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The Internet Crime

Germany Shuts Down Illegal Data Center In Former NATO Bunker (apnews.com) 17

German investigators say they have shut down a data processing center installed in a former NATO bunker (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) that hosted sites dealing in drugs and other illegal activities. Seven people were arrested. The Washington Post reports: Officials said Friday that the former military bunker in Traben-Trarbach, a picturesque town on the Mosel River in western Germany, was acquired in 2013 by a Dutch man who turned it into a heavily secured data processing center. Prosecutor Juergen Bauer said 13 people are under investigation, including three Germans and seven Dutch citizens. Seven were arrested in raids Thursday. They are suspected of membership in a criminal organization because of a tax offense, as well as being accessories to hundreds of thousands of offenses involving drugs, counterfeit money, forged documents and the distribution of child pornography.
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Germany Shuts Down Illegal Data Center In Former NATO Bunker

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  • Ha ha! (Score:2, Funny)

    by o_ferguson ( 836655 )
    n/t
  • I can't help but imagine this would've been an order of magnitude more clickable if the bunkers could've been formerly Nazi, rather than NATO.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      WW2 German bunkers would have the full "Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution" watching them all :)
      Locals who know to make calls to the gov, CCTV... CCTV on the "one" road into the sensitive WW2 area to get faces and transport details.
      A average NATO/East German bunker would be left to more traditional security once the NATO/mil/East German site was not in gov/mil use anymore.
    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      It's all kind of Bond villain-ish isn't it?

  • The Nato bunker was bought in 2013, was used to run the 2nd largest illegal narcotics website in the world, was the center that attacked 1 Million Telekom routers in November 2016, had 200 or more servers in it, had obscene levels of physical and electronic security in plain view of everyone, cost a lot to run and used a lot of electricity and bandwidth. All of its illegal activity ran through fat, heavily surveilled data pipes in Europe's wealthiest and most technologically advanced country - Germany. Some
    • maybe they decided it was better to watch who was doing what on there instead of shutting it down
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      German police work a lot like UK and US police.
      Whats the power use of any building on average...
      Strange people, strange movements of transport, strange new non business activity around a new 'business'.
      Spending changes on any building..
      New networks, power connections.. tax spending, ownership changes...
      How a city feels a building is getting used vs the city and national average. Its always tax time :)
      Informants and reports.
      Maybe the German police got told it was a NATO/CIA black site and they knew
    • by fazig ( 2909523 )
      The possible reason why this happened now is stated in TFA.

      They are suspected of membership in a criminal organization because of a tax offense...

      The state is not fond of tax offences.
      While there may be some exceptions for the very rich and those who employ a lot of workers, if belong to a small team like that you'll most likely go to jail right away.

    • Somehow it took German police until September 2019 to actually raid it, after years of illegal activity. Hmmm. You'd think that Germany with all its technological might would detect the place quickly, issue a warrant and raid it.

      Detected it? Of course, they have probably been monitoring it for years. However building a large organised crime case to put people away takes a lot more effort than quickly seeing something sending a cop in and then letting the perp go after issuing a fine.

      Something stinks here.

      Your knowledge of law enforcement. My guess is if a henchmen came to you and ratted out their mob boss, you'd arrest the henchman and pat yourself on the back.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Saturday September 28, 2019 @05:44AM (#59246122) Homepage

      It's not really that hard to connect the dots. Obviously an operation of this size has a legitimate business that pays taxes and all that. But they didn't use all that capacity for official customers, they also hosted other sites for undeclared income - probably anonymous hosting for cryptocurrency. Basically the digital equivalent of pocketing cash for services without declaring it as income. That's the tax fraud conspiracy charge, the rest is them going through all the unofficial customers' servers and threatening to charge them as accessories to whatever they were doing.

      A good lawyer will probably beat the latter charges, even though anonymous hosting would attract a lot of shady customers they'd have to prove they had specific knowledge of illegal activity and did nothing to stop it. What probably will make the case stick is the tax charge, the police just have to prove they received additional income that didn't show up on the books. It's how they famously took down Al Capone, they couldn't prove anything else about what he was doing but they were able to prove he got money for it. I think the same will be the case here.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • A friend of a friend says there are rumors that several popular movie and tv torrent sites have been taken down in this operation. I wouldn't know, but anyways... byebye... mother.

  • I still don't quite get how the data center itself could be illegal as you don't need to obtain a "data center license" or anything similar.

    Data center used for illegal activities, yes.

    • Data center used for illegal activities, yes.

      Pretty much anything used for illegal activities can be seized on that basis in most of the world, including property, though I have no knowledge of the specifics in Germany.

      • Pretty much the same about seizing. But if a car that is used for illegal activities was seized, no one would call it an "illegal car"

  • by Cederic ( 9623 ) on Saturday September 28, 2019 @09:42AM (#59246452) Journal

    I drove through that town last year. Very pretty, although the whole driver from Koblenz to Trier is fantastic. Koblenz, Cochem and Trier are the large towns on that route, and all are well worth visiting.

    Plenty of castles on the hills too, and thousands of years of history still visible. Very easily recommended.

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