Feds Take Down Online Fraud Bazaar ‘Silk Road’, Arrest Alleged Mastermind
Summary: Federal agents arrested 29-year-old Ross William Ulbricht, alleged operator of the Silk Road dark market known as "Dread Pirate Roberts," and seized the site's servers, replacing its home page with a seizure notice from the FBI, Homeland Security and the DEA. The complaint says the site hosted nearly 13,000 drug listings as of the prior month, plus 801 "digital goods" listings including banking Trojans and hacked Netflix and Amazon accounts, and that investigators copied a Silk Road server on July 23, 2013, after more than 100 undercover drug purchases dating to November 2011.
What you should know: The government seized roughly 26,000 Bitcoins worth about $3.6 million, which it called the largest Bitcoin seizure to date, and researcher Nicholas Weaver noted that any Silk Road buyer who skipped encryption had messages seized and that Bitcoin payout addresses can be traced to wallets.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Cybercrime & Law Enforcement
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