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Main defendant Maximilian S. with his lawyers: "It was agreed that I could opt out at any time"
Photo: Hendrik Schmidt / dpa
Maximilian S., who became known as a "nursery dealer", has admitted his participation in the online drug shop "Candylove" before the regional court in Leipzig.
However, he doesn't want to have had anything to do with the drug directly: "I was certain that I didn't want anything to do with it except programming," he said.
In addition to programming an online shop for retailers, he also developed software for processing orders.
"It was agreed that I could drop out at any time," he said.
S. had become known as the operator of the Shiny Flakes store.
In 2015, he was sentenced to seven years in prison after admitting to selling nearly a ton of drugs through his online drug marketplace.
His story was the template for a film project by the streaming provider Netflix: the series "How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)", which now has three seasons.
In the new proceedings, the public prosecutor's office accuses a total of five defendants of having been involved to varying degrees in trading via the freely accessible web shop.
As of April 2019, they are said to have sold 16.5 kilograms of amphetamine and 2.5 kilograms of hashish as a gang.
According to the public prosecutor's office, the 28-year-old S. is said to have acted as the head of the group - which he denied: he had nothing to do with ordering, packaging or shipping the drugs.
“I definitely didn't want to be associated with the shop on the outside.
You have to understand, I've done this before - alone - and it's failed before."
The initiative to set up the shop came from one of the four men accused, he said.
He met him in the open prison in autumn 2018.
He quickly clung to his fellow inmate, whom he perceived as a "likeable guy" and saw in him a friend, protector and big brother.
“I felt that I was being taken seriously.” When developing the shop, it was important to him that “the project wouldn't go on forever”.
He helped because he was heavily in debt and had received money for his work, according to S. The accused did not provide any information on the amount.
Judgment not before June
In court, S. spoke, among other things, about growing up in Möckern, a district in the north of Leipzig.
Accordingly, he "at times only had a handful of friends" and was already very interested in computers and the Internet as a child.
He was often bored at school.
In one of the previous hearings, two of the five defendants, aged between 24 and 42, admitted to having been involved in the drug deals as accomplices.
The other two defendants, including a lawyer, have not yet commented on the prosecutor's allegations.
The next hearing is scheduled for March 2nd.
A verdict is not expected before June.
The presumption of innocence applies to the accused until the final conclusion of the proceedings.
bbr/dpa