Cops arrest online drug bazaar kingpin who sent gold bars to his home

German cops have arrested a man suspected of being the administrator of the now-defunct online drug bazaar Dream Market. It took years for the authorities to track Owe Martin Andresen down.

Andresen is known by the “Speedstepper” alias. He was already identified as the presumed main admin of the darknet drug market in 2019, so it took a while to track him down. Finally, he was detained on May 7th.

According to the authorities, they tracked Andresen down by monitoring crypto wallets and tracking purchases of gold bars that the indictment claims were delivered to his home address.

“Andresen allegedly channeled commissions earned from selling illegal drugs, stolen personally identifiable information, counterfeit identification documents, and other items through cryptocurrency wallets and even converted his ill-gotten gains into gold bars,” said US Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg.

“Thanks to the close coordination between federal and German law enforcement, Andresen and his co-conspirators will no longer profit from the online sales of narcotics and fraud services, and Andresen will be prosecuted in both Germany and the United States as a result of his actions.”

As per the Department of Justice’s press release, it’s clear that patience was the key here. In 2019, amid increasing law enforcement pressure, Dream Market’s administrators announced they would voluntarily shut down the marketplace.

After Dream Market’s closure, the marketplace’s cryptocurrency infrastructure remained largely untouched.

But three years later, in 2022, Andresen allegedly transferred funds into new, consolidated cryptocurrency wallets. This activity could only have been initiated by someone with access to Dream Market’s original private keys, believed to be “Speedstepper.”

Months later, in August 2023, Andresen allegedly used a cryptocurrency service provider based in Atlanta, Georgia, to purchase gold bars from international companies using funds in the consolidated wallets and directed those companies to ship the gold bars to his home address in Germany.

German law enforcement identified additional money laundering transactions committed by Andresen in Germany. In total, Andresen is alleged to have laundered over $2 million between August 2023 and April 2025.

On May 7th, in a coordinated effort by both German and US law enforcement, Andresen was arrested on German charges, and his residence and two other locations were searched.

During the searches, law enforcement located approximately $1.7 million of gold bars allegedly purchased with Dream Market funds, as well as over $23,000 in cash.

The people behind Dream Market seem to be quite a weird bunch. For instance, another lower-level admin, French national Gal Vallerius, was sent to jail for two decades a year after being arrested on his way to attend the World Beard and Mustache Championships.

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