FBI Seizes Deep Web Black Market Silk Road, Arrest Owner

So the Government or whatever has enough time to spend resources on arresting people who were peacefully conducting business online but they can't seem to not have time to fix the United States debt problems. Go figure...

The U.S Government is crossing boundary lines trying to control what people want to do instead of actually helping the people. This B.S has gone way too damn far. The people of the United states don't seem to even care if their liberties are being taken away (have been taken) and this is a perfect example of that.

This "DPR" fella who they arrested surely did many stupid mistakes in concealing his identity but inherently he did nothing wrong (except for the FBI claiming that he tried to hire a hitman to kill off a blackmailer who wanted to get half a mil or else he would release the identitiesof 5k people which would risk their privacy).

Cheers to the fellas who will be running the future successor of Silk Road.
Someone out there needs to teach these idiots we call politicians/Gov't/FBI/NSA etc... how to properly respect the people.

Another quick rant: The US itself is a mistake in my opinion. They stole land from the native americans. For just a short while we were truly free before this stupid government went full apeshit on us.

Now Kudos to the original DPR...

RIP SILKROAD (2011-Oct. 2013)
 


after a day of reading news, and a ton of different threads on different forums, there is one conclusion that can be drawn about this:

there was no flaw in silk road: it worked. the flaw was human error and pure sloppiness. if he would have spent as much time concealing his own identity in his day to day interactions online (aka stackoverflow) as he did for SR he wouldn't be in this predicament right now. The TOR model works and will continue to stand up against FBI poking and what not for a very long time.

the FBI is claiming that they gained access (or maybe discovered, or were made aware of) the silk road "servers" but we do not know this. more will be revealed once we get a court date and are able to see a discovery from the FBI of what happened.

if the FBI were smart, they'd mask their egos and just say they reverse/parallel engineered his identity via his sloppiness.
 
shawnhag said:
after a day of reading news, and a ton of different threads on different forums, there is one conclusion that can be drawn about this:

there was no flaw in silk road: it worked. the flaw was human error and pure sloppiness. if he would have spent as much time concealing his own identity in his day to day interactions online (aka stackoverflow) as he did for SR he wouldn't be in this predicament right now. The TOR model works and will continue to stand up against FBI poking and what not for a very long time.

the FBI is claiming that they gained access (or maybe discovered, or were made aware of) the silk road "servers" but we do not know this. more will be revealed once we get a court date and are able to see a discovery from the FBI of what happened.

if the FBI were smart, they'd mask their egos and just say they reverse/parallel engineered his identity via his sloppiness.
Click to expand...

I highly doubt the FBI was smart enough to exploit anything in any way so I think it was just this DPR's sloppiness. Like he should have known that he had early tracks and should have done whatever he could to protect his identity but he was just in it for the money maybe? or maybe just lazy?
 
LeCunt said:
So the Government or whatever has enough time to spend resources on arresting people who were peacefully conducting business online but they can't seem to not have time to fix the United States debt problems. Go figure...

The U.S Government is crossing boundary lines trying to control what people want to do instead of actually helping the people. This B.S has gone way too damn far. The people of the United states don't seem to even care if their liberties are being taken away (have been taken) and this is a perfect example of that.

This "DPR" fella who they arrested surely did many stupid mistakes in concealing his identity but inherently he did nothing wrong (except for the FBI claiming that he tried to hire a hitman to kill off a blackmailer who wanted to get half a mil or else he would release the identitiesof 5k people which would risk their privacy).

Cheers to the fellas who will be running the future successor of Silk Road.
Someone out there needs to teach these idiots we call politicians/Gov't/FBI/NSA etc... how to properly respect the people.

Another quick rant: The US itself is a mistake in my opinion. They stole land from the native americans. For just a short while we were truly free before this stupid government went full apeshit on us.

Now Kudos to the original DPR...

RIP SILKROAD (2011-Oct. 2013)
Click to expand...

You must be new to the US. They shut down the Silk Road solely because the guy was making tons of money and not paying taxes on it. If you still think the US gov actually does things to "help people" you're lying to yourself.

It baffles me how he was just hanging out in his house not giving a fuck though. First rule of operating a billion dollar drug trafficking business: move to a third-world country and run it from there. I'm not bashing him for leaving a trail because no marketers are THAT careful from day 1 of their careers, but once you hit the point where you're pulling in billions of dollars of revenue on something that's 100% illegal it might be time to get out of the spotlight and take your yacht down to Panama.
 
o hai guyz said:
You must be new to the US. They shut down the Silk Road solely because the guy was making tons of money and not paying taxes on it. If you still think the US gov actually does things to "help people" you're lying to yourself.

