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A huge underground bunker became home to international criminal businesses.

Six hundred and fifty police officers were deployed,

including special tactical units.

Target 200 meters ahead.

The main suspect is a 59-year-old man from the Netherlands.

Go, go, go. Team one advancing.

No one.

Advancing.

Team one has reached lower floor.

Team one, come in, please.

Radio connection is bad.

I am sure that people like me will have a big impact on the future internet.

The problem, however, is whether humanity is ready.

Do you want to make the world a better place?

Yes, of course.

Next question, please.

Do you see yourself as a criminal?

No, not really.

A data center exclusively for criminal businesses worth millions.

At the center of this thriller is a bunker that once belonged to the Bundeswehr.

In the middle of Germany, near Traben-Trarbach on the Moselle,

the cybercriminals operated their international business.

An extraordinary blow against cybercrime.

Drugs and forged documents.

I'm Michiel and I was the manager of Cyberbunker.

If I was to go back there now,

to right before the first visit to Traben-Trarbach,

then I would have said don't go there, because...

it can't end well.

Life in Traben-Trarbach is usually peaceful.

We don't have the hustle and bustle of a big city.

It's quite soothing for the soul.

But if I were to be asked about the bunker,

what it is,

I would have just said,

"It's the worst thing that could possibly happen here."

The bunker everyone is talking about is located on a mountain.

You can see an antenna, a fence, and nothing else.

A green site.

From 2012, the bunker was empty.

And a buyer was then sought.

Until the news came in 2013 it had been sold.

As a local journalist, of course you want to know.

Who's the buyer and what do they want to do with it?

I did some research

and it turned out that he was a somewhat dubious character in the online world.

The name I was given was Herman Johan Xennt.

There were many stories swirling around him.

He had very long, blond hair. He always wore a long coat.

But he showed up here as a businessman.

In 2013, during a regular city council meeting,

Xennt presented his project.

He explained that he needed a bunker...

BUNKER FLOOR PLAN

...that he was Dutch, and had done this before.

"We need the rooms for our employees, for the IT people."

"And it'll grow over time."

He then created what we now call a cloud, or a data center, there.

And at the time, of course, we thought it sounded exciting.

Silicon Valley, Traben-Trarbach, exactly.

Only smaller, why not?

PURCHASE CONTRACT

But there wasn't jubilation in the council that a buyer had been found.

As the city council, we couldn't prevent it anyway.

There were mixed feelings about it.

You just heard trucks going in and out at night.

He had to get his equipment into the bunker somehow, of course.

But initially it was sort of intangible.

There was also a bit of Googling done in city hall.

Who is this guy? Where did he come from?

And there was some information already out there.

He already had skeletons in his closet. There was something there.

I'm Jörg Angerer, Senior Public Prosecutor,

and I worked on the Cyberbunker case.

In 2013, I was called by the Office of Criminal Investigation

who told me that Traben-Trarbach's municipal mayor

had got in touch to say

that someone wanted to move into a former NATO bunker

that was being sold,

and that he had already been involved in shady business in Holland.

That was the initial tip.

I'm Tim Henkel.

I'm a cybercrime investigator for Rhineland-Pfalz Criminal Police.

I'd just completed training and was taking my first steps as a police officer.

It all started in 2013.

My supervisor back then informed me that there was a case there

and asked me if I'd be interested in taking part in this operation,

which I thought was extremely exciting and I was very excited, of course.

We first conducted online investigations into this Dutchman,

into his past,

and first did some research into who we were dealing with.

Well, this is the bunker.

If you come in with me quickly,

then I can also show you the inside.

So, this is the rear entrance.

You can see the spacious entrance with two diesel air vent filters.

He had this fascination for bunkers.

So, I think if this videotape continues as it is,

bad bits like this shot will be cut out.

We'll only keep the good bits and then you'll see

the progress of the renovation of a bunker, a small nuclear bunker

into a bunker with a...

classy appearance,

which makes you think you're in a space station or something.

So, there you have it.

You're welcome to keep looking around.

See, there it is, and it works too. Follow me.

