The Trier district court has sentenced the operators of a huge illegal drug marketplace on the Internet to long prison terms.
The court found the husband of an Australian couple guilty of armed importation of narcotics and sentenced him to nine years, the court said on Friday.
He was also convicted of aiding and abetting drug trafficking in 1,498 counts.
In addition, he has to go to a rehabilitation center.
The court also sentenced his wife to five and a half years in prison for armed importation of narcotics and aiding and abetting drug trafficking in 1,498 cases.
In addition, it collected the proceeds of the crime in the amount of more than 2.7 million euros.
The court saw it as proven that both had operated the Darkmarket trading center with other perpetrators.
The man was the administrator of the platform, his wife was in charge of design and settling disputes between sellers and customers.
In addition, the two brought drugs from Denmark to Germany.
At the time of the shutdown in January 2021, Darkmarket was one of the world's largest illegal marketplaces with around 500,000 users and more than 2400 sellers.
A total of at least 320,000 transactions were processed.
Payment was made with different cryptocurrencies.
At the time the dark market was shut down, their value corresponded to a sum of more than 140 million euros.
According to the verdict, the couple took a commission for the trading operations.
Both were arrested in January 2021 - first the husband, who traveled to Germany from Denmark, and a few weeks later his wife.
The trial against both began in December 2021, but had to start all over again in April due to illness.
The investigators got on the trail of the two Australians through the so-called cyber bunker case.
This bunker was a data center that was operated in a former NATO bunker in Traben-Trarbach, Rhineland-Palatinate.
The infrastructure for criminal activities was made available there, and Darkmarket also temporarily used a server there.
In December 2021, eight defendants in the cyberbunker case in Trier were sentenced to mostly several years in prison.
The Attorney General Koblenz appealed.