A 20-year-old Englishman appeared in court in Rotterdam on Tuesday for his role in setting up and running a dark web marketplace named Bohemia.

Finlay H, who was just 17 when he became embroiled in the website, was arrested at Schiphol airport this summer. He was in court for a procedural hearing and was remanded in custody for a further period.

H, who was born in London, is one of two men arrested so far in connection with running the website. An Irish national, said by Dutch police to be the other of the two website admins, was also arrested in Ireland this summer.

Police confiscated €8 million in virtual currency such as Bitcoin at the time the two arrests were made.

The public prosecution department says H earned millions of euros from his role on the site, which was primarily used to sell drugs – mainly cannabis – with fake IDs and some ransomware for hackers. He is accused of helping develop and maintain the website, which grew into one of the biggest of its type.

The team behind Bohemia is said to have run down the website towards the end of last year in what could have been an “exit scam”, in which the website team empty the company and associated accounts.

A statement by a Bohemia admin in later November claimed that in a “shameful and disgruntled set of events” a lead developer went “rogue”, withdrawing small amounts of Bitcoin (BTC) over a period of just over a month, website Searchlight Cyber said.

67,000 transactions

Dutch police began their investigation into Bohemia in 2022 and estimate some 67,000 transactions a month were taking place, leading to record turnover of €12 million in September 2023.

The probe involved Irish, US and British police. The investigation so far has shown at least 14,000 transactions took place from the Netherlands with a value of at least €1.7 million. Several Dutch dealers were also arrested in June, and police say they are not ruling out more arrests.

“The administrators, sellers and buyers on these sorts of marketplaces are often impossible to get a grip on,” Stan Duijf, head of operations at the Dutch national police, said. “This investigation has damaged trust in these sorts of marketplaces.”