We believed that Xennt fled the Netherlands

to evade the threat of prosecution there.

At that time it was clear to us

he was doing the same thing here as he'd done in the Netherlands.

That was the start of our investigation.

At the start we used classic observation in order to gain insights.

I don't believe that the group were explicitly aware

that investigations against them were underway.

I'm just trying to think of the best adjective to describe it.

The observation at the bunker site was not successful.

We were not sure exactly what was in the bunker.

The facility is huge and we couldn't get to it.

The people who came to Cyberbunker

were searching for something.

There was a sort of world there, that you could only imagine

if you let your imagination run wild and read about something like it.

But it was there, it was real.

Xennt gave you a sense that something special was being built there.

He had this aura of a visionary, his ideas were good.

He wanted to start a software development center.

This is a huge project going on here.

It's really big.

A bit like a mini Silicon Valley.

You feel like you're locked in.

That's when you experience this silence.

And then you immediately also realize that true silence doesn't exist.

Because you hear your blood rushing.

You felt very secure there, very comfortable.

Work was good, living was good, I felt very at home.

Most of the time everything was relaxed, there was laughter, joking around.

It was as though everyone had their own vision, their own idea,

and then joined together.

Mr. Xennt had an appointment and came into the salon.

He looked very fresh, very young.

He looked good.

Maybe it was his leather coat but I thought...

he's from another planet.

He's different.

Then he chose a very light blond, a cool blond,

and that's what he got.

He was silent and stared at the floor.

And I felt that it was a negative silence and was actually very happy

when this gentleman left.

The bunker crew, sometimes it felt as if a pirate ship was docking here,

the whole pirate crew ran through the village, amusing themselves,

then were suddenly gone again and casted off.

You just wondered,

what's going on up there?

You didn't know who was up there. What is he actually doing?

You didn't hear or see anything, or know what was going on.

But there were rumors.

Maybe he's growing some kind of drugs up there?

The other thing was his dogs,

which ran free all day long and annoyed the community.

That was the final straw for me,

so I said no matter what, I'm calling Mr. Xennt.

He was surprised, but he said, "No problem, come on over."

He said, "Give me 15 minutes to rein the dogs in,

but then come on over. No problem."

That was a positive starting point.

We went up there.

Mr. Xennt greeted us quite normally,

the atmosphere was very open.

Then he told us who he is, what he does.

We said you can look around anywhere you want.

Everything was open.

Then we just went down level by level,

and he said, "Open every door, I have nothing to hide."

I was relieved that the premises weren't being used for anything suspicious

and that we didn't find a hemp plantation.

And suddenly you came into a room that was really black.

Very cold, very austere.

It was definitely a bit strange.

What struck you immediately was that there were no windows, of course.

You're practically floating in time and space.

It was a very different atmosphere in there.

Yeah, very unusual for me.

Of course, it wouldn't have helped if we'd rung Cyberbunker's doorbell and asked,

"Mr. Xennt, can you show us what's here and what you're up to?"

That is where protecting the case comes first and takes priority.

For us, it was very important to stay out of sight

and ensure they didn't realize we were conducting an investigation.

Telephone surveillance is a very intensive measure.

You enter the other person's day-to-day life.

The group is very secretive, and of course, we had to find ways

to get information from the inner circle.

The Cyberbunker group spoke in a very coded way.

For example, "boxes of oranges" or various types of furniture.

It was colors of ships, it was suits of various changing colors.

So, when people make these kinds of phone calls,

it's clear something is up. That's not how people talk.

The codification of language and terminology

which was revealed through the telephone surveillance,

created big problems for us.

Ultimately, we couldn't identify crimes through telephone surveillance,

but the gang's structure became clear.

It started with the leadership team around Xennt and the manager Rugers.

Then there were IT workers who worked in the bunker.

There was a guard, who also cooked for the staff.

It was clear that Mr. Xennt gave orders and others did what he said,

but the role of the others wasn't 100% clear at the beginning.

However, for us, the key was the servers.

What is on these servers?

What data is going in and out of there?

With Cyberbunker, the advantage was that cybercriminals felt safe.

