FBI Shuts Down Silk Road

[Mazmaz]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9910TR20131002

http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweav...lComplaint.pdf

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Wednesday it arrested Silk Road owner, Ross William Ulbricht, 29, known online as "Dread Pirate Roberts," in San Francisco on Tuesday, according to court filings.

Ulbricht, who holds an advanced degree in chemical engineering, appeared in federal court on Wednesday and a bail hearing was set for Friday.

His lawyer Brandon LeBlanc, a public defender, declined to comment.

Federal prosecutors in New York charged Ulbricht with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, the filing said.

"Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today," FBI agent Christopher Tarbell said in the criminal complaint.

The site was used by "several thousand drug dealers" to sell "hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs," he said.

The site, which has operated since early 2011, also offered tutorials on hacking ATM machines, contact lists for black market connections and counterfeiters, and guns and hit men for sale, according to the charges.

More than 900,000 registered users of the site bought and sold drugs using the digital currency Bitcoin. In recent media reports about the growing popularity of Bitcoin, the Silk Road website has emerged as part of a darker side to the use of digital currencies.

Through the site, according to the charges, users could buy drugs and have them shipped to an address. Investigators, posing as regular users on Silk Road, made more than 100 purchases of drugs, which were shipped to the New York area.

"DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS"

According to the complaint, Ulbricht, who shortened his alias from Dread Pirate Roberts to DPR when posting on Silk Road's forums, operated the site from San Francisco.

At times, he used computers at Internet cafes to access the servers running the website, which employed several technological tools to mask the location of its servers and the identities of its administrators and users.

The complaint described other aspects of Ulbricht's online presence: In a Google+ profile, he described himself as a fan of libertarian economic philosophy and posted videos from the Ludwig von Mises Institute, an Auburn, Alabama-based economics institute.

Reached by phone in Austin, Texas, Ubricht's parents said they had not known what their son was doing in San Francisco.

"He is a really stellar, good person and very idealistic," said Ulbricht's mother, Lyn Lacava. "I know he never meant to hurt anyone."

Ulbricht's father Kirk confirmed his son had received a master's in material sciences from Pennsylvania State University. His thesis was titled: "Growth of EuO Thin Films by Molecular Beam Epitaxy."

"He did amazing research on crystals and exotic materials they hoped would have some use for humans," Ulbricht said. "But it was very theoretical stuff."

The complaint against Ulbricht describes a darker side. During one correspondence with a Silk Road user, Ulbricht tried to call out a hit on another user with whom he had a dispute. That user, known online as "FriendlyChemist," was threatening to expose the identities of thousands of Silk Road users unless Ulbricht sent him money.

"I wouldn't mind if he was executed," Ulbricht wrote, offering personal details about his foe, including the fact that he was a married father of three, and the names of the city and province where he lived.

In a later post, Ulbricht wrote: "He is threatening to expose the identities of thousands of my clients."

"This kind of behavior is unforgivable to me. Especially here on Silk Road, anonymity is sacrosanct."

BITCOIN CONNECTION

During the raid, authorities seized $3.6 million worth of bitcoin, which was used instead of cash or credit cards to complete transactions on Silk Road.

The charges against Ulbricht said his website generated sales of more than 9.5 million bitcoin, roughly equivalent to $1.2 billion.

Authorities seized the currency by taking control of the digital "wallets" Silk Road used to store bitcoin.

In a corresponding civil asset forfeiture action, prosecutors claimed Silk Road and Ulbricht were liable to the government for the value of all transactions involving drug tracking and computer hacking, as well as for money laundering penalties, and a final amount would be determined at trial.

The raid on Wednesday was not the first time the U.S. government has made arrests related to Silk Road.

Earlier this year, authorities in South Carolina arrested Eric Daniel Hughes, known on Silk Road as "Casey Jones," and charged him in state court with drug possession. The Drug Enforcement Agency seized units of bitcoin, which Hughes allegedly used to purchase drugs from the online market.

Bitcoin, which has been around since 2008, first came under scrutiny by law enforcement officials in mid-2011 after media reports surfaced linking the digital currency to Silk Road.

(Additional reporting by Daniel Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Bernadette Baum)

[Ragnus]

How do you seize bitcoins?

Also, The Silk Road definitely isn't gone forever. Someone, somewhere will remake it.

[Vendog]

Man all this stuff gets shutdown before i learn about and get to use it.

[Kyreth]

How do you seize bitcoins?

Also, The Silk Road definitely isn't gone forever. Someone, somewhere will remake it.

Assuming someone doesn't just come up with an offshore equivalent- or didn't do it already.

And you seize bitcoins by getting the physical servers that hold the bitcoin coding in question- thus, the "wallets". Of course, USING it might be tough unless they can get him to roll on the encryption.

[Jakson]

RWU is not the real DPR. The real DPR made a fortune off Silk Road and has been living like a king Patagonia since 2012.

[ronin sparthos]

For a second I thought this article was going to be about the shitty Silk Road MMO. Then it hit me.

[archibaldcrane]

Damn, threatening a hit against a guy threatening to drop dox? This dude's a regular Walter White amirite?

