Five members of the same family, suspected of drug trafficking on the darknet, were arrested at the end of April.

Four of them were indicted, including two remanded in custody and one under judicial supervision. 

It is a real family SME that the investigators identified.

Five members of a family were arrested at the end of April in Haute-Savoie and in the Loire, suspected of drug trafficking on the "darknet", announced Friday the gendarmerie.

In July 2018, a suspicious profile had been spotted on encrypted internet networks, "at the origin of a significant number of drug deliveries in France but also abroad: United States, Australia, Taiwan", indicates the same source.

Investigators had lost track of him but found him in early 2020 on an encrypted messaging.

The specialized interregional court of Lyon, competent in matters of organized crime, had then entrusted the investigations to specialized gendarmes from the Lyon research section (SR).

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A clandestine manufacturing laboratory

In connection with the American customs and the Swiss judicial police, they discovered that the orders were sent from France or Switzerland by delivery companies or by La Poste depending on the volume, the type of products (MDMA, heroin and cocaine) and the nature of the packaging.

On April 27, about sixty gendarmes from the SR of Lyon as well as groups from the Loire and Haute-Savoie intervened to arrest two women and three men, belonging to the same family, in these two departments.

An underground laboratory for manufacturing and processing synthetic narcotics has been discovered.

"A profit of at least 2 million euros since 2018"

"We were dealing with a family made up of five people, parents, children ...", confirms to Europe 1 Colonel Laurent Lesaffre, who commands the research section of Lyon. "There was the one who was responsible for the manufacture and processing of the products, the one who was responsible for packaging the products and the one who was responsible for sending them, to post them", he further explains. . This family, he says, made very significant profits through these maneuvers. "It is estimated that it has made a profit of at least around 2 million euros since 2018."

On Europe 1, Colonel Laurent Lesaffre also indicates that the particularity of this network is that, working on the dark web, "they were paid mainly in cryptocurrency, in particular with Bitcoins".

And to conclude: "We have already been able to seize the equivalent of 500,000 euros in Bitcoins". 

Four of the suspects indicted

The searches also made it possible to seize 28,000 euros in cash, as well as 9.4 kilos and 3.5 liters of MDMA, 22 kilos of precursor products, 1.5 kilos of cannabis buds, 625 grams of resin, 65 grams of crack and 18,400 ecstasy pills.

Some of these products were packaged in a hundred envelopes ready to be shipped, adds the gendarmerie.

After their presentation to the investigating magistrate, four of the suspects were indicted, two of whom were remanded in custody and one under judicial supervision. The latter will be summoned later by the judge in charge of the case.