When you went onto Cyberbunker, it was pretty clear what it was for.

It had a picture of a bunker.

Which I assumed was total bull, if I'm honest, I didn't think it was real.

There was an FBI raid team on it, trying to get into that bunker.

Cyberbunker was known in the scene as a so-called "bulletproof hoster."

Bulletproof hosting,

that means, no matter what happens, the servers stay online.

Cyberbunker was really the place to go

for anyone in the scene

who wanted to host questionable or illegal content.

The bunker specifically advertised that it hosts everything,

except child pornography and terrorism.

This made you think, whoever advertises in that way

isn't looking for legal customers.

Xennt always said we're doing nothing wrong, everything is legal.

POLICE

SPAM DISPUTE SLOWS THE INTERNET

PIRATE PARTY

Police in Barcelona have arrested a 35-year-old Dutch activist

who was responsible for the largest DDoS cyberattack in history.

The investigation started in March...

We also then reached a point where we said,

"Okay, how can we gather more intelligence now?"

In 2017, we decided to carry out a so-called network node monitoring.

This means we recorded the data center's incoming and outgoing data traffic.

If crimes were committed there, they'd show up in the network traffic.

The intention of the surveillance

was to see what was being done in the bunker.

What data was going in and out? What was illegal and what wasn't?

We didn't expect the sheer quantity that we got from our surveillance.

We established that on the Cyberbunker servers,

phishing sites were hosted,

large-scale hacker attacks were committed,

narcotics stores were running.

It was the first really effective investigation.

We had clear results, clear sites.

Really potent criminal sites.

None of these criminals could operate their sites,

if they didn't have a hoster to provide servers for them to do so.

You have to realize that there are always real crimes behind it.

We determined that, for example, Wall Street Market was hosted there,

the largest darknet market at the time for drugs, weapons, other illegal goods.

I'm Martin Frost.

I was one of the operators of Wall Street Market.

This marketplace was one of the largest in the world.

In my opinion, Cyberbunker offered a very professional hosting service,

to an extent, even better than what I see in the legal sphere.

For us, that was pretty much the reason we went there and stayed.

On Wall Street Market, you found pretty much anything.

Starting with marijuana to MDMA, cocaine or heroin.

The fact that you're far removed from all these events,

from the production process, dealing and things on the streets,

you're really far away from it.

You're just sitting at your computer.

At first you don't see organized crime, they operate in a different way.

I do believe though that in recent years

organized crime has also increasingly caught on. "Hey."

"These are new distribution channels." And of course, they use them too.

Then suddenly a whole new name appeared in the telephone surveillance.

What's that, Mädchen?

When a person like George Mitchell shows up in a preliminary investigation,

someone with ties to the Irish mafia, who's also linked to homicides there,

who is synonymous with major drugs and arms trafficking,

that, of course, changes the dynamics of the case a lot.

So, if we're talking about the drug section on Wall Street Market,

there was everything that the market had to offer.

From grass to MDMA, cocaine, and also, fentanyl, for example.

The servers are secure.

They have a "no matter what" service.

I was never afraid the authorities would catch us.

We were often contacted during the investigative process,

including by internationally operating agencies in the USA.

It certainly helps the investigation process

when high-profile players,

like Wall Street Market, are hosted in the data center.

Our approach to the investigation process was to operate with lasting effect.

That doesn't mean achieving quick success by shutting down some narcotics store,

but to take this Cyberbunker offline permanently and to do it with evidence.

But how do we gain access to these servers?

How do we get into this bunker?

On the Cyberbunker website,

there was a special page, a volunteer program...

...where Cyberbunker was searching for people

who would join the Cyberbunker team on a voluntary basis.

We needed really good people.

Someone responded to the ad.

Harry was a really great guy.

Young, really nice, spontaneous, friendly and decent too.

He said he'd like...

to do something,

if possible, such as gardening.

That was interesting to Xennt...

...because Harry didn't want to get paid.

He just asked if he could sleep there.

And for Xennt, that was ideal, of course.

I think everyone liked him.

So, you could almost call it friendship.

He couldn't though.

