FBI raids alleged online drug market Silk Road; arrests owner

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. law enforcement authorities raided an Internet site that served as a marketplace for illegal drugs, including heroin and coc aine, and arrested its owner, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Wednesday.

The FBI arrested Ross William Ulbricht, known as "Dread Pirate Roberts," in San Francisco on Tuesday, according to court filings. Federal prosecutors charged Ulbricht with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, according to a court filing.

FBI raids alleged online drug market Silk Road; arrests owner

The feds have caught up to the Silk Road. The underground website long known for drug trafficking was seized by the FBI

The site, which is only accessible through the anonymizing Tor network, has been pulled and replaced with an FBI notice. The Silk Road forums are still operating, suggesting they were hosted on a different server.

Ulbricht said his website generated sales of more than 9.5 million Bitcoins, roughly equivalent to $1.2 billion.

preceding this event law enforcement's bought drugs off the silk road more then 100 times, testing the quality and purity in labs in New York city.

Ross William Ulbricht AKA Dread Pirate Roberts, the owner of silk road was arrested today on conspiracy, hacking, trafficking, and computer hacking. Im pretty sure he's screwed



techcrunch.com...

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt


Think they used BitCoin to track his location?

Well, I'll be damned! They really DO seem to be working the underground economy and TOR Network. I didn't believe it by earlier developments. Too much down there. Too damn much evil in one place which has been ignored for so many years.

Silk Road is a BIG BIG thing if they have literally put it offline entirely. Think Walmart for guns, dope and contraband of all types and description, world wide and on delivery. That was, for some people, Silk Road.

I'm just in shocked amazement. They may actually do this. I'll have to send a thank you card to the Hoover Building. I've always said I wouldn't believe they were serious until deep areas got hit behind the anonymity they operate with. Well, now it's happening?

WoW!

reply to post by ChuckNasty

Tarbell acknowledges "undercover activity" by himself and other law enforcement agents, something users have suspected for a long time.

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt


Well I knew about underground internet, but I never knew how bad it was.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


That's why I didn't touch ANYTHING when I peered down there. I was sure that 90% of what I was seeing was nothing more than undercover LEO's laying traps. I just couldn't believe that the FBI and others weren't staging stings to catch people. I mean, come on ... there's no way you can hire a hit man over the internet and it be legit.

I felt like I needed a real, physical shower after looking at the deep net.

reply to post by MystikMushroom


You express my own sentiment so well there. A shower. Yes. It's not a joke, is it? It's also impossible to explain why it's not a joke without physically showing someone or waiting for them to return for their own life learning experience. I think that's why I'm almost coy and evasive about questions on TOR and the levels below it.

I can't say there is NOTHING good down there because some corners make Wikileaks look like Barnes and Noble peddling mainstream policy. It's quite a world of crap to find just a few shiny turds tho, isn't it?

Also, I'm not saying I support anyone doing illegal activities or breaking the law in anyway. However, the silk road was a NATURAL progression of the war on drugs...and ever advancing computer, network, and internet technology.

I'm surprised it took as long as it did, to have an underground ebay that essentially focuses on narcotics. The ONLY reason it wasn't done before, is because money is trackable, and so is the traffic that would have been on the web.

Add in bitcoins, and TOR....combined with the war on drugs, and common sense tells you the silk road is just BOUND to happen.


The thing is....I believe the silk road was a prototype of sorts. Now the cat and mouse game begins....just like in the piracy industry. Did the government ever effectively stop piracy? Sure.....napster got shut down. Kazaa....then the torrent sites....piratebay, demonoid, etc. However, piracy is easier than EVER BEFORE.

It will be the same with underground narcotics selling I believe. A cat and mouse game.

So long as online currencies like bitcoin exist....and new forms of encyrption and underground web exists......I believe things like silk road will exist as well.

ChuckNasty
Think they used BitCoin to track his location?

I wouldn't be surprised. I don't see how anyone can expect to keep 9.5 million bitcoins anonymous.

This was just a matter of time...I don't know what took so long, or why they had to make 100 purchases, when a handful seemingly would have been enough.

There is a billions dollars into the government coffers. They can open the government for another 3 or 4 hours now.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

This was just a matter of time...I don't know what took so long, or why they had to make 100 purchases, when a handful seemingly would have been enough.

They probably wanted to know how well, quality wise, the operation was. Maybe tracking supply also.

Arbitrageur

ChuckNasty
Think they used BitCoin to track his location?

I wouldn't be surprised. I don't see how anyone can expect to keep 9.5 million bitcoins anonymous.

This was just a matter of time...I don't know what took so long, or why they had to make 100 purchases, when a handful seemingly would have been enough.

They probably made double the purchases they admitted to making. There are many reasons why they made so many. Testing quantity, quality of all the various substances sold on there....tracking people....determining the methods of how people conceal the substances in the mail....

basically, evidence gathering, AND data mining, in a sense. They want to learn everything they can about an operation, it would take at least a few hundred purchases to learn the various ins and outs....especially how people are packaging the substances, sending them out, etc.


Also, I doubt very much they are going after just the founder of the site. So many of the packages are probably going to be used as evidence in cases against some of the top sellers.

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt


Well.. there goes TOR...

damn.. what else we got?

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt


How could the FBI seize a website on TOR?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Oh my yes -- I even feel dirty thinking and talking about it. I barley scratched the surface, I'm sure -- and I saw enough to not want to put myself or computer at risk.

I felt that even trying to figure out how to use the deep web would put me at risk. One wrong click...

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt


It will be interesting to see if this causes a surge in the sale of street drugs. People will still want the product; the only thing this does is to scatter them back into the "real world". This probably hurts the war on drugs more than anything.

How long now until the same thing happens to Lolita City? As despicable as its existence may seem, do you really want all those people left with nowhere to turn to but "real life" to feed their vices?

I'm sure the bitcoins weren't the only identification verification they used in the Deep to take down this place. It does make me wonder what the people in repressive countries can do now to hold on to their anonymity. Obviously, they can be found if someone wants you bad enough, but it makes me wonder just how secure they really are now.

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt


Forbes has a decent article with a bit more detail of the situation. Here are some highlights for discussion.

One clue mentioned in the criminal complaint against Ulbricht was a package seized from the mail by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol as it crossed the Canadian border, containing nine seemingly counterfeit identification documents, each of which used a different name but featured Ulbricht’s photograph.

The complaint also mentions security mistakes, including an IP address for a VPN server used by Ulbricht listed in the code on the Silk Road, mentions of time in the Dread Pirate Roberts’ posts on the site that identified his time zone, and postings on the Bitcoin Talk forum under the handle “altoid,” which was tied to Ulbricht’s Gmail address.

One remaining mystery in Ulbricht’s criminal complaint is whether he was in fact the only–or the original–Dread Pirate Roberts.

Another user blamed the Dread Pirate Roberts’ carelessness, including his decision to raise his profile by giving an interview to Forbes. “Sorry, but when he gave the #ing Forbes interview I imagined this would be coming,” wrote a user calling himself Dontek. “Should have kept all this # on the down low rather than publicly bragging about it.”

...another popular alternative to the Silk Road known as Atlantis went offline last week, with its administrators saying only that they shut down the business for “security reasons.”

So if this information is accurate, I think we can say Tor is not completely compromised. You are secure as long as you use it correctly, which has always been the case. This means journalists in censored countries who use Tor for protection should still be safe as long as they take the proper precautions and don't mess up. Sounds like this guy just got overconfident and slipped up on some of the basic areas of maintaining anonymity.