FBI raids Silk Road site, arrests owner

[gary m]

MSN link

NEW YORK — U.S. law enforcement authorities have shut down Silk Road, the web marketplace for illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine as well as criminal activities including murder for hire, and arrested its alleged owner, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Wednesday.

The FBI arrested Silk Road owner Ross William Ulbricht, 29, known as "Dread Pirate Roberts," in San Francisco on Tuesday, according to court filings.

"Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today," FBI agent Christopher Tarbell said in the criminal complaint. According to Tarbell, the site was used by "several thousand drug dealers" to sell "hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs."

Authorities also seized $3.6 million worth of the digital currency Bitcoin, which was used instead of cash or credit cards to complete transactions on Silk Road. The charges against Ulbricht said his website generated sales of more than 9.5 million Bitcoins, roughly equivalent to $1.2 billion.

I went to the site a few times just to see what it was about. You could only get to it through Tor.
They listed every imaginable drug, weapons, explosives and services.

Now I am far from the most intelligent person around, but going on line in any fashion to buy or sell smoke, C4 or a fully auto M16 just seems like an invitation to end up in Club Fed.

[Gingersnap]

MSN link



I went to the site a few times just to see what it was about. You could only get to it through Tor.
They listed every imaginable drug, weapons, explosives and services.

Now I am far from the most intelligent person around, but going on line in any fashion to buy or sell smoke, C4 or a fully auto M16 just seems like an invitation to end up in Club Fed.

I never went there but I'd heard of it. Now that's Anarcho-Capitalism. What an idiot.

[scott]

Gotta love the PR machine.

"Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today," FBI agent Christopher Tarbell said.

That's absolute bullshit and the FBI knows it. But since the masses don't know about the folks conducting business using coded messages in pirated movies, idiots like this deliberately lie to people.

This is nothing but an underground Craigslist, and a very poorly disguised one at that. You want sophisticated and extensive? Imagine a bar that has a specific team on a specific TV every time they play even though nobody around is watching it. Then look at the signs that make it onto the broadcast and watch for the one guy filming it on his phone.

And even that is amateur.