Not this pig anyway.

I certainly think it's careless to openly post job ads

for a criminal bunker.

That's how we got a man into the compound itself.

Of course, he has to generate empathy, he has to be able to build trust

and that only works if he's approachable and he acts interested.

It was always nice.

Harry slowly became part of the family.

The undercover investigator provided us with valuable information.

For the first time,

we were able to precisely identify who held which role in Cyberbunker.

Who was in charge, what the dynamics were like.

The majority of them also lived up there,

were paid a very small salary, so were practically working for free,

just for food and lodgings but...

they were pretty much failed existences.

Apart from the fact that we weren't paid,

there was nothing to complain about, everything was great.

It was really good. I felt at home there and safe, etc.

Well, purposeful.

Although we had already taken many steps,

we had no one with eyes on the bunker itself.

But we wanted to see behind this door.

It would attract attention

if the undercover agent went inside the bunker.

That wouldn't fit his cover story as a gardener.

It just so happened that we knew someone.

The female undercover investigator's name was Julia.

Part of the cover story was that Julia was Harry, the gardener's, girlfriend.

I think we walked through the bunker once,

and explained roughly what had to be done.

She worked, was kind, friendly and warm.

I can't remember anything negative about her whatsoever.

I was somewhat skeptical and not really in favor of it at first.

The dangers of sending a woman, alone into a hermetically sealed bunker facility

that can't be accessed from outside,

and in which active criminals live, are pretty obvious, I think.

It's not something you're wild about doing.

She was left to clean the offices unsupervised.

Every floor, every room was accessible to her, unsupervised.

She had a key for every room.

It was strange, they basically didn't want any money at all.

And then Xennt said, "Maybe they're actually just police."

But it was implausible.

Harry had been there such a long time already.

And so it was.

EMERGENCY EXIT

There were hundreds of photos...

of the bunker, from different rooms.

Various lists of passwords were photographed.

You could really see where people had their room, where the servers were,

where other equipment was, how things were secured.

We had the network node surveillance running,

we had the undercover investigator.

We could see inside the bunker.

The last piece of the puzzle.

We had enough

to give us ideas about how to gain access.

We had to make sure that, at the time of the arrest,

there was no one in the actual bunker who could shut down the servers.

That's why it was clear that the only option would be to use a ruse

to lure the perpetrators out of the bunker and then arrest them outside the bunker.

Harry called a restaurant and reserved a table for September 26th at 6 p.m.

For us it was end day, of course.

He really wanted everyone to come, I still remember that.

You all have to come! You have to be there. He has to come too!

He really did his best to get everyone to come.

We talked to our undercover investigator, so that he made sure in advance...

I'M IN THE CAR

...that everyone accepted the invitation.

WHO IS THERE? 17:24

EVERYONE 17:24

POLICE

- Police! Hands up! - Everyone, hands in the air!

What the...? What's going on? What's going on here?

Suddenly, there was a racket outside, there were helicopters flying around.

Everyone was chatting on WhatsApp. Guys, what's going on in Trarbach?

There was a flurry of activity.

There was a massive police presence in the local pub.

Night fell, everything was dark.

You're moving through a terrain that you've never entered before.

A bunker is always only secured from the inside.

It makes sense.

But this has the unfortunate side effect

that if you leave the bunker and no one is inside, it can't be locked.

And that's how it was here too.

- A padlock? - A padlock, yes.

And the special forces managed to open that?

We'd have been able to open it.

It's not that hard to crack a padlock.

ACCESS FORBIDDEN

There were a multitude of rooms,

arranged in an angular fashion. It was pretty much a square.

The units moved deeper and deeper into the bunker...

and at some point, on the third level, ended up in the server room.

You have a rough idea of what you think it will look like,

but what we found on site definitely topped that.

At first the amount of data was overwhelming.

The server room was significantly larger than I expected it to be.

There were also a few empty shelves, so it was obviously set up for growth.

We could only shut down the servers

once the data on them had been backed up.

So, each server had to be backed up before it could be taken down.

It's amazing, shutting down something like that.

Then it was game over.

