US authorities said today they had shut down the Silk Road website and arrested its owner on charges he ran an online black market for illegal drugs and services.
Ross William Ulbricht, also known as "Dread Pirate Roberts," was arrested yesterday in San Francisco after the website was shuttered, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Prosecutors said they seized approximately USD 3.6 million worth of Bitcoins in the largest ever seizure of the virtual currency.
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From about January 2011, Ulbricht ran a marketplace that hawked heroin, cocaine, LSD, and methamphetamine as well as hacker tools such as software for stealing passwords or logging keystrokes on people's machines, according to the court documents.
Prosecutors also charged that in March of this year, Ulbricht tried to hire someone to kill a Silk Road user who threatened to expose the identities of others using the website.