Elysium Admin will be in Court on Thursday

More than a year after the takedown of the darknet forum “Elysium,” the Attorney General in Frankfurt spoke to the public about the upcoming trial for the site’s alleged administrator and three co-conspirators.

Four defendants between the ages of 40 and 62 will face charges at the District Court of Limburg on Thursday for, among other things, sexual abuse and the distribution of child pornography. The men are said to have operated or played a significant role in the operation of Elysium.

The German Federal Criminal Police Office seized the Elysium servers last July. Prosecutor Georg Ungefuk has said that this case represented something unique for Germany as the majority of similar cases have involved the arrest of forum members belonging to a forum from outside Germany. This forum, as many know, was run from within Germany and had 111,000 members that lived primarily in Germany and Austria.

“Until now, forum operators mostly sat abroad. The platform gained a lot of users within six months, so we can assume that almost every member of the child pornography scene in Germany at Elysium was active,” Ungefuk said. “It’s [difficult] to find the people behind the user accounts.”