Feds bust ‘Dread Pirate Roberts,’ digital buccaneer for ‘Silk Road’ drug website
Ross William Ulbricht, 29, was arrested Tuesday in San Francisco on drug trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering charges - and an assassination scheme.

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BY DANIEL BEEKMAN / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2013, 12:03 PM


Screenshot of the website for “Sillk Road,” an underground drug marketplace, that has been siezed by the feds.

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The feds have busted "Dread Pirate Roberts," a shadowy digital buccaneer who allegedly owned and operated a $1.2 billion underground website for drug dealers and hackers.

Ross William Ulbricht, 29, was arrested Tuesday in San Francisco on drug trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering charges — and an assassination scheme.

The website Ulbricht is accused of running, "Silk Road," has been called "the eBay of the drug trade," and the defendant has been dubbed a "digital drug lord."

"Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today," the New York-based FBI agent who cracked the case said in an affidavit. "The site has sought to make conducting illegal transactions on the Internet as easy and frictionless as shopping online at mainstream e-commerce websites."

Living in San Francisco, UIbricht ran Silk Road on the "deep web," a hidden part of the Internet not indexed by standard search engines, according to a criminal complaint filed by Manhattan federal prosecutors and released Wednesday.

The site trafficked in drugs such as heroin and cocaine along with illegal services and used the controversial online currency Bitcoin, the complaint alleges.

Ulbricht calls himself an investment advisor and entrepreneur on his LinkedIn page, and is the CEO of Good Wagon Books, which "has collected tens of thousands of reusable items and found them new homes."

He said he hails from Texas and graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2006 with a degree in Physics, then attended Penn State.

"Just as slavery has been abolished most everywhere, I believe violence, coercion and all forms of force by one person over another can come to an end," the rambling LinkedIn page proclaims. "I am 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."

Law enforcement agents have made more than 100 undercover purchases through Silk Road since Nov. 2011, including purchases made from and shipped to New York.

"From in or about January 2011 … the Silk Road website has served as a sprawling black-market bazaar," the complaint states.

"Silk Road has been used by several thousand drug dealers and other unlawful vendors to distribute hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs and other goods and services to well over a hundred thousand buyers, and to launder hundreds of millions of dollars."

The site, according to the complaint, has generated $1.2 billion in sales and $80 million in commissions.
Ulbricht in March even solicited a Silk Road user to "execute a murder-for-hire of another Silk Road user, who was threatening to release the identities of thousands of users of the site," the complaint alleges.

"I would like to put a bounty on his head if it's not too much trouble for you," Ulbricht wrote in a private online message, according to the complaint.
"What would be an adequate amount to motivate you to find him? Necessities like this do happen from time to time for a person in my position?" he asked.
When the purported hit man asked for $150,000 to $300,000, Ulbricht allegedly replied: "Don't want to be a pain here, but the price seems high. Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for $80,000."

Ulbricht had $3.4 million in his Silk Road account as of July 23, the complaint states.
The target of the hit lived in White Rock, British Columbia, according to Ulbricht, and the hit man reported to Ulbricht that the deed had been done, according to the complaint.

But Canadian authorities could find no evidence of the murder.
The feds caught Ulbricht by tracing posts he made on a Bitcoin forum in 2011 to his Gmail address and then to his LinkedIn page, the complaint explains.
The feds have also filed a civil forfeiture lawsuit seeking all the assets of Silk Road.

They said they have already snatched roughly 26,000 Bitcoins from the site, worth about $3.6 million, in the largest-ever seizure of Bitcoins.
The feds have additionally seized Silk Road itself, posting a notice to users on the site.

Silk Road had nearly 13,000 listings for controlled substances as of Sept. 23, grouped into categories such as "intoxicants," "opioids" and "stimulants."
"High Quality #4 Heroin All Rock," one listing said.

There were also listings for services: one vendor offered to hack into Facebook, Twitter and other social network accounts so that "you can read, write, upload, delete and view all personal information."
Hit men were also advertised.



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