Maximilian Schmidt, the 18 yo who built the BTC-based drug empire Shiny Flakes from his parents' house and inspired the series "How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast)", was sentenced in May to another 4.5 years for running drug company Candylove while serving hi

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In 2013, German teenager Maximilian Schmidt secretly created a dark web business called Shiny Flakes from his childhood bedroom. Over the course of 14 months, he sold an estimated tonne of drugs of various types through the postal system.

In 2015, at the age of 20, he was arrested with several million euros worth of illegal drugs in his bedroom. He apparently made two mistakes that led to his capture: a mistaken address on one of the packages that led to the package being returned and ultimately opened by the postal service, and the fact that Schmidt also shipped all his parcels from the same post office which had CCTV coverage.

In addition to the confiscated drugs, law enforcement recovered some of the Bitcoin that Schmidt had received as payments, but they were apparently unable to access two of his BTC wallets. They also found a database on his computer of thousands of his customers, which led to 4000 criminal proceedings being opened. Schmidt would eventually be summoned as a witness to hundreds of the ensuing trials.

Schmidt confessed and was sentenced to 7 years, but was released in 2019 after 2 years. While serving his sentence he was filmed for the Netflix documentary called "Shiny_Flakes: The Teenage Drug Lord", which was released in 2021. At the end of the documentary, they revealed that Schmidt, now out of prison for 2 years, was under investigation relating to a drug bust that had happened in Leipzig. At the time the documentary was released, it was an ongoing situation.

The investigation revealed that Schmidt ran another online drug store called Candylove while he was still in prison for Shiny Flakes, and while he was being filmed for the Netflix documentary.

According to the prosecutor, he acted as the ringleader while 4 accomplices made around 500 shipments of drugs (though he claimed in his defense that he was simply the programmer for this second venture).

His trial for these new charges was held in spring of this year, and he was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to 4.5 years in prison in May.

He has been described by multiple people as someone who shows no signs of remorse.

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