If you take the servers away from the perpetrators, business is over.

THIS SERVER HAS BEEN SEIZED

The sites were down as soon as the bunker had been taken offline.

In the fight against cybercrime,

German investigators have dismantled a major data center

for illegal business on the darknet for the first time.

BLOW AGAINST CYBERCRIME

After almost five years of research,

the investigators achieved an extraordinary blow against cybercrime.

27. SEPTEMBER 2019 TODAY

All of this ran over 280 servers,

with up to 200 customers on each.

DARKNET DATACENTER TAKEN OFFLINE

Through which, amongst other things,

drugs and fake documents were distributed.

IN THE BUNKER OF EVIL

A total of 650 police officers were deployed.

The evaluation of the seized data

has only just begun.

Our first impression is that the scope is enormous.

POLICE PRESS CONFERENCE ON CYBER-CRIMINAL RING

The bunker in Mont Royal, says one investigator,

is a real goldmine for them.

53% COMPLETE... 61% COMPLETE

In total, two petabytes of data were secured, so two million gigabytes.

I think the scene

quite underestimated the authorities, and I did too.

The Cyberbunker bust had an enormous impact on the darknet scene,

on darknet drug trading overall.

The volume of stuff circulating

and the quantity of goods, which was just a number to me,

were in reality actually drugs that end up somewhere,

that are produced by people, people who suffer during the production process.

Just the whole extent of it

only hit me after the arrest,

and not straight away, it took a while.

I regret it all.

FBI

OPERATION DISRUPTOR, 2020

2020 TRIER, GERMANY

The trial was a challenge, of course.

It was a wide-reaching charge,

it was a technically complex subject.

JÜRGEN BRAUER ATTORNEY GENERAL KOBLENZ

You must first prove the crimes that have

been committed from the computer center by other individuals,

and then you have to prove that the operators of the data center

were aware of, knew about, and encouraged these acts.

SPECIAL VOLUMES IMPRISONMENT

Herman X. and a few colleagues

have now been declared a criminal organization.

I was pretty sure there would be a conviction.

I still consider the investigation to be watertight,

and I also think the evidence is watertight.

JUSTICE

ENTRANCE "BUNKER - TRIAL" (PLEASE WAIT HERE)

"Aiding and abetting some 250,000 crimes," the indictment reads.

So, you just have to note...

MICHAEL EICHIN MAIN DEFENDANT'S DEFENSE ATTORNEY

...Xennt didn't kill anyone, didn't rob a bank,

didn't steal an old granny's purse.

He supplied a server, or rather multiple servers.

That's what he's accused of, running a data center.

As such, he therefore remains convinced that he's done nothing illegal.

This being seen differently legally, is just the way the law works.

However, in terms of evidence, the case was completely well-rounded.

Nevertheless, the Cyberbunker operators deny

knowing about their customers' illegal darknet activities.

Senior public prosecutor Angerer spent nearly five years on the investigation.

Can he really prove the defendants knew what criminal services were operating?

Once, at the beginning of a trial day,

Xennt turned around to the other defendants

and held his finger up to his lips.

Probably to order silence.

DARKNET BUNKER: DEFENDANTS REMAIN SILENT

It astonished me

that they didn't testify at all and preferred to sit in jail.

I decided to testify shortly after I was arrested.

I think that Xennt should have stood up,

he should have explained

what was going on there.

That's why I made these notes,

just writing down everything I could remember.

My whole testimony took six days of hearings.

And I assumed, well, I knew nothing about any of it,

so I can't get imprisoned for that, it will probably turn out okay.

MANAGER CLAIMS TO NEVER HAVE SEEN DRUG TRAFFICKING CHARGES

Mr. Rugers, and this was shown in our interrogations,

plays down his role in this entire set of offenses as being insignificant.

I don't know how Xennt managed to get these people.

He obviously has some charisma, people follow him.

Rugers defended him to the end, even in the main trial.

He acknowledged the offenses, but always claimed that Xennt is actually a good guy.

That contradicts itself, that doesn't make sense at all.

