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Silk Road creator's alleged ally extradited to the US
Key Silk Road figure Roger Thomas Clark, better known by his Variety Jones alias, is now facing trial in the US. The alleged mentor to creator Ross Ulbricht (aka Dread Pirate Roberts) has been extradited to the States after spending well over two years in custody in Thailand. He now faces an American trial over charges that include narcotics trafficking, computer hacking, money laundering and plotting to traffic in fraudulent ID.
Silk Road founder loses appeal and will serve life in prison
The Silk Road network's creator Ross Ulbricht vowed to fight his lifetime prison sentence when it was handed down two years ago. But today, the US Second Circuit officially denied his appeal, sending him away for a long, long time.
Coen brothers are writing 'Dark Web,' the Silk Road movie
Heads up, Fargo fans: Fox is making a movie called Dark Web about Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, and the studio enlisted the help of the Coen brothers. The siblings are on board to write the film's screenplay based on the Wired series that tells the story of Ulbricht's empire and its fall in the hands of authorities. Silk Road was once a thriving online black market selling illegal drugs, weapons and even the services of hitmen, where buyers and sellers dealt in Bitcoins as their main currency.
Ross Ulbricht appeals his Silk Road conviction
Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht isn't taking his conviction laying down. His attorneys have appealed for a new trial in the case, primarily citing evidence of corrupt DEA and Secret Service agents that wasn't revealed until after the original trial. Allegedly, the government hid the agents' bitcoin laundering activities until it was too late, potentially skewing the outcome. As they both worked together and had experience with forensics (in the Secret Service agent's case), there's a possibility that they could have planted evidence to guarantee the conviction.
The Silk Road bust almost didn't happen
Officials like to boast about taking down Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht (aka Dread Pirate Roberts), but it turns out that they almost didn't get him at all. The New York Times has learned that the Internal Revenue Service's Greg Alford spent months sifting through chat logs and other details to link Ulbricht to the online black market, but the DEA and FBI didn't take the tax investigator's work seriously. If it weren't for his insistence on pursuing the case and reviewing evidence, Ulbricht might still be running the Dark Web service today.
FBI arrests alleged Silk Road creator's mentor in Thailand
Another major Silk Road player might be facing court in the near future, specifically Roger Thomas Clark, whom the feds caught in Thailand on December 3rd. During his time as Ross Ulbricht's senior adviser, a position that the feds believe netted him hundreds of thousands of dollars at least, he used the names "Variety Jones," "VJ," "Cimon" and "Plural of Mongoose." Ulbricht once described him as a "trusted mentor," whereas the FBI likens him to a mob boss consigliere -- think Robert Duvall's Tom Hagen in The Godfather -- as he reportedly gave the Silk Road mastermind advise on how to maximize profits and use threats of violence to keep people from talking to authorities.
Another Silk Road spy pleaded guilty to laundering bitcoins
$820,000. That's how much former Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges pilfered in bitcoin during his time investigating the online black market, Silk Road. Bridges pleaded guilty to money laundering and obstruction of justice recently and the Department of Justice says that it was analyzing the "block chain and data" from Silk Road's servers that lead the breadcrumb trail of ill-gotten gains back to him. Bridges funneled his 20,000 bitcoins, at that time worth $350,000, through a series of "complex transactions" with a stop at Mt. Gox before transferring them into US dollars in early 2013. It isn't nearly as flagrant as his colleague Carl Force's transgressions (a movie deal? Seriously?), but the amount of money Bridges tried stealing was an awful lot higher.
Ross Ulbricht verdict dismisses the idea of Silk Road as a safe place
Ross Ulbricht is going away for life. The prosecution urged judge Katherine Forrest to send a strong message to anyone who might be tempted to go the Silk Road way, and she did. In addition to maximum time, the judge ordered $183 million, the estimated total sales from Silk Road, to be paid as restitution. When the 31-year-old mastermind was convicted on seven charges (including distributing narcotics over the internet, money laundering, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, and conspiracies related to those crimes) earlier this year, it was clear that he would spend a significant chunk of his life in prison. But over the past few weeks, his parents rallied support on social media and the defense made every attempt to highlight a different side of the drug market and its creator. They claimed Silk Road actually reduced harm, and that users were safer buying drugs through the site than on the streets.
