DIICOT prosecutes group that sells drugs to students on Sweet Grass platform with 11,000 members

The Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) has prosecuted 16 defendants accused of creating a group on a messaging platform under the name "Sweet Grass", with 11,000 members, through which drugs and ethnobotanical plants (psychoactive substances) were sold to students.

The charges in the case, dubbed "ENIGMA" by investigators, are of setting up an organised criminal group, trafficking in high-risk and risk drugs, incitement to the illicit use of high-risk drugs, illegal trading in products likely to have psychoactive effects, non-compliance with the arms and ammunition regime, child pornography and driving a vehicle under the influence of alcohol or other substances, Agerpres reports.

Of the 16 traffickers, six are in remand, four are under house arrest, four are under judicial supervision, one is at large and one is arrested in another case.

According to DIICOT, under the operation codenamed "ENIGMA" there has been an investigation of an organised criminal group set up in July 2022 by two of the defendants, with the aim of committing crimes of trafficking in risk and high-risk drugs, which the other defendants joined successively, in a short time, out of a desire to benefit from a stable clientele, an organised framework for the sale of drugs, under the protection of anonymity.

The online chat group concerned in this case had approximately 11,000 members on 10 April 2023 who took advantage of the privacy settings of the application, having only pseudonyms - usernames, and used it to sell and procure drugs for their own consumption. The chat group functioned as a virtual black market, with requests and offers for a wide variety of drugs, where dealers rented the equivalent of virtual stalls, for which they paid a monthly fee to the administrator. The members of the group were not only from Bucharest, but also from other cities such as Craiova, Brasov, Constanta, Cluj-Napoca, Targu Jiu, Arad, Oradea, Timisoara, Pitesti, Ploiesti.

The case has been submitted to the Bucharest Court for competent resolution.