![]() ![]() ![]() Tarbell said the site “sought to make conducting illegal transactions on the Internet as easy and frictionless as shopping online at mainstream e-commerce websites,” and carried listings for hard drugs, hackers, counterfeit cash, forged ID documents, firearms, ammunition, even hitmen – one of whom Ulbricht is alleged to have enlisted to kill a blackmailer.Īccording to the indictment, Silk Road had acquired nearly a million registered users worldwide – about 30% of whom were based in the U.S. The FBI swiftly shuttered the site, an underground digital marketplace that, since its inception in 2011, has allowed users to anonymously trade illegal goods and services in near total secrecy, using the digital currency bitcoin, and an encryption network called Tor that routes traffic through a “hidden” area of the Internet known as “the dark web.” Ulbricht as pictured in his LinkedIn profile, which the FBI alleges alluded to Silk Road. Ulbricht’s LinkedIn profile states that, since completing his studies in 2010, he has focused on “creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force” of the kind imposed by “institutions and governments.” The FBI claims the former physics and engineering student even publicly alluded to his alleged criminal enterprise on his LinkedIn profile, with a statement describing how his goals had “shifted” in accordance with his libertarian economic views since leaving grad school at Pennsylvania State University. ![]() They allege he is “the Dread Pirate Roberts,” the Silk Road’s mysterious founder, who drew his pseudonym from the feared, fictitious character in the film The Princess Bride. The FBI caught the man accused of creating Silk Road – the shadowy e-commerce site it describes as “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today” – after he allegedly posted his Gmail address online, according to court documents.įederal agents swooped on Ross William Ulbricht in a San Francisco public library Tuesday afternoon, charging the 29-year-old American with narcotics trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering. ![]()
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