2 sites vie for Silk Road’s criminal customers

U.S. law enforcement agents served tech-savvy drug users a major dose of buzzkill this week by shutting down Silk Road, a ‘dark Web’ site considered the world’s largest online marketplace for illegal drugs. The site’s alleged owner, previously known only as “Dread Pirate Roberts” or “DPR,” has been arrested on multiple felony counts and unmasked as 29-year-old Ross William Ulbricht, a San Francisco engineer. 

 

The first criminal complaint against Ulbricht (pdf), filed in New York, lists his charges as one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy.

Ulbricht also allegedly tried to hire hitmen to kill two people who threatened his anonymity – one a user who tried to blackmail him, the other a former employee who’d been arrested. A separate indictment filed in Maryland charges him with conspiracy to commit murder of a witness, use of interstate commerce in murder-for-hire, conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance, and aiding and abetting.

 Experts believe that, if convicted, Ulbricht faces life in prison on the drug charges alone....

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