Ross Ulbricht is a young American who started a revolution by creating one of the largest black markets in the world, thus proving his libertarian and anarchic ideas, by creating the legend of the Silk Road and its renowned operator, Dread Pirate Roberts.
One of the best-known personalities in the cypherpunk and cyberpunk world is Ross Ulbricht, a young American who became famous throughout the world for being the creator of the dark market, Silk Road, under the pseudonym of Dread Pirate Roberts.
Digital Certificate
Ross Ulbricht Story
His full name is Ross William Ulbricht, and he was born on March 27, 1987, in the city of Austin, Texas, in the United States. His parents, Lyn Ulbricht and Kirk Ulbricht, ensured the good education of his son, who grew up in the metropolitan area of the city with his sister, Cally Ulbricht.
Living in Austin, Ross attended the West Lake High School, known for being one of the top 200 high schools in the entire United States (occupying the 106th place). Following his graduation, Ross began his undergraduate studies at the renowned University of Texas, where he graduated in 2006, having completed his studies in Physics. He then began attending the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Master's degree in Materials Science and Engineering, and where he also studied crystallography.
Knowing the libertarian theories
At the same time, Ulbricht began to show great interest in liberal economic theories, especially in the economic writings of Von Mises, whose economic philosophy he adhered to and publicly defended in various debates. His interest in "libertarian economics" quickly led him to seek his future by creating his own projects, so, after finishing all his studies in 2009, he decided to return to his native Austin.
However, these first attempts to start his own business failed. His latest attempt was an online book-selling site known as «Good Wagon Books«, but this project also failed, which brought Ulbricht to the ground. Worried about his debts and his future, he decided to put into practice the maximum expression of the libertarian theories that embraced his mind and thus began the development of Silk Road, the first great dark market in the world.
Silk Road and the legend "Dread Pirate Roberts" are born
The breakdown of his previous efforts to start his own businesses led Ross Ulbricht to try one last time, with something clearly revolutionary: a dark market on top of Tor and that would use the newly born Bitcoin as a currency of exchange.
The idea itself was the maxim of the libertarian economic theories followed by Ulbricht: a digital market where you could buy whatever you wanted, anonymously and, whose payment was made with a difficult-to-trace pseudonymous currency, Bitcoin. Passionate about the idea, Ulbricht began development on Silk Road until its release in February 2011.
Silk Road could be defined with a single phrase: free trade. The registration to enter the market was quite simple and, in fact, it was not even necessary to give real data of your identity or location, that was something that the users could later arrange with the seller. Among the few rules of the group were to make gentlemen's agreements (do not miss the trade or you will be banned) and avoid placing offers that are very "outlaw" and that inflict damage on others.
However, Silk Road was full of offers of all kinds of illegal drugs both in the United States and in much of the world. In addition, there were those who offered forged identity documents, driver's licenses, visas, passports and more legal documents. It was also not uncommon to find offers of weapons, pornography or dubious professional services. A lot of that stuff was banned, some just slipped through your fingers.
In any case, Silk Road was alive and behind him was Dread Pirate Roberts, the pseudonym that Ross Ulbricht adopted for this new project.
The rise of Silk Road
Unlike the first projects Ross started, Silk Road was a huge success. The site began to be frequented and used by people from all over the world with a single purpose: trade freely. Although Ross's idea is laudable (free trade has no problem), most of his trading volume was due to the trade in illegal substances, pharmaceutical prescription drugs (some dangerous), and document forging services, among others. .
It didn't take long for Silk Road to start attracting a lot of attention with its services. So what Ross called "economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systematic use of force“, began to attract the attention of authorities around the world.
The first was the attention of Senator Charles Shumer, who in June 2011 invited the DEA to close the place once and for all. Shortly after, the site would suffer a DDoS attack that would take it out of service and for which he suffered a "blackmail" in which they asked for 5000 dollars to stop the attack. Another theory blames DEA and FBI authorities for the attack and for disguising it as a hacker community attack on the site.
The fall of Silk Road and arrest of Ross Ulbricht
In any case, the site remained active until 2013, when after an apparent mistake by Ross Ulbricht, Gary Alford, an IRS investigator, was able to establish a connection between Ross and Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR). The mistake was using his real email account on an internet forum. Alford would discuss his meeting with the FBI and by October 1 they would plan a trap to catch Ross.
To do this, FBI agent Chris Tarbell would set a trap for Ross. Tarbel would put Jared Der-Yeghiayan of Homeland Security Investigations to use the account of Silk Road administrator Cirrus, who was collaborating with the FBI at the time.
During Ross and "Cirrus's" conversation, several FBI agents surrounded Ross undercover, and during what many call "Hollywood" action they distracted Ross and quickly took his laptop away, fearing he was using some kind of UBS Killer with your laptop and all the data on it would be lost. Following his arrest, the site he ran was shut down, declaring the death of Silk Road, and the beginning of a manhunt that he would turn up for several of the people behind many of the site's illicit activities.
The charges and their sentence
Ross Ulbricht was accused of several crimes including drug trafficking, computer hacking, money laundering, contracting hitmen with the intention of eliminating an employee who had been arrested and users who extorted him.
However, several of these charges were dismissed by Judge Katherine Forrest due to lack of evidence and evidence fabricated by agents (the hit man was a lie created by DEA agents Carl Mark Force IV and Shaun Bridges, which used to steal bitcoin from the Silk Road case, valued at 730 thousand dollars and for which they were tried and convicted).
The case followed by Judge Forrest took almost two years and her verdict was a double life sentence, plus 40 years in prison, without the possibility of parole. Since then, Ross Ulbricht has been serving his sentence at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.
The consequences for your “roaders”
With the evidence in Ross Ulbricht's computer and the collaboration of Cirrus, the FBI and DEA were able to track down various characters within the Silk Road. One of the best known is Cornelis Jan "Maikel", known as "The Pablo Escobar of Silk Road", for being the biggest drug dealer on the site. This Dutchman was caught by the police and received 10 years in jail for all his activities which included the sale of 104 kilograms of MDMA, 566.000 ecstasy pills, four kilograms of cocaine, unknown amounts of amphetamine, LSD, marijuana, ketamine and Xanax.
Other personalities who were arrested were Silk Road administrators Andrew "Inigo" Jones, Gary "Libertas" Davis and Peter "Simmetry" Nash. Andrew received a sentence of 5,5 years in prison, Davis for his part received 6,5 years and Nash received a sentence of 17 months.
For his part, Cirrus, the key behind Ross's capture, was actually agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan, working undercover. Der-Yeghiayan detailed how the process was to go from "seller" to "manager" of Silk Road, escalating and gaining confidence, until everything was ready for the capture of Ross. In fact, Der-Yeghiayan points out that his promotion to administrator (for which he was paid 8 BTC a week) took place in July 2013, and Ross' arrest was made on October 1. The intervening time was necessary to gather all the necessary evidence, plan the capture and carry it out.
Author
