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FBI seizes Silk Road and Arrests Founder

Rory

Banned
Sep 29, 2012
801
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0
FBI seizes Silk Road' black market domain, arrests owner

Published: Oct 2, 2013, 07:48 PM

Authorities have arrested a man in San Francisco, California accused of operating an underground website that allowed users to purchase guns and drugs from around the world using encrypted, digital currency.
Ross William Ulbricht, also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday for his alleged involvement in the Silk Road online marketplace, according to court papers published this week.
A sealed complaint dated September 27 was unearthed by security researcher Brian Krebs in which Ulbricht is accused of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.
According to prosecutors, Ulbricht aided in the trafficking of controlled substances from January 2011 up until last week. The authorities say that the narcotics moved through the Silk Road site include 1 kilogram of heroin, 5 kilograms of cocaine, 10 grams of LSD and 500 grams of methamphetamine.
 

AnaSCI

ADMINISTRATOR
Sep 17, 2003
8,625
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And to think the DarkNet and Dread Pirate Roberts were suppose to be untouchable and unable to be located!
 

Rory

Banned
Sep 29, 2012
801
0
0
And to think the DarkNet and Dread Pirate Roberts were suppose to be untouchable and unable to be located!

Yeah. But this case brings to mind other possible flaws. The indictment should be interesting once it's made available.
 

AnaSCI

ADMINISTRATOR
Sep 17, 2003
8,625
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Paying that supplier $150k for the murder is going to seal his fate. Even if it never came to pass and as I was thinking when reading it that he was probably talking with the same group that just burnt him for that money pretending to be someone else. But just the fact that his intent was trying to have the person murdered is going to get him.
 

AnaSCI

ADMINISTRATOR
Sep 17, 2003
8,625
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I guess their competitor sites will be getting an extreme boost in business coming. There are still 3-4 of those sites out there going. Wonder how long before the Feds get to those?
 

gabe walker

New member
Dec 1, 2010
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For someone who took steps to remain anon, he made some serious mistakes early on that F'd him from his LinkedIn page, soliciting IT guys using his real name, posting his real pic/name , then ordering fake ID's from china and sending them to his residence.. A lot of stupid in a short period of time , " oh hey officers you can buy those on this real cool website called silkroad." Wtf! How about " not mine, don't know what your talking about, contact my lawyer."

Wonder how much was done by NSA , and FBI cyber crimes, and worked backward through archived online data and how much was done by his own doing.... Tor, and bitcoin are not a guarantee of anonymity... Sounds like the fed's were testing their capabilities and simply made an example of him and what they can now do..
 

AnaSCI

ADMINISTRATOR
Sep 17, 2003
8,625
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Wonder how much was done by NSA , and FBI cyber crimes, and worked backward through archived online data and how much was done by his own doing.... Tor, and bitcoin are not a guarantee of anonymity... Sounds like the fed's were testing their capabilities and simply made an example of him and what they can now do..

I believe this is probably how it worked. Using the NSA as the DEA does to work the case backwards to get the bust. Overreaching and illegal constitutionally but he was very foolish none the less. Also it is too hard to ever implicate the NSA involvement in any wrong doing as has been proven with the DEA operations.
 

WesleyInman

Registered User
Jul 28, 2013
79
0
6
There are conflicting reports of value..One report says about 1-10 kilos of drugs ONLY were sold on this site..

While others report that he assisted in over 1.6 billion in transactions and profited over $80 million dollars. And I am not exaggerating these claims, look it up if you do not believe this as being reported.
 

AnaSCI

ADMINISTRATOR
Sep 17, 2003
8,625
18
38
There are conflicting reports of value..One report says about 1-10 kilos of drugs ONLY were sold on this site..

While others report that he assisted in over 1.6 billion in transactions and profited over $80 million dollars. And I am not exaggerating these claims, look it up if you do not believe this as being reported.

Yes but wasn't the numbers for various services, not just the drugs that were purchased by the Feds (which were the 1-10 kilos).

SilkRoad offered drugs, guns, computer assistance, child pornography, documentation, etc, etc. Anything you could image you could purchase there at one time or another.
 

gabe walker

New member
Dec 1, 2010
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0
I believe this is probably how it worked. Using the NSA as the DEA does to work the case backwards to get the bust. Overreaching and illegal constitutionally but he was very foolish none the less. Also it is too hard to ever implicate the NSA involvement in any wrong doing as has been proven with the DEA operations.

