Alleged Dream Market kingpin faces US, German charges

Safety

Owe Martin Andresen faces expenses in each US and Germany related with cash laundering, claims he despatched gold bars on to his doorstep

A person police suspected of being the administrator of the previous main on-line drug bazaar Dream Market is dealing with expenses in each his native Germany and the US following his arrest earlier this month.

Prosecutors declare Owe Martin Andresen, 49, is the person recognized by the “Speedstepper” alias, one of many few Dream Market admins recognized by regulation enforcement within the 2019 makes an attempt to shutter the platform. Whereas different crime leaders on the platform have been convicted, it took the authorities years to determine their newest suspect, whom they consider was primary admin of the web site.

Authorities mentioned they tracked him down by monitoring crypto wallets, and monitoring purchases of gold bars that the indictment claims have been delivered to his house deal with. 

Different lower-level admins have lengthy been convicted, together with French nationwide Gal Vallerius, who was sentenced to twenty years in jail a 12 months after being arrested at Atlanta airport in 2017 on his option to attend the World Beard and Mustache Championships (sure, actually).

Andresen was arrested by German police on Could 7 after the US indicted him in January, charging him with a number of counts of cash laundering offenses. He faces comparable expenses in Germany.

Authorities spent years gathering small items of proof that finally tied Andresen to Dream Market’s helm. 

After the platform shut down in 2019 amid mounting stress from regulation enforcement, not one of the suspected admins touched Dream’s infrastructure, together with the operation’s recognized cryptocurrency wallets, which contained hundreds of thousands of {dollars}’ price of tokens.

Three years later, between November and December 2022, Andresen allegedly accessed these quite a few wallets and transferred the contents right into a single, consolidated one – a step solely somebody with entry to Dream’s non-public key may perform. Police consider this was Speedstepper.

The following breadcrumb got here virtually a 12 months later, when in August 2023, Andresen allegedly used an Atlanta-based cryptocurrency service supplier to buy gold bars from numerous worldwide corporations utilizing the funds from the consolidated pockets. 

The indictment claims he had these gold bars shipped on to his home in Germany, as an alternative of selecting a extra impartial, much less compromising location.

Between then and April 2025, German police consider they’ve recognized a number of different cash laundering schemes executed by Andresen, washing greater than $2 million within the course of.

Upon his arrest on Could 7, police searched Andresen’s residence “and two different areas,” at which officers discovered gold bars price roughly $1.7 million, greater than $23,000 in money, in addition to a number of financial institution accounts and crypto wallets containing roughly a mixed $1.2 million. 

All of those proceeds are thought to stem from the funds generated by Dream Market and the assorted charges it charged for transactions and sellers to record their illicit wares.

Dream Market operated between 2013 and 2019 and benefited tremendously from the Alphabay and Hansa seizures, scooping up their customers after enjoying second fiddle to each platforms for a lot of their respective reigns.

Based on US Lawyer Theodore Hertzberg, at its peak, Dream had round 100,000 concurrent listings, most of which have been for medicine.

The US mentioned the market was liable for the trafficking of giant portions of unlawful narcotics, together with greater than 90kg of heroin, 450kg of cocaine, 25kg of crack cocaine, 45kg of methamphetamine, 13kg of oxycodone, and 36kg of fentanyl. 

“Andresen allegedly channeled commissions earned from promoting unlawful medicine, stolen personally identifiable data, counterfeit identification paperwork, and different gadgets via cryptocurrency wallets and even transformed his ill-gotten positive aspects into gold bars,” said US Lawyer Hertzberg. 

“Because of the shut coordination between federal and German regulation enforcement, Andresen and his co-conspirators will not revenue from the net gross sales of narcotics and fraud providers, and Andresen might be prosecuted in each Germany and the US because of his actions.”

Andresen faces 12 federal expenses – six counts every of worldwide and home concealment cash laundering – every carrying a most 20-year sentence.

German authorities additionally charged Andresen with “a number of” counts of home cash laundering, with every cost carrying a most five-year jail stint. ®