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Irish Silk Road figure extradited to the US
The US is continuing its quest to try Silk Road's foreign leaders. Irish resident Gary Davis (aka "Libertas") has been extradited to the US to face charges over his alleged involvement in the dark web outfit as an administrator. He faces charges of computer intrusion, money laundering and narcotics distribution. IF he's convicted, he could face life in prison.
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 investigator gets more jail time for second Bitcoin theft
A Secret Service agent already convicted to 71 months in prison for swiping Silk Road Bitcoins will get another two years for a separate Bitcoin theft, Reuters reports. Shaun Bridges pleaded guilty to stealing 1,606 Bitcoins -- worth around $360,000 at the time and now valued at over $11 million -- from a Bitcoin wallet controlled by the Secret Service. The theft was discovered when the agency tried to return some of the coins after they were seized from the European BitStamp exchange.
Authorities bust AlphaBay, the dark web's biggest marketplace
After the demise of Silk Road, the role of the dark web's most notorious black marketplace was assumed by AlphaBay. But The Wall Street Journal reports that the site has now been shuttered, thanks to a joint law enforcement operation between the US, Canada and Thailand. One of its operators, Canadian Alexandre Cazes, was arrested in Thailand, but was found dead in his prison cell earlier this week.
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.
Irish court orders accused Silk Road admin's extradition to US
Silk Road's saga hasn't ended just because some of its primary architects are behind bars. An Irish court has ordered the extradition of Gary Davis, an alleged key administrator for the Dark Web-based black market, to the US. Davis reportedly both handled customer questions and organized Silk Road's many items (including drugs and hacking tools) into sections. He's poised to appeal the ruling, and for good reason: he could face a life sentence if the US convicts him.
Disgraced US agent may be responsible for multiple Bitcoin thefts
A US secret service agent already convicted of stealing over $800,000 in Bitcoin during the Silk Road investigation is also suspected of lifting even more of the cryptocurrency from two other cases. According to the affidavit, the former agent is suspected of stealing roughly $700,000 from the secret service's account months after the agency was urged to block his access. Shaun Bridges pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to almost six year years for the original theft.
Hyperloop One team dreams of connecting Europe and China
Hyperloop One has teamed up with the city of Moscow and a local company to explore bringing the Hyperloop to Russia. The trio will investigate how and where such high-speed transportation can be integrated into the country's existing transport network. Since Moscow itself has a population of 16 million people, cheap, quick and reliable mass transit is always worthy of further study. But the wider picture is that Hyperloop One views this as the first step on building a new high-speed freight link between Europe and China.
Silk Road 2.0 staffer gets 8 years in prison
It's clear that authorities want Silk Road 2.0's operators to face stiff penalties for running an online black market... even when they're not the top dogs. A federal judge has sentenced Brian Farrell, a key assistant to site architect Blake Benthall, to 8 years in prison. Farrell had pleaded guilty in March to conspiring to sell illegal drugs (including cocaine, heroin and meth) through the Dark Web portal, which emerged just weeks after law enforcement shut down the original Silk Road in fall 2013.
Crooked Silk Road investigator arrested a second time
You'd think that a former Secret Service agent caught stealing Bitcoins during the Silk Road case would know better than to try to elude authorities, but apparently that isn't the case. Ex-investigator Shaun Bridges was re-arrested January 29th after he was caught with bags containing a passport, records for offshore accounts, documents for his wife's non-US citizenship application and multiple bulletproof vests. Needless to say, that looks more than a little suspicious -- especially when Bridges was a day away from turning himself in to serve a nearly 6-year sentence for corruption charges. It's not exactly certain what he had in mind, but the odds are that he wanted to be out of the US on January 30th.
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.
Ex-federal agent gets 6 years for stealing Silk Road bitcoins
Shaun Bridges, the second federal agent taken to court for stealing Bitcoins while investigating Silk Road, has been sentenced to 71 months or almost six years in prison. US District Judge Richard Seeborg told the court that he was compelled to hand a high-end sentence for one count of money laundering and one count of obstructing justice, as he saw the case as "an extremely serious crime consisting of the betrayal of public trust from a public official" motivated by greed. Bridges, who was part of the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force, ransacked drug dealers' accounts, locking them out and stealing around 20,000 bitcoins in all. That was worth around $350,000 at the time, but as of this writing, that number of bitcoins is already equivalent to almost $8 million.
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.
Carnegie Mellon says it didn't help the FBI hack Tor for money
The Tor network volunteers recently accused Carnegie Mellon University of helping feds uncover the identities of some shady website operators and users, including drug distributors and child pornographers, in exchange for $1 million. In a statement released today, however, the university doesn't only deny getting money from the FBI, but also heavily implies that it was served with a subpoena that requested the details of its Tor research. "The university abides by the rule of law," it said, "complies with lawfully issued subpoenas and receives no funding for its compliance."
Rogue federal agent to serve 6.5 years for Silk Road scandal
Former federal agent Carl Force has been sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison for his role in obstructing justice while investigating the online black market, Silk Road. As Reuters tells it, prosecutors were aiming for a longer sentence (87 months, or 7.25 years) but the defense was aiming for a brisk four-year sentence due to a history of mental health issues. To back up that claim, Force said he didn't understand a lot of what he was doing. Even the movie deal? Ars Technica reports that Force will have to pay $337,000 in restitution to a CoinMKT customer and $3,000 to an arrested Silk Road employee by the name of Curtis Green. If you'll remember, the last federal agent involved with the corruption charges, Shaun Bridges, is awaiting trial, while Silk Road's mastermind Ross "Dread Pirate Roberts" Ulbricht was given a life sentence for his crimes. [Image credit: Tim Arbaev for Getty]
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.
Key Silk Road witness gets 2.5 years in jail
One of the reasons that Silk Road was so popular and dangerous was because it enabled people who would have otherwise never dealt drugs to become Scarface-like kingpins. That's the tale of Michael Duch, an IT consultant who has wound up being sentenced to two and a half years in prison for dealing heroin. Duch agreed to testify against the site's founder, Russ "Dread Pirate Roberts" Ulbricht in exchange for a lower sentence, and told the court how easy it was to make anything up to $70,000 a month from home.
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.