Definitely, when the DEA instruct their agents to never disclose information passed on by NSA, to deny Project Hemisphere, and retroactively build a false cases from the beginning, it's very suspect...

All of his mistakes would have amounted to some dude behind a comp doing some fantasy role play on minecraft unless they knew what, who, and where they were looking... even the fake ID incedent could have been explained as ignorance, novelty ID's, etc.

This was on the whole small time, up to 10 kilos total, really? Billions of dollars to develop the fastest computers in the world with sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms, capable of brute force attacks on encrypted data, and this is it... If anything it shows how vulnerable Tor is..
 

gabe walker

New member
Dec 1, 2010
13
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0
FBI is now making arrests of individuals who used Silk Road to sell drugs. Two in sweden, four arrested in the UK and two from Washington state area. They apparently used a GPS tracking device to monitor the two as they made up to 30 package deliveries/pickups in the WA arrests.
 
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AnaSCI

ADMINISTRATOR
Sep 17, 2003
8,625
18
38
FBI is now making arrests of individuals who used Silk Road to sell drugs. Two in sweden, four arrested in the UK and two from Washington state area. They apparently used a GPS tracking device to monitor the two as they made up to 30 package deliveries/pickups in the WA arrests.

Do you have a link to the arrests?
 

gabe walker

New member
Dec 1, 2010
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0
Silk Road drug busts: 8 more arrested

LONDON (AP) — Authorities in Britain, Sweden, and the United States have arrested eight more people following last week's closure of Silk Road, a notorious black market website which helped dealers to sell drugs under the cloak of anonymity, officials and media said Tuesday.

In the U.K., the country's newly-established National Crime Agency warned that more arrests were on the way.

Most if not all the arrests took place within a couple of days of last week's capture of Silk Road's alleged mastermind, Ross Ulbricht, in San Francisco, suggesting that authorities may now be busy unraveling the network of drug dealers who made fortunes peddling illicit substances through the site.

Britain's National Crime Agency said it had seized millions of pounds (dollars) worth of bitcoins, the electronic currency used on the site, and the agency's director general, Keith Bristow, said in a statement that other online drug dealers should expect a knock on their door.

"These latest arrests are just the start; there are many more to come," he said.

Silk Road gained widespread notoriety two years ago as a black market bazaar where visitors could buy and sell hard drugs using bitcoins, a form of online cash which operates independent of any centralized control. A so-called "hidden site," Silk Road used an online tool known as Tor to mask the location of its servers. While many other sites sell drugs more or less openly, Silk Road's technical sophistication, its user-friendly escrow system and its promise of near-total anonymity quickly made it among the best known.

Officials say the black market website brokered more than $1 billion in sales before the FBI collared Ulbricht at a public library on Oct. 1. In its complaint, the bureau said it had managed to copy the contents of the site's server — something one expert said would likely provide international authorities with detailed information about the site's dealers.

"Any large sellers on Silk Road should be very nervous," said Nicholas Weaver, a researcher with the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley and the University of California, San Diego.

Silk Road's eBay-style customer review system means that months' worth of sales history are now in law enforcement hands, Weaver said in an email, while the traceable nature of bitcoin transfers means the FBI "can now easily follow the money."

Britain's Crime Agency said its arrests were carried out only hours after Ulbricht was detained. It called the suspects "significant users" of Silk Road and described them as three men in their 20s from the northern English city of Manchester and a man in his 50s from southwestern England.

U.S. authorities have charged two people in Bellevue, Washington, a city just east of Seattle, after identifying one of them as a top seller on Silk Road. He was arrested on Oct. 2, while his alleged accomplice turned herself in the next day.

In Sweden, two men from the coastal city of Helsingborg were arrested on suspicion of distributing cannabis over Silk Road, the local Helsingborgs Dagblad reported Tuesday. The newspaper did not say when the pair had been detained.

Britain's Crime Agency, which became operational only this month, said the arrests sent a message to criminals that the anonymity touted by sites like Silk Road is an illusion.

"The hidden Internet isn't hidden and your anonymous activity isn't anonymous," it said. "We know where you are, what you are doing and we will catch you."
 

Rory

Banned
Sep 29, 2012
801
0
0
Silk Road drug busts: 8 more arrested

LONDON (AP) — Authorities in Britain, Sweden, and the United States have arrested eight more people following last week's closure of Silk Road, a notorious black market website which helped dealers to sell drugs under the cloak of anonymity, officials and media said Tuesday.

