Drugs Sold in Brussels via Google Maps, With Delivery

Illegal drugs are being advertised for sale in Brussels through ordinary Google Maps listings, with dealers offering courier delivery on demand, according to an investigation by the Brussels news outlet BRUZZ. Dealers are uploading AI-generated images of fake cannabis shops onto the mapping platform, embedding the names of Telegram channels inside the pictures to funnel buyers into encrypted chats where hard drugs can be ordered.

The practice marks a new front in the exploitation of mainstream digital platforms by criminal networks — moving drug sales from the relative obscurity of messaging apps into a service used by billions of people for directions, reviews and local search.

How the Scheme Works

A search for “Cannabis store” or “Cannabis magasin” on Google Maps in Brussels returns roughly twenty results, BRUZZ found. More than half are entirely virtual, linked to no real store, and marked as open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

When a user clicks a listing, the featured photo — normally intended to help customers, such as a dish at a restaurant — is an AI-generated image of a cannabis shop that bears no resemblance to the physical building where the virtual store claims to be located. Some listings purport to be based in the City 2 shopping center. Large text on the image names a Telegram channel. Entering that name in Telegram opens a chat where orders can be placed. Most of the search results funnel toward the same five Telegram channels; others use a web link leading to WhatsApp or Signal.

The abuse extends to legitimate businesses. Some listings do correspond to real CBD (cannabidiol) shops — including Canna House Ambiorix, Liberty Shop near the ULB, and StreetShop Ixelles at Flagey — but carry the same glossy AI photo with a Telegram link to hard drugs. Those shops are not involved in the illegal trade; their addresses have been hijacked.

A Year of Futile Complaints

A seller at StreetShop Ixelles, who asked not to be named, described an exhausting and so far hopeless effort to keep the fraudulent images off their listing.

“Almost every day we ask Google to remove those photos, which then takes a day or so. Almost immediately afterwards a new photo appears, with a link to hard drugs.”

The seller said the problem has persisted for about a year and is harming their legitimate business. “We are not at all happy about it. It creates confusion among people, and at the same time it diverts potential CBD buyers away from us, to something else. Hopefully the media attention changes something.”

The core weakness is a feature designed to help customers: anyone can upload a photo to any address listing on Google Maps. That openness, once meant to showcase a restaurant’s best dish, is now being used to inject hard-drug advertising onto legitimate business pages and fabricated storefronts alike.

Testing the Trade

To confirm the funnel worked, BRUZZ journalists followed the links. They tested two Telegram channels and one WhatsApp conversation — the latter linked to a British phone number. All three offered various hard drugs.

On a Telegram channel identified as “Santi,” the offer included nine types of marijuana, two types of cocaine, ketamine, crystal meth, LSD, MDMA, DMT, hash, gummy bears and vapes. The opening message was briskly commercial: “Hello, how do we help you?” and “Let me know what you need, sir.” A meeting was arranged at the tram stop on Flagey Square after the reporters declined to share a private address. Because the notional purchase exceeded 100 euros — three grams of ketamine for 180 euros — courier delivery was offered free. “When do you want it delivered, sir? Deliveries are always possible, sir,” the dealer wrote.

Payment, required upfront, could be made via PayPal, Revolut, Zelle, Apple Pay and Bitcoin, according to the report. One dealer demanded payment via an Apple Gift Card: load 100 euros, send a photo of the code. When pressed for a bank transfer, a Lithuanian account number appeared. The reporters ultimately cancelled the purchase, noting that even as a journalistic test, completing such a transaction would be illegal.

Police and Google Respond

The Belgian federal police confirmed they are aware of the phenomenon. “The phenomenon is — unfortunately — known to us,” spokesperson An Berger said. “It is one of the more recent ways criminals use existing digital platforms and apps for their criminal purposes. Whether it’s selling drugs or fraud, criminals constantly adapt their methods to reach citizens. We of course advise against responding to these advertisements and to always report them to the platforms.”

Berger added that Belgian police work with Europol and the European Commission on their relationship with major international platforms so illegal content can be detected and removed faster. “The different regulations, especially in non-European countries, make this particularly complex,” she said.

Google offered a terse response. The Benelux spokesperson said only: “We are investigating the practice.”

Broader Context

The story lands amid a wider reckoning with drug crime in Brussels. In September, the Graystraat neighborhood in Elsene was designated the city’s 19th “drug hot spot,” and police in the West zone detained three suspects after catching a dealer at Simonis. The affected CBD sector is itself under scrutiny: in April, at the order of the Brussels prosecutor’s office, three CBD shops belonging to the same owner were sealed for selling products with excessive THC levels or lacking mandatory fiscal seals, BRUZZ reported.

The central question now is whether the platforms can move fast enough to stop the abuse. A listing feature that lets anyone upload a photo to any address is a persistent vulnerability — and as the CBD shops’ experience shows, takedowns that last a day are little match for dealers who repost almost instantly. How aggressively Google and its peers respond will determine whether these virtual storefronts remain a fixture of the Brussels map.