FRANKFURT - German investigators have shut down the world's second-largest criminal online trading platform and detained three German men suspected of running it, the Frankfurt public prosecutor's office said on Friday .
The online marketplace, named"Wall Street Market", was used to trade drugs, private data, falsified documents and malware and had more than 1.15 million customer accounts and over 5,400 registered sellers, the prosecutor's office said in a statement. The three men, aged 22, 29 and 31, were detained from April 23 to 24, it said, adding that Germany's federal criminal investigation office, or Bundeskriminalamt, had secured the platform's server infrastructure.
The men, who investigators believe took payments of 2-6 per cent of sales made on the platform, were detained after covert operations involving US and Dutch law enforcement agencies, and the European Union's Europol agency.