Silk Road forums

Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: abby on October 03, 2013, 01:10 am

Title: A sympathetic report on the closure (or at least non hysteric)
Post by: abby on October 03, 2013, 01:10 am
from what I remember, this is the newspaper that was taking SR seriously and called SR the market leader.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/fbi-arrest-kingpin-of-12bn-online-drugs-site-silk-road-8854333.html

Quote
FBI arrest kingpin of £1.2bn online drugs site Silk Road

Ross Ulbricht, 29, was said to have had  £2.1m in his account in  July from commissions  A physics graduate has been named for the first time by the FBI as the shadowy figure behind the world’s largest online drugs market who ordered a hit on a blackmailer who threatened his multi-million dollar empire, according to agency documents.

   Ross William Ulbricht, aka Dread Pirate Roberts, ran the Silk Road website – the one stop shop for drugs, porn and dodgy documents – for nearly three years, generating £1.2bn in sales until he was arrested this week in a San Francisco library, according to papers filed in New York.


Silk Road – described as an ‘amoral eBay’ – has been an illicit business success story since it was set up in 2011 and provided anonymity to drug dealers and buyers using a sub-layer of the internet unreachable by normal search engines. Deals are conducted through encrypted software and paid for using bitcoin, an internet equivalent of cash, in a system designed to avoid the attentions of law enforcement.


Mr Ulbricht, 29, who is said to have had £2.1m in his account in July from commissions, is accused of putting out a contract on a vendor on the website who threatened to bring down his empire by releasing the names of thousands of users if he did not pay $500,000.


The name and address in Canada of the alleged blackmailer were passed to another user of the site who Mr Ulbricht offered $150,000 to have him killed, according to the papers.


Mr Ulbricht is purported to say that the blackmailer was “a liability and I wouldn’t mind if he was executed,” according to messages obtained by the FBI. He later adds: “This kind of behaviour is unforgivable to me. Especially here on Silk Road anonymity is sacrosanct… It doesn’t have to be clean.”


The person who accepted the ‘hit’ promised it had been done but the Canadian authorities said they had no record of any murder being carried out, according to the documents first revealed by the Krebsonsecurity.com website.


Silk Road, which has now been taken down by the authorities, was used by drug buyers across the world to avoid street corner rip-offs, with the third largest number in Britain, according to the FBI. On his LinkedIn profile, cited in the court filing, Mr Ulbricht said that after a career in research scientist, his goals had shifted to a plan to “use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and aggression amongst mankind”.


The arrest of Mr Ulbricht marks a major success for law enforcement in cracking illegal networks using the so-called DarkNet that is favoured by some journalists, campaigners in repressive countries and international criminals who want to avoid scrutiny by the authorities. He was due to appear in court accused of drugs offences, computer hacking and money laundering.


The Silk Road had been hit by a series of technical problems including the release of names and addresses of purported members, which had seen rival websites set up to take a slice of the market. In April last year, the US authorities busted a secret drugs marketplace known as The Farmer’s Market that led to the arrests of eight people in the US, the Netherlands and Colombia.

as an idle thought. If the murder did take place it means that DPR killed to protect us all.  I still don't know how I feel about that.
Title: Re: A sympathetic report on the closure (or at least non hysteric)
Post by: Eternal Sunshine on October 03, 2013, 01:15 am
If the guy was killed DPR saved a lot of lives.