US law enforcement authorities have managed to shut down Silk Road, an underground marketplace where one could allegedly purchase drugs with Bitcoins. The alleged owner of the site has also been arrested. The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced on Wednesday that it had arrested the owner of Silk Road, Ross William Ulbritch, also known in the online circles as Dread Pirate Roberts in San Francisco. Ulbritch allegedly ran Silk Road, touted to be the “Amazon.com of drugs”.
Silk Road was a thriving marketplace for drugs (Image credit: Getty Images)
Ulbritch is being charged with narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, according to court filings. While the website has been pulled down and a message by the FBI is being hosted on it currently, The Verge says that the Silk Road forums are still operating, allegedly from a different server. The criminal complaint against Ulbritch was filed by FBI agent Christopher Tarbell who said, "Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today.” He added that Silk Road was used by "several thousand drug dealers" to sell "hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs.”The site was first launched in 2011 and became a thriving marketplace to purchase hard drugs such as cocaine, heroin and meth. It also was used for criminal activities such as murder for hire and ATM hacking tutorials. Investigators had already made more than 100 purchases of drugs on the site.
The site has been shut down by the FBI
The interesting bit about Silk Road was that a lot of trading on the website happened with Bitcoin, the digital currency. After the FBI took the site down, it emerged that the price of Bitcoin had plummeted $129 from over $140, according to trading website Mt. Gox. The official complaint against Ulbritch also said that he tried to call a hit on another user on Silk Road, with whom he had a dispute. The user known as “FriendlyChemist” had allegedly been blackmailing Ulbritch and threatening to expose identities of thousands of users. Ulbritch had written that he wouldn’t mind if FriendlyChemist was executed. He later even wrote, "He is threatening to expose the identities of thousands of my clients.This kind of behavior is unforgivable to me. Especially here on Silk Road, anonymity is sacrosanct."The FBI, during the raid, seized $3.6 million worth of Bitcoin and the charges against Ulbritch said that his website generated sales of more than 9.5 million bitcoin, roughly equivalent to $1.2 billion.With inputs from agencies.
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