It baffles me how he was just hanging out in his house not giving a fuck though. First rule of operating a billion dollar drug trafficking business: move to a third-world country and run it from there. I'm not bashing him for leaving a trail because no marketers are THAT careful from day 1 of their careers, but once you hit the point where you're pulling in billions of dollars of revenue on something that's 100% illegal it might be time to get out of the spotlight and take your yacht down to Panama.
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Maybe I expressed myself incorrectly but that's what I mean that the government currently in place is useless and just does things that don't help the people. It's just a POS Government that hogs our money.

I 100% agree with you on this. I have no idea why in the world he'd be thinking of running a massively scaled narcotics operation from the US.
 
Feds: Silk Road boss paid $80,000 for snitch

Ross William Ulbricht ordered the hit against an employee who took delivery of a kilogram of cocaine valued at $27,000, according to a superseding indictment filed in federal court in Maryland. Shortly after receipt, the employee came under suspicion of stealing from other Silk Road members after he was arrested by law enforcement authorities, prosecutors said. Communicating with an undercover law enforcement agent posing as a drug smuggler, Dread Pirate Roberts—the online moniker prosecutors say Ulbricht used as leader of Silk Road—first asked that the suspected employee be beaten and forced to return the stolen Bitcoins. Soon, the indictment alleged, the kingpin changed his mind.

"Can you change the order to execute rather than torture?" Ulbricht allegedly asked in January. The employee—who prosecutors said had access to private messages sent by all Silk Road users including its boss—"was on the inside for a while, and now that he's been arrested, I'm afraid he'll give up info." Dread Pirate Roberts, who agreed to pay $40,000 in advance and another $40,000 when the hit was completed, added he had "never killed before, but it is the right move in this case," the indictment added.

On February 4, Dread Pirate Roberts allegedly transferred $40,000 into a bank account controlled by the undercover agent. On March 1, Dread Pirate Roberts had the remainder deposited into the account after he received a staged photo that purported to depict the body of the employee who had died of asphyxiation and heart rupture after being tortured.

...
Click to expand...

#dprispewep
 
I cant' believe how stupid this guy was. If he had read How to Be Invisible, he wouldn't have made this stupid mistake: Never receive mail at your home if you want to remain invisible!

The government says it identified Ulbricht after a routine border search of a package that contained nine counterfeit IDs. The package was shipped from Canada to an address in San Francisco. When the government visited the San Francisco address, they found Ulbricht there.
Click to expand...

He also should have lived somewhere like Kazakhstan not San Francisco!
 
JarredLv said:
aYuv6OF.jpg


Not exactly what I was expecting...

He wasn't caught because Silk Road is flawed. He was caught because he made some pretty stupid moves. He should have had complete and total segregation between his two lives. Based on what I've read about his capture, I'm surprised it took this long.
Click to expand...

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but the discussion on the Silk Road subreddit has a great summary of the events:

