CA - Ross Ulbricht & others for Silk Road online drug market, San Francisco, 2014

[shadowraiths]

Four men have been arrested in the UK over their role in illegal online marketplace Silk Road.

Keith Bristow, the NCA's director general, warned that users who think they can hide their identity on the internet need to think again.
"These arrests send a clear message to criminals; the hidden internet isn't hidden and your anonymous activity isn't anonymous. We know where you are, what you are doing and we will catch you."

"It is impossible for criminals to completely erase their digital footprint. No matter how technology-savvy the offender, they will always make mistakes."

Exeter-based officers worked closely with American law enforcement officers to identify significant UK users of the Silk Road.

It is hoped that the investigation will give them insights into how criminals use the dark net.

"These criminal areas of the internet aren't just selling drugs; it's where fraud takes place, where the trafficking of people and goods is discussed, where child abuse images are exchanged and firearms are traded," said Andy Archibald, head of the NCA's national cybercrime unit.​

link

 

[i.b.nora]

Wednesday 4 October, 2013

http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...tor-ordered-to-n-dot-y-dot-for-bail-hearing-1

"Ross William Ulbricht, ... will be transported to New York for a bail hearing, a federal judge ordered.

Ulbricht, 29, today made his third appearance in federal court in San Francisco after being arrested Oct. 1 by federal agents at a public library. After Ulbricht waived his right to bail and an identity hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero said he would be sent to federal court in Manhattan to face charges. Ulbricht will seek bail there, Brandon LeBlanc, his public defender, told the judge.

“Another attorney will represent him in New York,” LeBlanc said after the hearing. He declined to comment on whether Ulbricht has hired his own lawyer."

So far, all the reports on his court appearance today, are more or less the same.

 

[shadowraiths]

A guide to the Silk Road shutdown

The FBI has brought down one of the world's biggest virtual black markets. But what does that mean for Bitcoin, Silk Road's competition and drug dealers everywhere?

What is the Silk Road?

A virtual black marketplace operating on the Deep Web. Launched in February 2011, it ran using Tor, which ensured anyone browsing could do so anonymously by bouncing messages back and forth on volunteer relays. According to the FBI, it ran off servers in several countries. Stealth Mode offered an even more secure option, whereby vendor details were only attainable via a specific URL a user had to have prior knowledge of.

Does it just sell drugs?

No, but anything ranging from prescription drugs to heroin does make up about 36 percent of all sales, according to a Carnegie Mellon University study. The report revealed Silk Road sells £1.22m worth of black market goods every month, with items including ATM hacking guides, stolen credit card information and hitmen contacts listed. Weapons and ammunition sales moved to a sister site known as the Armory in March 2012.​

link

 

[shadowraiths]

Sting Operation Nabs Alleged Online Arms Dealer On Silk Road Competitor Site

On Thursday the Department of Justice said that it’s arrested 38-year-old Matthew Crisafi in New Hampshire on charges of selling unlicensed firearms, arms smuggling and money laundering after he allegedly attempted to sell firearms to an undercover officer of the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations division. According to the officials, the deals were made through the anonymous marketplace website known as Black Market Reloaded, a competitor to the popular black market site Silk Road and a refuge for many online drug dealers and buyers after the Silk Road was shut down and its alleged administrator arrested by the Department of Justice just over a month ago.​

link

 

[i.b.nora]

A new Silk Road has been set up, using same name, same look. Yesterday there was only one article, today there are a number. Here is one:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/07/us-crime-silkroad-idUSBRE9A608I20131107

New Silk Road drug bazaar opens a month after FBI bust
By Noel Randewich
SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Nov 7, 2013 3:41am EST

"(Reuters) - A new anonymous Internet marketplace for illegal drugs debuted on Wednesday, with the same name and appearance as the Silk Road website shut down by U.S. law enforcement authorities a month ago.

Like its predecessor, the new Silk Road listed hundreds of advertisements for marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy and other illegal drugs available for purchase from independent sellers using the anonymous Bitcoin digital currency."

more...

And another article:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/06/technology/new-silk-road/

How Silk Road was reborn
By Laurie Segall @LaurieSegallCNN November 6, 2013: 8:00 PM ET
CNNMoney

"The Feds may have taken down Silk Road, the online black market that's been coined the "Amazon of illegal drugs," but a little over a month later, it's re-emerged.
Not long after the bust, select users on the site received an email from a former active Silk Road user asking the community to help rebuild. The authenticity of the new forums was endorsed by former Silk Road user "Libertas.""

More...

***

I have seen some speculation that the new website is a sting operation. I guess time will tell.

 

[i.b.nora]

Ross Ulbricht appeared in court this week in New York, hence what is now becoming a flurry of articles about him, about Silk Road, and about other related activities. Here is a long and good article about what a good Boy Scout Ross was. (Oh, those Boy Scouts!)

http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-78091571/

Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht: Before drug charges, an Eagle Scout physics student
By Greg Farrell, Bloomberg News
3:20 pm, November 7, 2013[/]

"NEW YORK — The man accused by the FBI of running a billion-dollar online market for illegal drugs, who allegedly also paid hit men to murder people threatening his business, was no trigger-happy junkie."

