Archive · this shop closed 26 February 2015 · nothing here is for sale
Shiny-FlakesThe address that sold a tonne of drugs in fourteen months. Shut down in 2015. Recovered and documented here.

Archive / Press

The sources

32 indexed sources, 13 of them German. Every claim on this site traces back to something on this page, and where sources contradict each other the contradiction is shown rather than smoothed over.

Start with these

The load-bearing sources. If you only read a handful, read them.

Vice / Motherboard · 13 March 2015

The Rise and Fall of Shiny Flakes, Germany's Online Drug Market

The first substantial English-language account, and still the most cited. Source of the 320kg figure and of the detail that packages reached Indonesia.

Forbes · 13 March 2015

Astonishing Images Show $4.2 Million In Seized Dark Market Drugs

Published the police photographs that defined the case. Gives 360kg and EUR 48,000 in cash, and dates the start of the investigation to March 2014.

Vice · 2015

How Police Busted Shiny Flakes, Germany's Biggest Online Drug Market

The investigative detail: insufficient postage on a package, the repeated use of Packstation 145, the courier in the car park, and the text file of logins on the laptop.

The Irish Times · 5 February 2023

German drug dealer who inspired Netflix show is back in court

The best English-language account of the second case.

Legal Tribune Online · 17 May 2023

Candylove-Urteil: Shiny Flakes muss erneut in Haft

The four-and-a-half-year sentence, and the court's rejection of the gang-trafficking theory.

Legal Tribune Online · 6 November 2024

BGH-Urteil: Shiny Flakes droht haertere Strafe

The definitive account of the BGH decision (5 StR 599/23), including the Bande reasoning and the cannabis reclassification.

Wikipedia (DE) · continuously updated

Maximilian Schmidt (Dealer)

The most reliable single factual spine, and well sourced. Gives 600kg shipped and 341kg seized.

The lost Motherboard archive

Motherboard Germany covered this case more closely than anyone in English and its coverage no longer exists. The site was retired, the addresses resolve to nothing, and the reporting survives only in the Internet Archive. It includes the September 2014 interview with the operator while the shop was still trading, the account of how police found him, the trial coverage, and the 2017 investigation into how many of his customers were being prosecuted - the single most important piece of reporting on this case and one almost nobody can now find.

PieceWhat it holds
Exklusiv: Das Interview mit dem Betreiber hinter Shiny Flakes
September 2014		The operator in his own words while trading. Analysed here.
Tausende Kunden im Visier
Daniel Mützel, 17 October 2017		Bestellungen.xls, the 14,000 entries, and the 4,516 German investigations confirmed by the Leipzig prosecutor. Analysed here.
Der Aufstieg und Fall von Shiny Flakes
March 2015		The German original of the piece that ran in English on Vice.
Wurde der Clearweb-Drogen-Shop Shiny Flakes hochgenommen?
March 2015		Written in the gap between the shop going dark and the police confirming why.
Überraschende Wende im Shiny-Flakes-Prozess
2015		Trial reporting, on Schmidt giving evidence.
Nach dem BGH-Urteil ist Shiny Flakes auch finanziell arm dran
2019		The asset-confiscation side of the first case.
Die Leipziger Justiz hat 200.000 Euro von Shiny Flakes verpulvert
undated		On what pursuing the money cost the Leipzig authorities.

These are listed without direct links because the original addresses are dead and Wayback timestamps for a retired publication are not stable enough to be worth enshrining. Searching the Internet Archive for motherboard.vice.com/de and the headline will find them.

Everything indexed

Newest first.

What is deliberately not linked

This archive links to journalism, court reporting, film criticism and reference works. It does not link to marketplaces, vendor directories, mirror lists or anything transactional, regardless of how newsworthy the underlying material is. Where a source of that kind has been consulted - and some of the 2015 reporting on this case appeared on sites of exactly that description - it is described in the text without a link.

One of those sites illustrates why. DeepDotWeb covered the Shiny Flakes seizure in March 2015 and his sentencing that November. In 2019 DeepDotWeb was itself seized and its operators prosecuted for taking commission on referrals. Its archive survives only on third-party mirrors. The site that reported the takedown was taken down.

Missing something?

This index is maintained rather than finished. If you know of coverage that belongs here - particularly anything on the retrial after November 2024, which is the part of the record most likely to be out of date - send it over and it will be added with credit.