prosecutors never mentioned the Shiny Flakes clearnet website.) “I did not order anything,” he claimed. “I’ve read of the [Shiny Flakes arrest] only in the newspaper.”

Screenshot of the shop, taken by Motherboard

Shiny Flakes made headlines in 2015 after police raided the house of 20-year-old Maximilian S. A Leipzig Court charged Maximilian with the total weight of the drugs he had sold: 914 kilograms of methamphetamine, MDMA, amphetamine, cocaine, LSD, among many others. When police arrested Maximilian, they found another 320 kilograms of assorted substances. More importantly—at least for buyers and “alleged” buyers—Maximilian had kept a color-coded spreadsheet of finished, processing, and shipped orders.

The list revealed the name of the buyer, the drug(s) the buyer ordered, and the buyer’s address. On the day of Maximilian’s arrest, police raided the homes of 40 of the 20-year-old’s customers. Since then, police have been using the list to track down alleged buyers. Some beat the case. Others lost.

One example came from DeepDotWeb comment on a similar article about Shiny Flakes:

“I also ordered from Maximilian aka Shiny-Flakes. At the time police questioned me about my name on his list, i didnt have any records about drugs. […] They checked my bank account and noticed that i bought Bitcoins on the days where i ordered from that fucktard. The amount of Bitcoins matched the amount of the ordered drugs. This was enough for the judge to sentence me.”

Walter Rubach, the 31-year-old’s defense attorney, called the entire ordeal “really stupid.” He explained that the prosecution possessed no evidence that the drugs had ever arrived at his client’s house. And also that “the mailbox is easily accessible from the road. Everyone could have placed orders there and removed them.” The 31-year-old agreed, explaining that anyone could have used his address.

The court, in response to the lack of evidence, dropped everything but the possession charge. For the possession of methamphetamine, marijuana, and cocaine, the 31-year-old received a fine of 40 euros and a 90-day jail sentence.