The man prosecutors believer to be Dread Pirate Roberts, the creator of the Silk Road, has plead not guilty on all charges in a Manhattan court Friday.
Ross Ulbricht, who was arrested last fall as part of the US government’s raid on the Silk Road black market, faces charges of conspiring to traffic narcotics, hack computers and launder money; he’s also been hit with the “kingpin statute,” according to Forbes, which refers to his alleged engagement in a “continuing criminal enterprise.”
We’ll have to wait until Ulbricht’s trial in November to find out how well that Godfather-sounding charge sticks. Many people will be interested in discovering how US investigators put together a trail of evidence (eight to ten terabytes worth, in fact) that led them to infiltrate the dark web, seize some 174,000 Bitcoin and identify Ulbricht as Dread Pirate Roberts.
Ulbricht’s attorney, Joshua Dratel, has made previous statements suggesting the NSA could have been involved in cracking Silk Road’s servers.
The Silk Road was an online marketplace that existed only on the dark web and was only accessible via a special browser. Once in, a user could then pay for all kinds of illicit products and services with Bitcoin.
Ripple effects of the Silk Road’s demise are still being felt. BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem, who was arrested and posted a million-dollar bond in late January, faces federal charges for his alleged role in a Silk Road money laundering scheme.