Anyone seen this?
Basically the Silk Road was, until yesterday, a site where you could go and buy drugs, any drugs, using anonymous cryptocurrency, and they would be delivered to your door.
You could Moroccan hash, LSD blotters, MDMA, a pick of dozens of strains of weeds, cocaine, heroin, all manner of psychedelic chemicals, amphetamine, Viagra. Anything, and all with Amazon-style reviews.
It was open for two years, and they reckon they did somewhere up to a billion dollars in trade.
The alleged site author was a 29-year-old American, who was living in a shared apartment in San Francisco. According to the indictment earned $60 million from his activities, but was living frugally, and spent his life running the website from his bedroom. He appears to have been motivated by libertarianism principles.
The FBI, posing as a drug dealer, threatened to expose the identities of hundreds of users, and attempted to blackmail him for $500,000, which the fake user claimed he needed to pay off his supplier. Another user (also FBI), posing as a Hells Angel, claimed to be the supplier, and offered to kill the blackmailer for $150,000.
The money was transferred and a faked shot of the murder victim was sent to the owner of the Silk Road.
The FBI had this supposed murder as ammunition in order to get access to the server, which was hosted in Iceland (drug charges themselves might not be sufficient, so they preferred to have murder on the charge sheet), and spent the last few months monitoring all transactions.
He was arrested and today charged. He is saying nothing and pleading not guilty. However it's fair to assume that he will spend the rest of his life in jail.
Full indictment here:
i.cdn.turner.com/money/2013/images/10/02/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf?iid=EL
Replacement sites offering a similar service already exist, but there isn't really a single replacement yet.