The Silk Road

Dear Readers, The “Dark Web” is a parasitical dark corner of the internet shrouded in secrecy and anonymity. You reach it with special VPNs and a TOR browser.  The data is encrypted and bounced around the world – a process called “onion routing” to evade detection.  

The Dark Web might be courageously used to organize surreptitiously in places like Russia, maybe as a necessary cloak of identity. That’s a benign utility. What is used most of the time is trafficking in illegality: drugs, money laundering, and child pornography. Some of humanity’s worst faces prowl the Dark Web.  

The Silk Road was an Amazon-like virtual bazaar site to shop and exchange criminal activity used by over 100,000 users.  Among other criminal transactions (again, including child pornography), it allowed for secret drug transactions, allowing vendors to distribute hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and yes, even fentanyl.  

We are supposedly sealing our borders to prevent these drugs from flowing into this country, while the Silk Road was doing this in darkness.  There were at least six deaths linked to drugs purchased on it from 2011 to 2013.

Its host went by the moniker of the “Dread Pirate Roberts” (a sick nod to the wonderful fantasy movie “The Princess Bride”).  The DPR unmasked was designed and run by Ross William Ulbricht, a graduate student from Penn State University.  He set it up as a marketplace of goods and services bought and sold with equally shadowy Bitcoins.

The Silk Road, and Ulbricht, were unmasked due to the 2-year under investigation thanks to the efforts of Homeland Security agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan.  It started in June of 2011 when Der-Yeghiayan noticed mail seizures of illegal drugs in small packages (one or two ecstasy pills) at O’Hare Airport in Chicago.  In time, they became more frequent, still suspiciously packaged in small quantities with pre-printed labels going to locales across the country. 

Der-Yeghiayan surfed the Dark Web and found the Silk Road, making over 50 different orders of illegal items on the site from different sellers.  In July 2013, he purchased the screen name of a staff member (Cirrus) working for the Dread Pirate Roberts to infiltrate Ulbricht’s organization and connect him to his alter ego.

Proving this was true was not easy.  Der-Yeghiayan and his team eventually traveled to Ulbricht’s home city of San Francisco.  They identified his hang-outs and set up a sting.  He and, most importantly, his laptop were seized at a library near Ulbricht’s home in September of 2013, as he logged onto a Silk Road administrative site as the DPR.  The computer and its browsing history were the keys to charging and convicting Ulbricht.  

The criminal enterprise was prosecuted out of the Southern District of New York, U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan.  There were over 173,991 Bitcoins (worth roughly $150 million) seized from the Silk Road and Ulbricht’s laptop when he was arrested.  In June of 2014, our government successfully had these Bitcoins civilly forfeited from a September 30, 2013, complaint filed in federal court, timed with Ulbricht’s arrest. 

In May of 2013, a Canadian citizen (James Ellingson) was arrested and an indictment was unsealed for negotiated murder-for-hire plots with Ulbricht.  Initially, this was from one individual in March, then four more people in April, after the first one had allegedly been killed.

They were using dark web messaging.  Initially, this was for a hit for a “Silk Road user who had threatened to release personal identifying information of Silk Road drug vendors and customers.  In these messages, Ellingson claimed to have control over most drug trafficking in Western Canada.”  This murder was allegedly confirmed by photographic evidence, although prosecutors lacked proof anyone was actually killed.

Ulbricht was found guilty in 2015 of crimes accusing him of creating and running the Silk Road, after a four-week trial before U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest.  In justifying a life sentence imposed on May 29, 2015, Judge Forrest said “There must be no doubt that you cannot run a massive criminal enterprise and because it occurred over the Internet minimize the crime committed on that basis.”

This is all relevant today.  Ulbricht is a free man pardoned by President Trump, who claimed the sentence was “ridiculous.”  President Trump said, “The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern-day weaponization of government against me.”  People died thanks to Ulbricht’s Silk Road; this must also be ridiculous.

Warner Robins attorney Jim Rockefeller is the former Chief Assistant District Attorney for Houston County, and a former Assistant State Attorney in Miami.  Owner of Rockefeller Law Center, Jim has been in private practice since 2000.  E-mail your comments or confidential legal questions to ajr@rockefellerlawcenter.com.