In the U.K., the country's newly-established National Crime Agency warned that more arrests were on the way.

Most if not all the arrests took place within a couple of days of last week's capture of Silk Road's alleged mastermind, Ross Ulbricht, in San Francisco, suggesting that authorities may now be busy unraveling the network of drug dealers who made fortunes peddling illicit substances through the site.

Britain's National Crime Agency said it had seized millions of pounds (dollars) worth of bitcoins, the electronic currency used on the site, and the agency's director general, Keith Bristow, said in a statement that other online drug dealers should expect a knock on their door.

"These latest arrests are just the start; there are many more to come," he said.

Silk Road gained widespread notoriety two years ago as a black market bazaar where visitors could buy and sell hard drugs using bitcoins, a form of online cash which operates independent of any centralized control. A so-called "hidden site," Silk Road used an online tool known as Tor to mask the location of its servers. While many other sites sell drugs more or less openly, Silk Road's technical sophistication, its user-friendly escrow system and its promise of near-total anonymity quickly made it among the best known.

Officials say the black market website brokered more than $1 billion in sales before the FBI collared Ulbricht at a public library on Oct. 1. In its complaint, the bureau said it had managed to copy the contents of the site's server — something one expert said would likely provide international authorities with detailed information about the site's dealers.

"Any large sellers on Silk Road should be very nervous," said Nicholas Weaver, a researcher with the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley and the University of California, San Diego.

Silk Road's eBay-style customer review system means that months' worth of sales history are now in law enforcement hands, Weaver said in an email, while the traceable nature of bitcoin transfers means the FBI "can now easily follow the money."

Britain's Crime Agency said its arrests were carried out only hours after Ulbricht was detained. It called the suspects "significant users" of Silk Road and described them as three men in their 20s from the northern English city of Manchester and a man in his 50s from southwestern England.

U.S. authorities have charged two people in Bellevue, Washington, a city just east of Seattle, after identifying one of them as a top seller on Silk Road. He was arrested on Oct. 2, while his alleged accomplice turned herself in the next day.

In Sweden, two men from the coastal city of Helsingborg were arrested on suspicion of distributing cannabis over Silk Road, the local Helsingborgs Dagblad reported Tuesday. The newspaper did not say when the pair had been detained.

Britain's Crime Agency, which became operational only this month, said the arrests sent a message to criminals that the anonymity touted by sites like Silk Road is an illusion.

"The hidden Internet isn't hidden and your anonymous activity isn't anonymous," it said. "We know where you are, what you are doing and we will catch you."

Just saw this myself. Definitely looks like governments are going to start flexing a bit....
 

beadhandBP

Registered User
Oct 9, 2013
35
0
0
Dulac la
An SR ain't the only one I worked with a few people offshore who was bragging about this site an how they would get there dope from them but they have 2 others now since SR shut down my concerns are the bit coin payments I know sum sources use this as payment an AAS was sold on there to so wat that says about our INT folks?
 

PRIDE

AnaSCI VET / Donating Member
Apr 2, 2009
1,675
0
0
Those other sites are going to start getting hit soon too. Also on the boards I see another Operation Raw Deal coming shortly.

Time for everyone to prepare again because it is going to happen and the all of the cheap ugls are going to be going down. The only ones that are going to be left are the old school guys again.
 

AnaSCI

ADMINISTRATOR
Sep 17, 2003
8,625
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Silk Road commemorated with special edition ecstasy pills | The Verge

A drug dealer is keeping the memory of digital black market Silk Road alive with specially-printed ecstasy pills. "To pay our respect to DPR and to forever remember the legacy that was Silk Road we have made a small batch of special units," reads a message on the online storefront for TheHeineken, which sells an array of narcotics. "DPR" refers to Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road. Last week the FBI arrested Ross Ulbricht — who the agency alleges is Dread Pirate Roberts — and shut down the marketplace. Ulbricht has denied all charges.

Since the shutdown a number of other sites have moved in to fill the gap left by the Silk Road, including Sheep Marketplace, where the specially-marked pills are being sold. The tablets are emblazoned with Silk Road's camel logo on one side and the initials "SR" on the other, and the seller notes that "We will offer this limited batch only in small quantitys for a limited time" [sic]. It seems drug dealers know the allure of limited editions just as well as video game publishers; just don't expect a behind-the-scenes DVD with your purchase.