Xennt always told me everything, but the fact he was sending messages

saying that it's okay for marijuana to be sold through the servers,

he never ever told me that.

So, he apparently left things out

and that's why he could rely on my involvement.

For five years.

I can't believe that the second in command

in the Cyberbunker hierarchy,

actually, didn't know what was going on.

I just can't accept that.

In the trial against the operators of the so-called Cyberbunker

in Traben-Trarbach, Rhineland-Palatinate,

a verdict has now been reached.

The defendants were convicted of forming a criminal organization,

but not for aiding and abetting the internet crimes of their customers.

The Dutch citizen and seven co-defendants

will receive prison sentences of up to five years and nine months.

BIG FALL OF AN IT GENIUS

DARKNET BOSS MUST SERVE ALMOST SIX YEARS IN PRISON

VERDICT IN THE CYBERBUNKER TRIAL

Testing, one, two, three. Testing, one, two, three.

One, two, three, four, five, six. Testing, one, two, three.

I can't do it without looking at the notes.

"My trial was not fair and so neither was the judgement."

"It hasn't made us guilty of any crimes at all."

"We had nothing to hide."

"Nothing I could have said would have mattered."

"I was already convicted before I was arrested."

"The Chamber had to justify this long procedure somehow,

so someone had to take responsibility."

"I will not be intimidated or obstructed by the German judiciary,

the press or anyone else."

"I am on the side of all those who have been deprived their fundamental rights,

their professional and private lives for the sake of communication."

"I believe privacy is a fundamental right."

"Everyone has a right to privacy."

"The more communication evolves,

the easier it becomes for third parties to eavesdrop and spy on us."

"I am sure people like me will have a big impact on the future internet."

"The problem, however, is whether humanity is ready."

Next question, please.

Do you see yourself as a criminal?

No, not really.

I think he is a criminal,

in a different form than someone who commits murder or another crime,

but I don't think he has a problem with what he did.

Their advert stating no child pornography or terrorism would be hosted

was fulfilled by the perpetrators, with regard to terrorism.

We found no terrorism on the servers.

In terms of child pornography, it's a bit different.

Mr. Kamphuis had a server

on which linked child pornography had been operating.

That means I can go through links,

so pretty unambiguous links, like pre-teen, that kind of stuff,

meaning pre-teenager age, and see the corresponding photos.

I'm aware of Mr. Kamphuis' absurd notions with regard to child pornography.

What he overlooks, of course,

is that behind every photo, every child pornography photo,

is active abuse,

the abuse of the child.

That's quite different from a photo of a bank robbery.

In that, news about a bank robbery is shared.

Child pornography images are not shown to say there's been child pornography.

It's a completely different intention behind it.

And you would have to be pretty sick to make that comparison.

He wants to live his freedom and children should suffer for it.

He's not interested in children's freedom.

And that is the problem with people like him.

They talk about freedom, when they just mean their own.

Do you think that Mr. Kamphuis will remain free for some time?

I don't understand the question.

"In any data center where there are customer servers,

customers could use their servers for criminal purposes."

"You don't even notice it."

"There is nothing you can do about it."

That's simply wrong.

When Mr. Xennt says he didn't know anything,

I not only don't believe him, but he's lying.

We have email correspondence

in which Mr. Xennt clearly tells customers

about how he protects them from prosecution.

So, he knew exactly what was going on.

"I have many plans for the future."

"I know that there is no one else who wants to or can do what I want to do."

"You cannot stop me."

"I will still achieve my goals."

"Everything is ready. I just have to go home."

"I want to, and I will eventually, be able to realize my vision for a better world."

"No one can stop me."

Thank you for the interview.

Traben-Trarbach was in a state of shock,

when all that came to light.

It's something that stays with you for a while.

Shock, and...

horror.

What went on there was huge.

It was a relief in a way.

Now it's burst, now the bubble has burst.

Now we finally know what happened up there.

It's good that it came to an end.

It was bad enough.

It still hurts today to think of the suffering that was sown with it.

How, in today's world, it's actually incredibly easy

for someone to do the same thing in another place,

with the same success, success that has negative consequences on people.