Silk Road creator could spend decades behind bars
Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht aka Dread Pirate Roberts will be an old man by the time he gets out of prison. The 31-year-old is already expected to serve a minimum of 20 years after being found guilty on seven charges, including money laundering and narcotics trafficking. But the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, is aiming to get an even lengthier sentence, one "substantially above the mandatory minimum." In a letter for New York Judge Katherine B. Forrest, Bharara's office wrote (emphasis ours):
Silk Road Survival: In conversation with 'Deep Web' director Alex Winter
An unassuming, Mormon family man. A brilliant physics and engineering student with a goofy smile. Five years ago, neither of these men knew each other, let alone suspected that they'd be drawn into a web suffused with libertarian dogma, hard drugs and the sort of rhetorical dedication that allegedly drove that student -- Ross Ulbricht -- to order a hit on that family man. That's the weighty world that digital documentarian Alex Winter set out to explore in his new film, Deep Web. By his own admission, the documentary -- which first appeared at SXSW in March and hits Epix on May 31st -- can't tell the whole story of the Silk Road, an anonymous bazaar of hallucinogens, hitmen and, really, whatever you were looking for. Ulbricht is still behind bars after being found guilty of all seven charges leveled at him earlier this year, which included narcotics trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering. One even crowned him a "kingpin," and stuck him with the punishment attached to the title. While he and the rest of us wait to see what his sentencing holds, though, Deep Web acts as an important crash course in the events that led to all this. We spoke to director Winter to understand how and why he put the story together on film.
Judge denies mistrial in case against Silk Road's founder (again)
If you were hoping that Ross Ulbricht (Dread Pirate Roberts of Silk Road fame) was going to get a retrial, you might wanna walk those expectations back a bit. Okay; a lot. Despite the two former federal agents involved in the investigation purportedly stealing bitcoins and committing wire fraud during the investigation, the presiding judge Katherine Forrest has denied a motion for a new trial. Albrecht's defense protested, saying that the warrantless attempts to identify the Silk Road server violated his privacy rights and that the corruption charges demanded another look to see if the case had been tainted, as Wired tells it. None of that changed her mind though. She says that the evidence of Ulbricht's guilt was "overwhelming" and that there was little chance that conceding to any of those defenses would alter the outcome of the trial at all.
Former feds in Silk Road case stand accused of stealing bitcoins
While Ross Ulbricht was found guilty for creating and running the online black market known as Silk Road, it seems that a couple of Federal agents assigned to the case weren't so innocent either. The US Justice Department has just charged two former Federal agents involved in the investigation for allegedly committing wire fraud and diverting bitcoins into their own personal accounts. Former agents Carl Mark Force IV and Shaun Bridges were part of a Baltimore investigation into Ulbricht -- Force worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration and Bridges worked for the Secret Service -- when they supposedly committed the crimes.
Anonymity is dead and other lessons from the Silk Road trial
It's a story that belongs in a major motion picture. Hidden identities, narcotics, money laundering, computer hacking, blackmail and even attempted murder are all parts of this dramatic tale. But the story behind Silk Road, the online black market for drugs and other illegal goods, is not fiction. It was a very real phenomenon, and its creator, Ross Ulbricht, is a very real person (despite his "Dread Pirate Roberts" nom de plume). Tucked away as part of the Dark Web, Silk Road used the Tor network for anonymity and dealt in bitcoin so that transactions stayed anonymous. But as the recent Silk Road trial and Ulbricht's eventual guilty verdict showed, even when you try really hard to mask your activities on the internet, it doesn't necessarily work.
Silk Road creator found guilty on all counts
After a trial of several weeks, a federal jury has found Ross Ulbricht guilty of running and operating the online black market known as Silk Road. He was found guilty on all seven charges, which include money laundering, narcotics trafficking and computer hacking. Ulbricht was accused of being the "Dread Pirate Roberts," the so-called kingpin of Silk Road, which he apparently started back in 2010 in order to sell hallucinogenic mushrooms. It then grew into a digital marketplace for narcotics and other illegal items like fake passports. Silk Road was cloaked in the Tor anonymity network to hide it from view and used bitcoin as its currency of choice due to how difficult it is to track. The site was eventually shut down in 2013 when the FBI seized its servers and arrested Ulbricht.
US Marshals will auction 50,000 Bitcoins seized from Silk Road
Want a virtual piece of law enforcement history? You're about to get your chance. The US Marshal's Service is holding an auction on December 4th that will sell off 50,000 Bitcoins from Ross Ulbricht (aka Dread Pirate Roberts), the alleged founder of the black market website Silk Road. You'll need plenty of real-world cash to get your hands on this digital currency, though. The feds are selling the digital currency in batches of 2,000 to 3,000 coins, and you'll need to place a minimum $100,000 deposit by December 1st to claim one of them. Not exactly an impulse purchase, then. At least this isn't the last auction you'll see -- police seized a total of 144,000 Bitcoins in the Silk Road bust last year, and roughly half of them have yet to go on sale. [Image credit: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer]
FBI seizes black market website Silk Road, arrests its founder
Light just reached one of the darker corners of the web: the FBI has seized Silk Road, a site infamous for hosting anonymized, Bitcoin-based drug and gun sales. The move follows a sting operation that also led to the arrest of site founder Ross Ulbricht (aka Dread Pirate Roberts) for alleged hacking, money laundering and narcotics trafficking. While the seizure isn't likely to stop online contraband purchases, it's potentially a big blow. At current Bitcoin values, Silk Road generated $1.2 billion in revenue from just two years of operation -- the kind of cash that we'd expect from a large, legitimate e-commerce venture. The FBI's move also demonstrates that anonymizing technology like Tor won't always keep law enforcement at bay.
