Maximilian S. enters the hall with a self-confident smile.

He doesn't hide like two of his fellow defendants, who hold files in front of their faces or pull down their hoods very low.

No, S., that much should be clear right from the start, the star is in room 115 of the Leipzig district court.

But his two defenders also enjoy the appearance in front of the two dozen reporters and cameras standing in a semicircle in front of them.

Stephen Locke

Correspondent for Saxony and Thuringia based in Dresden.

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The trial, which begins here on Monday, is attracting enormous media interest.

Because the main defendant S. is no stranger, on the contrary: in 2015, investigators arrested the then 20-year-old man in the children's room of his parents' apartment in a Leipzig prefabricated building district.

From there, S. ran a thriving internet drug business.

Released early after almost five years

With the online shop under the name "Shiny Flakes", the young man had built up an entire drug empire and, by the time he was arrested, had sold almost a ton of cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine, methamphetamine and a wide variety of prescription drugs at home and abroad.

He had taken care of the entire chain from shopping on the dark web to portioning and shipping from his children's room and thus earned around four million euros, mainly in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

The Leipzig Regional Court therefore sentenced him to seven years in juvenile detention in 2015, although he was released early after four years and seven months in prison.

The act and the trial caused such a stir that the streaming service Netflix produced the series "How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)" from it, which has already run successfully for three seasons.

The documentary “Shiny Flakes: The Teenage Drug Lord”, which also premiered on Netflix in 2021, attracted no less great interest.

Stored and sold around 16 kilograms of amphetamines

Now S. is on trial again, which is presumably because he tried to build on his great, albeit dubious, success.

In any case, the public prosecutor accuses him and four co-defendants, at the latest from November 2018 – i.e. while S. was still in custody – and then until January 2021 via a new online shop called “Candylove.to”, including a good 16 kilograms of amphetamines, 2.6 kilos Hashish, almost two kilos of the party drug MDMA, 5715 ecstasy pills and 369 grams of cocaine as well as a large number of prescription drugs and sold them to customers at home and abroad.

S., who does not take drugs himself, was the head of the gang, the public prosecutor left no doubt about that on Monday.

According to the indictment, he had both the money and the skills to do so.

The 36-year-old co-defendant Friedemann G., who is currently serving a long prison sentence for other crimes and is being led into the courtroom in handcuffs, took over the logistics, while the oldest co-defendant, André R., a 43-year-old lawyer from Leipzig, himself primarily concerned with legal issues such as legally appearing employment contracts for the members of the group.

According to law enforcement, S., G. and R. were at the heart of a gang that had come together to engage in a large-scale drug trafficking operation.

Two other co-defendants, 24 and 40 years old, who come from Leipzig and Frankfurt/Oder, are said to have acted primarily on instructions and helped with portioning the goods and getting packaging material.

In total, the accused had sent 471 packages and parcels with a wide variety of drugs within Germany and abroad, making a profit of around 95,000 euros, according to the public prosecutor.

The indictment then detailed numerous cases in which the troupe is said to have sent orders, including at the request of undercover investigators who were already on the trail of the alleged gang.

Sometimes there was one gram of methamphetamine for 47 euros, sometimes three grams for 132 euros or a set of three grams of cocaine, two ecstasy and two LSD pills and ten painkillers for a total price of 210 euros.

The dealers from "Candylove.to" were very service-oriented, photographed the goods in the best light and responded to customer requests.

S. face up to 15 years in prison

The presiding judge said on Monday that the allegations against S., G. and R. were "serious" and that there was an "overwhelming probability of conviction".

S., whose remaining sentence of two years and five months was suspended on probation in 2019, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted – this time under adult criminal law.

In the case of the two suspects with no previous convictions and those accused of aiding and abetting, a suspended sentence could definitely be considered.

However, the criminal chamber is also open to mutual agreement talks, the judge explained.

Because the proof could be complex and take a long time;

so far, 18 days of negotiations have been scheduled until the summer.

The accused themselves remained silent on Monday.

Only the lawyer defending the accused explained on behalf of his client that he had nothing to do with the matter.

R. had had absolutely no contact with S. and was certainly not a member of a gang.

Rather, his client had been a lawyer for a co-defendant for years and had apparently been targeted by the investigators by wiretapping telephone calls.

In fact, there is a lot at stake for R.: If he is convicted, he could lose his license to practice law and thus his professional existence.