From a trained butcher to a fixture of the Wiener Gurtel underworld, to a drug dealer wanted worldwide: 50-year-old Martin Schabel has made it onto Europol’s “Most Wanted” list, as the third Austrian next to the alleged prostitute murderer Tibor Foco and the suspected billionaire fraudster Jan Marsalek.
Schabel was the head of the gang that ran the online shop “MrBlow” on the dark web, which in two years sold 40 kilograms of cocaine at a price of 75 euros per gram in bitcoin, making millions. The 50-year-old Viennese is said to have described himself as a “general importer of cocaine”. More than 11,000 orders have been processed by “MrBlow”.
Eight men and one woman were arrested. But Schabel has left and is suspected to be in Spain with a young woman. Investigators assume that he has since changed his appearance. But his tattoos are striking: the “praying hands” can be seen on the left breast, a man’s head on the right back and a dog’s head on the left lower leg. Several mug shots of Schabel were published over the weekend.
The Viennese is considered violent and is probably armed. “If you don’t do what he says, you’re going for a walk in your suitcase,” accomplices are said to have said about Schabel. According to criminologists, he was already in close contact with the so-called “Nokia Club”, a gang of extortionists, back in the 2000s. For years, even before “MrBlow”, he is said to have sold narcotic drugs in Vienna’s red light district. Although he was never convicted of drug trafficking, he was tried several times for violent crimes.
“MrBlow” was organized professionally: an IT professional for the shop side, transporters and a network of shell companies through which important necessary things were bought. Packaging material for the drugs, for example, as the investigators found out.
As it turned out, an accomplice who is said to have packed the cocaine was an old acquaintance: the 69-year-old former prostitute is said to have been packing and shipping the drugs together with her ex-husband (73), a former waiter in a red-light bar have created an additional income, as the evaluation of the traces on the plastic showed.
“In recent years, the drug trade has increasingly shifted to virtual space. Corona has intensified and accelerated this development,” says Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (VP).
Source: Nachrichten