Note: Be sure to read all the other new posts made today prior to this one.

 

[time]

I have seen some speculation that the new website is a sting operation. I guess time will tell.

I had the same thought when I read about it's grand reopening!

Other news

A Silk Road employee with access to drug buyers' and sellers' accounts on the underground website pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to sell cocaine.

Curtis Green, 47, of Utah, was known on the "darkweb" site by the screen names "Flush" and "chronicpain," Federal agents caughty him in a Drug Enforcement Administration sting targeting Silk Road, a website that allowed buyers and sellers to trade anonymously in forged documents, illegal drugs and illegal services such as computer hacking and murder for hire.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...rator-plead-guilty-in-silk-road-case/3469751/

Two men tied to an illegal online drug marketplace pleaded guilty to drug charges, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday, a day after the alleged mastermind of the website indicated he would plead not guilty.
An administrator of the Silk Road website, Curtis Green, pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute cocaine, and a vendor, Jacob Theodore George IV, pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute drugs including heroin, said Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland.

http://wkzo.com/news/articles/2013/...-drug-market-plead-guilty-to-us-drug-charges/

 

[fran]

Man behind Silk Road drug gang 'planned to carry out six murders'

Ross William Ulbricht accused of masterminding Silk Road website
Notorious online marketplace sold everything from illegal drugs to guns
The 29-year-old is now alleged to have hired a hitman to carry out six killings
FBI shut down website, but just weeks later it has reopened as Silk Road 2.0


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...Ulbricht-planned-6-murders.html#ixzz2lnCAYBM1

 

[i.b.nora]

Feds charge Bitcoin start-up founder with money laundering
BY TIMOTHY B. LEE
January 27, 2014 at 12:59 pm

"Less than a year after raising $1.5 million for his Bitcoin exchange start-up BitInstant, CEO Charlie Shrem has been charged with money laundering. A news release from U.S. prosecutors in Manhattan said that Shrem knowingly facilitated illegal purchases on the now-shuttered underground drug marketplace Silk Road.

Silk Road was a Web site that allowed users to buy everything from heroin to fake IDs. To help preserve users' anonymity, the site required all transactions to be conducted in bitcoins. According to the government, a man named Robert Faiella worked with Shrem to sell bitcoins to Silk Road users. The two men allegedly sold more than $1 million worth, with Shrem giving Faiella a volume discount on BitInstant's fees."

Much more ...

 

[i.b.nora]

In light of the Ryan Chamberlain case and his alleged use of Tor, I decided to see what if anything is up with the Ross Ulbricht Silk Road case.

This article is interesting:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/silk-road-suspects-mother-proud-of-son-says-hes-innocent/

Silk Road suspect’s mother “proud” of son, says he’s innocent
Lyn Ulbricht doesn't believe her son was the Dread Pirate Roberts.

by Cyrus Farivar - May 10 2014, 10:00am PDT

 

[i.b.nora]

Not to be confused with the original Silk Road, this is the one that took its place. So, it seems it was not a sting site but of course the Feds knew about all along. This guy is apparently originally from Texas, or at least has ties there, as was Ulbricht.

Feds arrest alleged leader of Silk Road 2.0
By Julian Hattem - 11/06/14 11:53 AM EST

"The Justice Department has arrested the alleged leader of an online black market that specialized in selling drugs.

Blake Benthall, 26, who went by “Defcon” and ran the Silk Road 2.0 website, was arrested in San Francisco on Wednesday and will appear in court on Thursday, authorities say."

"Silk Road 2.0 was launched about one year ago, shortly after federal agents shut down its predecessor."

"Like the previous incarnation of the site, Silk Road 2.0 is only accessible to people using the anonymous Tor software, ... ."

"As of September, the site was generating at least $8 million in sales per month, the Justice Department claimed.

The original Silk Road site was shuttered by federal agents last October. Weeks later, the replacement site was launched to fill the void.

Benthall was charged with counts of conspiring to traffic drugs, fake IDs, commit money laundering and hack into computers. The maximum penalties could land him in prison for decades."

More ...

 

[daisydomino]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/go-time-silk-road-jury-picked/

Go time: Silk Road jury picked

Opening statements are to begin later today. Ars is providing gavel-to-gavel coverage.

...

The trial is expected to last a month or more. If convicted, Ulbricht faces decades in jail.

Jurors include a high school guidance counselor, a social worker, and a Social Security Administration employee.

