A popular black market website where drugs were sold has been shut down, and authorities have charged the man who ran the site with "massive money-laundering."
The Feds told the New York Times that Ross Ulbricht was arrested on Tuesday afternoon at a library in San Francisco for his site, Silk Road. Official documents filed in the case accused Ulbricht of laundering huge amounts of money, narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking and money laundering conspiracy, in addition to operating and trying to arrange a hit on another citizen. Ulbricht will make his first appearance in federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Ulbricht employed a user of the website "to execute a murder-for-hire of another Silk Road user, who was threatening to release the identities of thousands of users of the site," according to a complaint that was made public on Wednesday.
The website has been seized by authorities, the New York Times reported.
To make purchases on Silk Road, users went through a tool called Tor, which ensures Internet anonymity. When making transactions, users worked through Bitcoin, an application for virtual money that kept the identities of vendors unknown to the buyers. According to a study by Nicolas Christin, assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, around $1.2 million in sales were shuttled through the site every month.
Authorities reported that they'd gotten a hold of 26,000 bitcoins valued at around $3.6 million.
According to ABC News, the website has been called the "Amazon of illegal drugs," as well as the "eBay of illicit substances." The FBI called Silk Road "the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet." The website sold items ranging from drugs, firearms, computer and ATM hacks to assassins for hire.
Silk Road has been open for business online for two and half years-during that window of time, the website was used by a few thousand drug dealers who flipped the materials to "well over a hundred thousand buyers."