I'm currently reading through the criminal complaint, which covers a lot of things worth noting with regard to how and why DPR got caught.
  • This has been a joint operation run the cybercrime squad within the FBI's New York field office. It involved the FBI, DEA, IRS and Homeland Security's investigative unit.
  • ---
  • It's unstated from when the investigation started, but they received a complete copy of the Silk Road web server on the 23rd of July 2013. This was all done under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, which implies that they had access to current site information up until the point they shut the site down.
  • This included user account and transaction information. It's unclear whether or not this covers addresses and other sensitive transaction information.
  • **This also apparently covers at least 60 days worth of messages from the period where the site was copied.
  • From February 6, 2011 to July 23 2013, 9,519,664BTC was generated in sales, 614,305BTC going directly to DPR in the way of "commissions". This comes to a total of 1,229,465 transactions.
  • Based on the copy of the site which the FBI received, they believe DPR to have been the sole operator and owner of SR, handling all aspects of the site himself and delegating only user affairs to appointed moderators.
---
  • In March of this year, a SR user/vendor called "FriendlyChemist" attempted to extort DPR via SR's private message system, providing proof that he had the names/addresses of thousands of vendors/users after having allegedly hacked a bigger vendor. He demanded $500,000USD, saying that he needed the money to pay off his supplier. DPR then stated that he wished to speak to FriendlyChemist's supplier.
  • A user called "redandwhite" then proceeded to contact DPR, stating that he was FriendlyChemist's supplier and also the owner of his debt. DPR then solicited redandwhite to "execute" FriendlyChemist, supplying redandwhite his full name and address. After having agreed on terms, DPR sent redandwhite approximately $150,000USD (1,670BTC) to have FriendlyChemist killed. redandwhite later provided photographic proof of the alleged murder.
  • Investigators could not find any record of somebody in that region being killed around that date or matching that description. This possibly implies that DPR was duped/scammed, but, DPR is also quoted as having told redandwhite the following: "Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for 80k."
---
  • DPR has been identified as Ross William Ulbricht.
  • > "He is 29 years old, graduated from the University of Texas with a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics in 2006. From 2006 to 2010, he attended graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania School of Materials Science and Engineering."
  • His LinkedIn profile is at: Ross Ulbricht | LinkedIn
  • Now, onto how he got caught...
  • An agent involved in the investigation ("Agent-1"), found the first few references to SR on the internet from somebody only identified as "altoid", attempting to promote the site in its beginning days, in January of 2011.
  • In October of the same year, a user also going by the name of "altoid" made a posting on Bitcoin Talk titled "a venture backed Bitcoin startup company", which directed interested users to "rossulbricht at gmail dot com".
  • That email address is what led to DPR's downfall.
---
  • After identifying "altoid", they started connecting the "DPR" identity to Ulbricht pretty quickly.
  • Ulbricht's Google+ page and YouTube profile both make multiple references to the a website dubbed the "Mises Institute". DPR's signature on the SR forums contained a link to the Mises Institute.
  • DPR cited the "Austrian Economic theory" along with the works of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, all of which are closesly associated with the Mises Institute.
  • Server logs show that someone logged onto the SR administration panel from San Fransisco around the same time that Ulbricht was staying in San Fransisco.
  • Multiple fake IDs were intercepted by U.S. Customs & Border Patrol while on their way to an address which Ulbricht was living at the time. These IDs all carried photos of Ulbricht but had false names and details. This was around the same time that DPR stated in a message that he was acquiring some fake IDs to buy new servers.
  • When questioned by Homeland Security about the fake IDs, he refused to answer any questions but then stated that anyone could purchase such things using "Silk Road" and "Tor".
  • The address which Ulbricht was staying at was being rented in cash and he was living with housemates who knew him under a name which corresponded with one of the fake IDs.
  • He posted on StackOverflow using his real name, inquiring about how to use curl/PHP to grab things off Tor, before quickly changing the name to "frosty" (with a fake email: frosty@frosty.com)
Miscellaneous notes

Pretty WTF that you'd start an illegal black market but leave such an obvious trail. Even more WTF is how it took so long to catch him.

Even more WTF is some of the laws the US used to catch him. For example, the appropriately named "Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty". :uhoh2:
 
I never thought for a minute that the owner would be from the US. Why on earth would you stay there? Step 1: Relocate. It's not like he couldn't afford it.

There will be a replacement soon. This method of drug sale isn't going anywhere.
 
Those are some pretty dumb fuck ups, and he deserves to get his ass raped to teach him a lesson.
 
dsm56 said:
Flagged for what? Misseling biz opps and acai? Don't you think the NSA has bigger fish to fry?

I'm 100% against this surveilance stuff, but let's be honest most people worried about being "flagged" and "surveyed" are just feeding their own ego thinking they are important when they are not at all.
Click to expand...

I have been pinched once and I dont that to happen once more. Doing CPA isn't harmful, but buying shit like vcc to pay for ahrefs might get you 2+ years in fed for lousy 70$ a month saving. And yeah,thats minimum charge for ID theft.

I can say I pay all my taxes 100% right, we all do hide some shit left and right. So be safe then sorry.
 
So DPR still has control of that btc wallet right? So whenever he gets out depending on the price of btc he could be a billionaire.....

That's one hell of a golden parachute.
 
Does anyone find it strange that Atlantis (silk roads main competitor) shut down last week? When they shut down they gave a 1 week notice to their user's to get their funds out.

The timing is no coincidence.
 
It's nice how this guy and the Silkroad is now connected to Austrian Economics and Libertarianism. Very convinient.
 
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