The Silk Road is closed
The US Federal Government shutdown has closed many “nonessential” services, but the criminal justice system is chugging along, and has outed “Dread Pirate Roberts” as one Ross William Ulbricht, and charged him with narcotics trafficking, hacking, and money laundering. It was fun while it lasted, Buttcoin!
[youtube id=”NoBFhdeR9PE” width=”580″ height=”337″]
ETA: According to some dude on reddit, “It looks like they sniffed him out by looking back at old Internet records (forum posts, IPs etc) around the times of SRs appearance. The first person to ever advertise SR was DPR himself, and he used an email account attached to his natural born identity. No NSA or technical hack.”
RandomJackass
October 2, 2013 @ 1:05 pm
That’s gonna hurt. I wonder how far the BTC market’s going to tank, now that they know millions of BTC are in the hands of the government, they’re biggest lolbertarian enemy.
I smell a meltdown.
dogon
October 22, 2013 @ 7:33 am
HOLY FUCKING SHIT! You were right! It tanked to… uhg… ugh… wt… $200+ USD?!?!
Necromongler
December 4, 2013 @ 9:15 pm
It’s above a thousand now!
Broadwing
October 2, 2013 @ 2:21 pm
Yes, but have you seen the best part of the whole thing yet? Supposedly Mr. Ulbricht was trying to take out a hit on a a guy for threatening the site, paid for with Bitcoin, naturally. And claimed he’d done it before. Innocent until proven guilty and all that, but wow, seriously. (Source: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/10/feds-take-down-online-fraud-bazaar-silk-road-arrest-alleged-mastermind/ )
So, I suppose the battle to become the Internet’s Next Top Drug Dealer might get reeeeal interesting.
Jordan Gifford
October 2, 2013 @ 3:52 pm
Redditors are claiming that the conversation between Ross and the hitman was actually Ross and the blackmailer negotiating over the payment. Of course, it’s the gubmint trying to frame Ross by saying he was hiring the hitman.
RandomJackass
October 3, 2013 @ 7:11 am
He probably wasn’t really trying to get a hitman, because that’d make this story a bit too crazy and interesting. It might have also been a heavy handed threat (I’ve had one done before… muuuhahaha) kind of thing.
Also, it’s the same party that mailed him fake ID’s that got him under the FBI’s interest already.
There’s lots of details that will come out of this in time.
bitderrrp
October 10, 2013 @ 9:26 pm
Except for the other hit he attempted to orchestrate.
http://www.businessinsider.com/ross-ulbricht-charged-in-2nd-silk-road-murder-for-hire-plot-2013-10