The question is how did a site that allegedly allowed users to buy illicit drugs, deal black market weapons and even hire hit men stay above water long enough to handle that much revenue over its two-and-a-half years of operation? Several prominent users of the site have also been taken into custody, and more arrests are due to follow. The man, Ross William Ulbright, has been charged with three felonies.
That owner, a 29-year old man who allegedly went by the moniker "Dread Pirate Roberts" was arrested at a public library in San Francisco.
Transactions totaled the Bitcoin equivalent of $1.2 billion, earning the site and its owner some $80 million in commissions. From Februto July 23, 2013, more than 1.2 million transactions were completed on the site involving nearly 147,000 different buyers and nearly 4,000 different sellers. It largely succeeded, if the FBI details about the business are any indication. RELATED: WHAT ARE BITCOINS AND WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? “The site has sought to make conducting illegal transactions on the Internet as easy and frictionless as shopping online at mainstream e-commerce websites,” the FBI’s Christopher Tarbell said in the agency’s complaint. Shoppers on the Bitcoin-based marketplace could also find hacking services, fake documents, pirated media and much, much more. The currency of this particular frontier is the Bitcoin, itself a highly anonymous currency – a Bitcoin account has no name or personal information attached to it – it is only identified by a string of 27-34 alphanumeric characters. The underground site had been a hub of illicit drug sales - including nearly 13,000 listings for heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other controlled substances, according to the FBI complaint. officials seized and shut down a hidden but sprawling online marketplace called Silk Road, known as the eBay of illegal goods and services.
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