[chiyio]

Lame. The forums there were really informative on certain things. I don't think I would trust purchasing anything on a site like that anymore though.

[Bilopdop]

For a second I thought this article was going to be about the shitty Silk Road MMO.

Me too, but after reading it, this Silk Road is a much better game.

Also, I need to keep my digital wallet hidden.

[Esvedium]

RWU is not the real DPR. The real DPR made a fortune off Silk Road and has been living like a king Patagonia since 2012.

/golfclap

[archibaldcrane]

Lame. The forums there were really informative on certain things. I don't think I would trust purchasing anything on a site like that anymore though.

Still, how many people were busted buying drugs on Silk Road? A handful? Gotta be safer (both physically and from a law enforcement perspective) than buying them any other way.

[Nephlite]

Assuming someone doesn't just come up with an offshore equivalent- or didn't do it already.

And you seize bitcoins by getting the physical servers that hold the bitcoin coding in question- thus, the "wallets". Of course, USING it might be tough unless they can get him to roll on the encryption.

If they figure out how, they could probably cash it out like any online currency. Online transactions that involve real money don't actually shift actual money around, it's a marker used by banks and investors who will (eventually) cash it out for hard currency from an intermediary source like a currency exchange investor. From what I've heard, there are such banks that deal with Bitcoin exchanges since it took off and the U.S. will probably go to one of the larger ones who will cash it out for U.S. dollars and invest it somewhere else. Once it's up for civil forfeiture, you can bet your ass they'll seize the asset immediately (especially since the government is so strapped for cash).

[hey]

Assuming someone doesn't just come up with an offshore equivalent- or didn't do it already.

And you seize bitcoins by getting the physical servers that hold the bitcoin coding in question- thus, the "wallets". Of course, USING it might be tough unless they can get him to roll on the encryption.

Not sure if you know this, but bitcoin wallets are just numbers, which allow you to spend whatever bitcoins are associated with that number. A different number is used to spend bitcoins than to receive them, so you could just write it down on paper, put it in a safe, then bury the safe, to store them. Putting a wallet on a server would be quite silly.

[Bregor]

[BaneTheBrawler]

relevant to the above:


classmate shared this. had to explain how money works. "lol ok" Not sure if she understood. Not sure if I care.

[Bregor]

That's why I always love the news stories about rising gas prices. WILL WE SEE $5 A GALLON? Who cares, talk to the poor fucks in the 70s who had to deal with what equates to ~$15 a gallon.

[Andalusian girls]

relativity is hard

[BaneTheBrawler]

its not even that that bothers me. its that the picture is taking two different values to make assumptions about two different things none of which are relevant to each other. It's just random shit, like the sort of thing Palin and her ilk would say on campaign. Just words strung together that don't actually mean anything.

the little bit about minimum wage is totally irrelevant. It doesn't have anything to do with anything else in that picture. They could just say "5 1964 quarters" and make the same incorrect point. But that doesn't obfuscate enough, so they threw in minimum wage.

'64 quarters are silver, modern quarters are not. The price of silver has nothing to do with government decree, so in this case "robbed by fiat" is just a fancy way of saying "i have diarrhea of the brain please get angry on my behalf"

also, the only way the "robbed by fiat" thing could make any amount of sense is if the creator somehow thinks that by earning 25 cents they are entitled to a silver quarter worth ~5 dollars. I chose to deal with only that part, since the others would have been more obviously political and attracted the retards. This way I get to pull the smart-guy-trying-to-educate card, which is less likely to cement resistance. Also helps that my reputation in high school was as a smart guy. the way i phrased it:

The third assertion is wrong. Money isn't supposed to have any inherent value, and you don't own it. You own the value assigned to it. The coin itself still belongs to the U.S. Mint. However, there's no law that says you can't melt down quarters and above, so if you find a '64 silver quarter, you could do that and make some money off the government. Or you could sell it for even more to a collector. But if you just use it as a regular quarter, you're not being stolen from. You still got the 25 cents worth out of it. So, if anything, by melting or selling silver coins, you're actually stealing from the government, who paid for that silver in the first place. They don't care, though. Just don't melt nickels or pennies.

Edit: Also, as long as I'm ranting about it, I see this kind of shit from classmates and family members and friends all the time and it's fucking infuriating to know that they're leading normal, relatively successful lives while I'm just barely living. Fuck. Lots of built up resentment, I guess, because this paragraph got pretty long for a while.

[Lucavi]

Ignorance is oftentimes bliss, baby. Just because you know more of the truths of the world doesn't mean you're happier because of it. Knowledge sometimes has to be its own reward.

[Blubbartron]

I thought the picture was trying to say that you're being robbed by fiat because minimum wage isn't automatically adjusted for inflation (which is itself a direct result of fiat currency). Then I looked it up, and 1964's $1.25 in today's money is around $9.50. So it's kinda true in that regard, although clearly the picture is misleading since it's inflating the discrepancy by using the value of silver which, along with gold, has seen massive increases in value in recent times because of fuckwits like Glenn Beck.