Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)’ follows the misadventures of a teenager named Moritz Zimmermann. In a bid to win back his ex-girlfriend, he starts a drug dealing website with his friend Lenny. The easy access to drugs allows the website to blow up, and soon, the duo has more orders than they can handle and earns more money than they have seen before. Over the course of four seasons, the story takes many twists and turns. What makes it even more interesting is that its concept is borrowed from real life.
Moritz Zimmermann is a Highly Fictional Version of Maximilian Schmidt
Created by Philipp Käßbohrer and Matthias Murmann, ‘How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)’ is inspired by the true story of Maximilian Schmidt, who was arrested at the age of 20 for running a drug business from his parents’ apartment in Leipzig. The show picks up the details that came out during the trial and imparts them into Moritz’s story but adds fictional characters and elements to spice things up. In real life, Maximilian Schmidt started his drug business in December 2013. At the time, he was eighteen years old and had a restaurant job, which he left to start his website called Shiny Flakes, dubbed “Amazon for drugs.” Through it, he sold more than 900 kilograms of drugs over the course of a year or so and made around three million euros.
On the surface, it was a web design business, and because it was hidden in plain sight, no one paid any attention to it. Schmidt used postal service to deliver the drugs worldwide. In 2015, wrong postage led a package to remain undelivered and be opened at the mail center. Once drugs were found inside it, the cops kept an eye out for Shiny Flakes and its owner. They noted that he used the same location close to his house to send and receive packages. They eventually caught him in the middle of the sale and seized 320 kilograms of drugs (valued at over 4.1 million euros), 48,000 euros in cash from his place, and, allegedly, 325,000 euros in Bitcoin, though it is claimed that he made over 4.4 million euros worth of Bitcoin over the years.
Schmidt was tried as a minor, and the conviction of his crime led him to receive a sentence of seven years in prison. The cops also found a sales list on his hard drive that had more than 14,000 entries on it. They used it to track down the major names (repeat customers who placed bulk orders for their own distribution), with Schmidt acting as the state’s witness in trials against them. While in prison, he was also interviewed for the Netflix documentary ‘Shiny Flakes: Teenage Drug Lord.’ It was noted that he did not express any remorse for his actions but rather felt proud of the success of his website. He described his life in prison as dull and was released in 2019 for good behavior, though it later turned out that he had been stirring trouble in there as well.
Maximilian Schmidt Went to Prison Again for a New Drug-Dealing Website
The legal troubles of Maximilian Schmidt did not stop at his reduced prison sentence and early release. In 2023, he was arrested once again and presented in the Leipzig court under the fresh charges of dealing drugs from an online platform. This time, he named his venture Candylove. The prosecution claimed that he had created the website while he was still in prison and started operating it at least three months before his release in 2019. By January 2021, he was accused of having sold 20kg of drugs: 16.5kg of amphetamines, 2.6kg of hashish, around 2kg of MDMA-Ecstasy, 0.5kg of crystal meth, and 350g of cocaine, among other things. In over 471 deliveries across Europe, he had sold €95,000 worth of drugs.
In the previous trial, Schmidt was the only one to be blamed for the crime. But this time, the cops identified at least two people who worked with him to handle the logistics and delivery part of the operation. Allegedly, he even used the filming schedule for the Netflix documentary as a way to process some of his transactions. It was claimed that once out of prison, he carried out the operation from a student apartment in Leipzig. Once again, the postal service became the reason for his crimes being exposed. The cops found out about Candylove after several packages with no return address were rendered undeliverable due to some mix-up. When they were opened, drugs were found inside them. To find out more about Schmidt’s operation, the cops placed several orders and conducted a sting operation that led them to arrest the man once again.
Maximilian Schmidt is a Free Man Today
Following the trial, Maximilian Schmidt was convicted and sentenced to four and a half years in prison. However, in November 2024, a judge overturned the conviction following an appeal from Schmidt’s legal team. It was ordered that the case would go back to trial, though no specific date was set for it at the time. Since then, Schmidt has been out of prison and currently lives in Leipzig. He has kept a low profile this time, as opposed to his previous release, following which he had an active social media presence where he shared his love for food, golf, shooting games, and Super Flakes. He also shared his visits to cryptocurrency conferences, showcasing his interest in starting a new business. For now, however, he hasn’t shared any such updates and is most likely waiting to settle the current criminal charges against him.
Read More: How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) Season 4 Ending Explained: Is Moritz Dead or Alive?
