One thing is clear: the darknet makes it difficult for security authorities to identify providers and consumers of the corresponding marketplaces. And yet there have been successes: in June 2017, the website "Elysium" ("Island of the Blessed" - the largest German platform for exchanging child pornography images and video material to date) was taken down. It has since been shut down. Thanks to international cooperation between the authorities, the investigation led to this platform, which had over 87,000 members. 14 suspects, including five Germans, were arrested and sentenced in early 2019, some of them to lengthy prison terms. The investigation was conducted by the Central Office for Combating Cybercrime (ZIT) in Giessen, a special unit of the Public Prosecutor General's Office in Frankfurt am Main.
At the end of April 2019, the operators and administrators of the underground economy platform "Wall Street Market" (WSM) were also successfully prosecuted. This was again based on extensive cooperation between national and international security authorities. WSM was one of the largest darknet platforms used for the illicit trade in various goods such as drugs, weapons and child pornography images and video material. According to the operators of WSM, the number of users amounted to 1,150,000 customers and 5,400 verified sellers. Three Germans were arrested as suspected administrators of the platform.