 

[i.b.nora]

http://www.cnet.com/news/silk-road-founder-claims-he-was-fall-guy-for-illegal-drug-site/

Silk Road founder claims he was fall guy for illegal drug site

The trial of the mastermind behind Silk Road began with the defense admitting Ross Ulbricht founded the illicit online drug marketplace but arguing he really wasn't the true operator of the site.
by Seth Rosenblatt
January 15, 2015 5:00 AM PST

Some highlights:

"Dratel acknowledged for the first time that Ulbricht, a former Eagle Scout, founded and initially oversaw the $1.2 billion contraband site, which the federal government shut down in October 2013. But Ulbricht, who called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts from the movie and novel "The Princess Bride," was just a "fall guy" who handed control of his "economic experiment" to others when daily operations became "too much for him," and returned to run the site just as federal authorities closed in, Dratel argued."

*

"About a dozen protesters outside the courthouse in lower Manhattan yesterday raised placards in support of Ulbricht. Some handed out jury nullification pamphlets, which advised jurors to acquit people charged under laws they don't agree with, a move defense attorney Dratel condemned, reported Forbes."

*

”The prosecution called Jared Der-Yeghiayan, an undercover agent for the Department of Homeland Security, to testify about his experiences as a customer service agent for Silk Road for at least 10 months, according to multiple news reports on the second day of testimony on Wednesday.”​

 

[i.b.nora]

This Wired article is good. It talks about the agent's testimony about the actual arrest at the library. It is from Wednesday's day in court.

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/silk-road-trial-undercover-dhs-fbi-trap-ross-ulbricht/

Undercover Agent Reveals How He Helped the FBI Trap Silk Road’s Ross Ulbricht
BY ANDY GREENBERG 01.14.15 | 6:34 PM |

"The FBI agents who arrested Ross Ulbricht in the science fiction section of a San Franciso public library in October of 2013 left nothing to chance. When plainclothes feds grabbed Ulbricht’s laptop and put him in cuffs, the prosecution in Ulbricht’s case says he was chatting online with an undercover agent who had infiltrated the staff of Silk Road, the massive online drug market Ulbricht is accused of creating. Now that undercover agent has told his story for the first time. And he’s revealed that just before his fateful conversation with Silk Road’s kingpin, he had been watching Ulbricht from less than a block away.

..."​

Much much more. Good article.

 

[i.b.nora]

Using Google Street View, if you go to 2885 Diamond St., San Francisco, you will see the Bello Cafe. If you look to the left (or north) the next building, 2 story concrete is the Glen Park Library. You can see the ground level entrance. The actual library occupies only the second floor. When you enter at ground level you can either take an elevator, or go up the stairs, two turns.

There is a bench just outside Bello.

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.733798,-122.434103,3a,75y,97.8h,90t/data=!3m3!1e1!3m1!2e0?hl=en

Hopefully that link will show street view.

 

[rabidstoat]

Tracking down this guy could've been done by anyone, looks like:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-story-of-how-the-govt-googled-ross-ulbricht/

It seems like what happened is that he posted under his username, altoid, on some web forum talking about an underground market for drugs using bitcoin. This was way back in 2011 or so. Then that same username, altoid, had posted on a totally different web forum about hiring someone who knew about bitcoin commerce for a software project. In that other email he gave his gmail address for contact, and his gmail address had his full name as the username.

After that the authorities had probable cause to get a warrant for his gmail account and start tightening the noose from there.

 

[OkieGranny]

http://sfist.com/2015/02/04/silk_roads_ross_ulbricht_found_guil.php

Following a guilty verdict in Manhattan federal court earlier this afternoon, 30-year-old San Francisco web developer Ross Ulbricht faces life in prison...

The jury deliberated for just over three hours before finding Ulbricht guilty of all seven federal charges...

He now faces a minimum 20-year sentence. His sentencing hearing will come in May.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/04/silk-road-verdict-ulbricht/22824331/

Ulbricht still faces charges of attempted witness murder and using interstate commerce for commission of murder-for-hire in a Baltimore federal court case.

 

[wfgodot]

NYT:

Ross Ulbricht, Creator of Silk Road Website, Is Sentenced to Life in Prison

 

[SCHMAE]

This is the most bizarre story! I cannot believe I never heard of this. I guess it was really exclusive and on the down low.

 

[shadowraiths]

The Dark Web Drug Lords Who Got Away

WHEN ROSS ULBRICHT was sentenced to life in prison without parole last Friday, the judge in his case made clear that her severe punishment wasn’t only about Ulbricht’s personal actions in creating the Silk Road’s billion-dollar drug market. As Judge Katherine Forrest told the packed courtroom, she was also sending a message to any would-be online drug kingpins who might follow in his footsteps. “For those considering stepping into your shoes,” she said, “they need to understand without equivocation that there will be severe consequences.”

But despite Ulbricht’s ultimate punishment, the lesson for anyone closely watching the Dark Web drug trade has hardly been one of inevitable consequences. As independent researcher Gwern Branwen has documented in an ongoing survey of more than 70 Dark Web drug markets created after Ulbricht founded the Silk Road, only five of those sites’ administrators have been arrested. For many of the others, the security model Ulbricht pioneered—using Tor and bitcoin to protect administrators, buyers and sellers—has successfully kept law enforcement fumbling in the shadows.​

Wired