After nearly three years of operating with impunity, the U.S. authorities have managed to close the website and find the alleged manager Silk Road (Silk Road in its English translation), a website with a structure similar to eBay in which more than 150,000 netizens have been trading in narcotics of all kinds from February 2011.
Nobody knew who was behind the Dread Pirate Roberts, the nickname that hid his true identity Ross William Ulbricht, an American of 29 years was arrested Wednesday in San Francisco in a joint operation between prosecutors, the FBI and police, reports AFP.
Network and in the media has been speculating all along about the true identity of the Silk Road manager , which maintained the anonymity because the page works only with browser that allows you to track IP addresses as the payments were made in bitcoins, a virtual currency, encrypted and independent of any regulator.
The site administrator has been pocketing commissions over the years between 6% and 10% of every sale that is made through the page, enter reaching nearly a million dollars a year (822,000 euros) , according to a study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (USA). Agents have seized to Ulbricht bitcoins worth $ 3.6 million (2.6 million euros), the largest seizure of this currency to date.
The FBI, in its brief, Ulbricht accused of drug trafficking, software piracy and money laundering, but also to pay $ 150,000 (110,000 euros) to a user of Silk Road to murdered another surfer who threatened to reveal the data of all members of the page. The FBI has failed, however, to determine whether or not the crime was consummated and that the records of the area that was not carried out is recorded no murders.
about the identity of Ulbricht, agents tracked the network for messages or publications that will be promoted the premiere of the page. After searching hundreds of conversations in forums on drugs, they found a user who advertised a new site where you could buy and sell drugs to escape the authorities. Officers found then a Gmail address with the same username, called Altoid, and then found that he had been registered by Ulbricht. From that moment began tracking the suspect and found that living in San Francisco with a different name and often received at home fake IDs.
has taken nearly three years to find a way to end Silk Road , after numerous media reports of the phenomenon during this time (including El Pais, who tried unsuccessfully to contact the manager a few months ago) and that even a U.S. senator asked its closure in 2011. It seemed that the web was designed perfectly so that it could never end it. Finally, on Wednesday appeared FBI logo portal Silk Road .
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