Sam Niu ’15: Just as the Mainline Takeover Project was an avenue for drugs into the EA community, online markets, such as the Silk Road, also provide easy access to drugs and other illicit materials. The federal government, however, delivered a significant blow to these types of sites by recently winning the conviction of Silk Road creator Ross William Ulbricht. A Manhattan jury deemed Ulbricht, known as Dread Pirate Roberts, guilty of seven federal charges on February 4, 2015.
One of these charges carries a minimum of 20 years in prison, with his total sentence potentially being life.
The Silk Road was an online black market created in 2011 to launder drugs and other illegal materials over the Internet using the Bitcoin digital currency in the transactions. While in some cases, the creator of a website through which illegal activities take place cannot be held responsible for these crimes, it was argued, and accepted by the court and jury, that Ulbricht had set up Silk Road with the intention of it being a means for drug trafficking. This decision allowed Ulbricht to be convicted of a charge that normally applies only to drug kingpins.
Also accused of negotiating assassinations on six accounts and computer hacking, Ulbricht was caught signed into the Silk Road as Dread Pirate Roberts, leading to his quick conviction by the jury, in about three and a half hours. Ulbricht will appeal his case, as his defense argues that his witnesses were not given the appropriate chance to present to the jury.
Ulbricht maintains that he is being setup by the former chief executive of Mt. Gox, a company that dealt in Bitcoin exchange, Mark Karpeles. The FBI was preparing to indict Karpeles up to a month before the arrest of Ulbricht. In light of this, the defense implied that Karpeles, believing he would be arrested and convicted, made a deal with the FBI giving up names of Silk Road administrators. Karpeles, however, rejected these accusations.
Following Ulbricht’s arrest and the subsequent end of the Silk Road in 2013, another black market drug trafficker created Silk Road 2.0, run by a man known as Defcon. The Silk Road 2.0 has, according to the Department of Justice, since November 2013, generated about eight million dollars per month. Blake Benthall, allegedly Defcon, the leader of Silk Road 2.0, was arrested along with Brian Farrell, the self proclaimed right-hand man to Defcon, known as DoctorClu.
This trial, as well as the arrests and shutting down of other online markets, has sparked controversy and opposition from Internet privacy activists who believe that this case could create a precedent which would ultimately limit online free speech. These strings of arrests are a part of the FBI’s cracking down on illegal activities online and prove that the anonymity of the Internet and the deep web, though difficult to break, is not absolute.