Online Drug Kingpin Arrested

Alleged online drug kingpin arrested at SF library
Henry K. Lee
Updated 1:25 pm, Wednesday, October 2, 2013

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The entrance to the Glen Park Branch Library in San Francisco. Ross Ulbricht, previously known by the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts, was arrested at the library on Tuesday.  Ulbricht was the alleged mastermind behind the online drug marketplace known as Silk Road. Photo: Kurt Rogers
The entrance to the Glen Park Branch Library in San Francisco. Ross Ulbricht, previously known by the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts, was arrested at the library on Tuesday. Ulbricht was the alleged mastermind behind the online drug marketplace known as Silk Road. Photo: Kurt Rogers


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(10-02) 12:59 PDT SAN FRANCISCO --

The alleged mastermind behind the online drug marketplace known as Silk Road - previously known only by the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts" - was arrested in a San Francisco library on federal drug and computer hacking charges as well as for allegedly trying to hire a hit man, authorities said Wednesday.

Ross Ulbricht, 29, was taken into custody at the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public Library about 3:15 p.m. Tuesday. He had a laptop in his possession at the time, said Kelly Langmesser, an FBI spokeswoman in New York.

The FBI said Ulbricht ran Silk Road from San Francisco, where he had been living for the past year, including at an Internet cafe not far from his Hayes Valley home. They said that since at least 2011, he has generated tens of millions of dollars in commissions by facilitating the sale of heroin, cocaine and LSD on an underground website that he himself once referred to as an "anonymous Amazon.com."

Ulbricht appeared Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Francisco on a complaint filed by federal prosecutors in New York charging him with narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. He was remanded into custody pending a hearing Friday.

The charges were the result of an investigation during which law-enforcement officials made more than 100 undercover purchases of drugs from Silk Road vendors, authorities said.

FBI Special Agent Christopher Tarbell described the website in an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in New York as a "sprawling black-market bazaar" that "provided a platform for drug dealers around the world to sell a variety of controlled substances via the Internet."

The website is run on what is known as the "Onion router" or "Tor" network, which makes it "practically impossible" to physically locate the computers hosting or accessing websites on the network, the affidavit said.

Federal prosecutors said Ulbricht engaged in money laundering by making use of Bitcoins, an anonymous form of digital currency.

Over the past two years, Silk Road has been used by "several thousand drug dealers and other unlawful vendors" to sell "hundreds of kilograms" of illegal drugs, generating about $1.2 billion in sales and $80 million in commissions, Tarbell wrote. While initially publicizing the site, Ulbricht, under the username "altoid," marveled about Silk Road, describing it as an "anonymous Amazon.com," investigators said.

Ulbricht also used Silk Road to facilitate the sale of software designed for computer hacking, such as password stealers and remote-access tools, the affidavit said.

Authorities also alleged that Ulbricht sought to use violence to protect his online empire. In March, he offered $150,000 to a Silk Road user "to execute a murder-for-hire of another Silk Road user, who was threatening to release the identities of thousands of users of the site" unless he was given $500,000 to pay off drug suppliers, Tarbell wrote.

Ulbricht was later given a picture of the purportedly dead victim, a resident of British Columbia, Canada, but there were no reports of anyone having been killed there, the FBI said.

"Your problem has been taken care of," the reported hit man wrote in a message to Ulbricht, authorities said. "Rest easy though, because he won't be blackmailing anyone again. Ever."

Ulbricht "has acted as a law unto himself in deciding how to deal with problems affecting Silk Road, and that he has been willing to pursue violent means when he deems that the problem calls for it," Tarbell wrote.

Authorities said they identified Ulbricht by examining his online activity. They said that in June, he was living with a friend on Hickory Street in San Francisco's Hayes Valley, just 500 feet from an Internet cafe on Laguna Street "from which someone logged into a server used to administer the Silk Road website."

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suge67 said:

damn, he was doing this since 2011 and gets caught now? He definitely made some Ms and with a good lawyer might avoid jail time.

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suge67 said:

damn, he was doing this since 2011 and gets caught now? He definitely made some Ms and with a good lawyer might avoid jail time.

Click to expand...

WhatsLosinLike said:

I just wanted to buy some weed man

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Brolic Scholar said:

They were more than likely giving him all the rope that he needed to hang himself and build a case that he won't beat. My guess is that they've been on to him.

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Brolic Scholar said:

suge67 said:

damn, he was doing this since 2011 and gets caught now? He definitely made some Ms and with a good lawyer might avoid jail time.

Click to expand...

They were more than likely giving him all the rope that he needed to hang himself and build a case that he won't beat. My guess is that they've been on to him.

Click to expand...