The internet is a relatively new medium for business in the grand scope of history, it has allowed for commerce instantly and anonymously. Where you used to have to go out of your house, to the store to buy your products in person, and before that going even further to find specialized shops and vendors for more specific products, now you can just get on a computer, order almost anything with an amazing amount of customization and specialization and have it shipped to your door in as few as a day with many sites not even charging for the shipping at all. Sites like amazon have revolutionized online commerce by creating a seamless marketplace online with everything you can think of with fast shipping and superb customer service. This site alone has killed the shopping mall with a value of over 650 billion amassed in just the last 20 years.
Another site called eBay also has a huge place in online commerce. Unlike amazon where buyers mostly purchase from professional vendors for new products, eBay allows for anyone to sell items on it’s site to potential buyers. The appeal is that the products here are the “second hand market”, meaning that items that might be sold out, or not longer being sold can often be found here, while it might be much more expensive. Products may also be used or simply in bulk where you can buy for cheaper than retail prices with often great value. The only drawback to some customers is that you cannot sell items of illegal nature, while this may seem obvious there is quite a market for things such as restricted narcotics, child pornography, escort services, weapons among others.
Where there is a hole in the market, demand for a service, something will fill that gap. And in the case of the “black market eBay” a man named Ross Ulbricht will step up. He, under the username “Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR)”, a nickname from the movie “The Princess Bride”, created a website called the “Silk Road”, a reference to trading routes in the middle east, in 2011.
The site was very tightly run as it was run through the dark web and users needed to have a Tor browser in order to access. The site also featured forums and a wiki for people to discuss topics related to the site and also a private messaging system similar to email. It also included a help section that users could use to receive assistance from site managers.
Immediately the Silk Road attracted the attention of both the United States Attorney’s Offices for the District of Maryland and also the Southern District of New York. Both Offices began investigations and quickly identified that a person going by the username DPR was operating and running the site as well as hosting the servers.
In January 2012, police gained permission to search the property of Ross Ulbricht, the lead suspect of the identity DPR. DPR signed his posts with a private PGP key which police recovered off of Ulbricht’s laptop, confirming his identity as DPR. Other evidence such as the instructions for how to contact and message the DPR, thousands of chat logs with Silk Road employees, journal entries of DPR ownership of the site, a copy of the Silk Road database and spreadsheets showing both the servers the run the website, as well as profits related to the site were all also found on his laptop. Police also found data that connected the travel plans of DPR which matched the travel plans of Ulbricht.
Ulbricht also was connected with 11 deaths. 6 deaths were drug related overdose, while the other 5 were murders commissioned by Ulbricht for at least $650,00 worth of bitcoin. He argued that the 6 not be considered because his sight actually made drug use safer in general, even citing that he hired a doctor to chat with customers about proper use and dosage and that any mistake be the fault of the customers alone.
Ulbricht was convicted with an offense level of 43, which is the highest possible level. He was convicted of the attempted murder of 5, large amounts of drug trafficking and money laundering. The court also found him responsible for the death of the 6 overdose victims. In describing the nature of his sentence, the court cited his offense, his character and the purposes of criminal punishment.