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Silk Road 2.0 Seized By FBI, Alleged Founder Arrested In San Francisco

Posted by timothy on from the slippery-stuff-that-silk dept.

blottsie writes The FBI has arrested the online persona "Defcon," identified as Blake Benthall, a 26-year-old in San Francisco, who the agency claims ran the massive online black market Silk Road 2.0. Benthall's FBI arrest comes a year after that of Ross Ulbricht, also from San Francisco, who's the alleged mastermind of the original Silk Road and still awaiting trial. The largest of those reported down is Silk Road 2.0. But a host of smaller markets also seized by law enforcement include Appaca, BlueSky, Cloud9, Hydra, Onionshop, Pandora, and TheHub. Also at Ars Technica.

9 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Another Idiot Tempts the Fates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really, a second fool resides in the US while running an illegal operation? Go ahead, wave a red cape at the bull, but don't cry when it gores you.

    1. Re:Another Idiot Tempts the Fates by ArhcAngel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      CIA? Naw they'll just grease the wheels of the local politicians to arrest that guy and deport him without due process. At least that's the way Kim Dotcom tells it.

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    2. Re:Another Idiot Tempts the Fates by lgw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ... It will NEVER stop.

      ... until the primary products sold there are legalized. Several more states legalized pot this month. I expect it will be sold on Amazon in my lifetime. That will certainly be the end for a black market for that particular good. How much of Silk Road's market (in terms of money actually spent) is for similarly innocuous stuff? For all the hype, I doubt the assassination market is real. There are of course some drugs that will never be legal - anyone know if that's a big business?

      The business for botnets is probably with us forever, but amazingly the price of cloud servers is coming down low enough where it won't make much sense to use a botnet except directly for criminal activities (DDOS etc).

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  2. Not smart by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Who is still using these sites after all of the Silk Road 1.0 arrests? You have to be pretty dumb to risk your freedom on some stranger's computer security skills.

    1. Re:Not smart by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What arrests? From what I gathered last time I looked into it, people advertised drugs with their public PGP key. The actual transaction with payment and shipping address happened encrypted between the seller and the buyer, they got Slik Road 1.0 the site but not anything like a customer registry or order history. Of course there's the risk of dealing with the individual dealer but hey, it's not exactly like that's risk free in the real world either. From what I gather it was pretty much like closing down a torrent site, everybody just moves to another site and carry on like before. Now who'd operate an online drug sales portal that's a good question, you're getting waaay too much exposure compared to the rewards. But that's for the 0,1% who runs the site, not the 99,99% that use them.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  3. I have said it before... by Noryungi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ... And I will say it again: if the FBI can arrest these people and bring down these ''black'' markets, who are supposed to be on Tor and protected by iron-clad crypto, it means only two things:

    1. Tor is not as secure as everybody says it is (because _____ insert your favourite conspiracy theory/security failure here).

    2. NSA/GCHQ, etc... justification for snooping on everyone (terrorists! drugs! guns!) is just complete and utter bull****. Hard detective work pays every time, and is probably more cost-effective than the massive surveillance and privacy violations we have right now.

    Please note that 1 and 2 are not necessarily opposed to each other. We may well have 1 AND 2 at the same time..

    --
    The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
  4. Re:DON'T ABUSE TECHNOLOGY!!! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is the reason why we can't have anything nice. Is because their are too many jerks out there who will use a new technology as a way to do illegal activities!

    How is Silk Road infringing on your ability to do anything? 90% of the activity on Silk Road are private transactions between consenting adults for things that should have never been illegal in the first place. The way to have less crime, is to criminalize fewer things.

  5. Re:Silk Road 3.0... by kromozone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    MDMA is relatively benign and no one is overdosing on it. What you do increasingly see is people overdosing on what they think is MDMA because it's not as readily available now thanks to law enforcement.

    http://www.theguardian.com/pol...

  6. Re:DON'T ABUSE TECHNOLOGY!!! by fnj · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A complete lack of victims other than self does bloody goddam well make it not wrong, however.