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New York Times Square Billboard Demands Release of Silk Road Darknet Drug Trafficker

A billboard in Times Square has been hired by the ‘Free Ross’ movement as part of a campaign to release Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road contraband marketplace on the darknet.

Ross Ulbricht is currently serving a double life sentence for his role as a darknet marketplace entrepreneur. He is in the seventh year of his sentence and it would appear that he is unlikely to ever be released without a pardon. He is 36 years old.

According to a tweet from the account ‘Clemency for Ross’, the billboard has been rented for several months. The post also claims the campaign message was paid for by a single ‘generous supporter’ and was not funded by any donations that they have received.

Times Square says FREE ROSS! #FreeRoss2020 pic.twitter.com/lbeRvakH2c
— Free_Ross (@Free_Ross) May 20, 2020

Ulbricht Double Life Sentence

Ulbricht was arrested and imprisoned in 2013 for setting up the ‘Silk Road’ darknet marketplace. He operated the site under the alias, ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ an obvious homage to the staple character in the Princess Bride.

The Silk Road online darknet market place reached the height of its popularity in 2011, and it was a pioneer in postal order drugs and other contraband, and unfortunately, the use of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin for trade on the black market.

Court documents from that time show that the darknet site facilitated around 1,229,465 transactions over its two-year operation. Ulbricht took a percentage of all proceeds.

Child Porn Solution From Prison

Despite having no access to the internet, Ulbricht has been able to remain active in the crypto community via his friends and supporters who will publish his contributions online.

Last month on May 20, one of his followers published on Ulbricht’s Medium account on his behalf. The article is on Ulbricht’s proposed automated solution called ‘ZKANN’ which the Silk Road founder believes would be an effective measure against the spread of child pornography and pedophilia on encrypted platforms.

Unfortunately, the use of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum has become the preferred payment for internet-based human trafficking and sexual exploitation services, which include blackmail porn and the sexual assault of minors and children.

Ulbricht states that as many large platforms already deploy algorithms such as to automatically moderate content. He goes on to recommend that the operators of encrypted platforms should combine zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) in conjunction with artificial neural networks (ANN)s to identify content depicting child abuse.

Ulbricht also advises that law enforcement data be used to train the ZKANN (ZKP + ANN) to identify the child porn and other inappropriate content and stop it from being launched on public systems.

Like the namesake of his alias, “Dread Pirate Roberts” it appears that Ulbricht is also more than what he appears. Despite his reputation as a criminal among the public, it seems underneath the guise of this notorious drug trafficker image is a man with some virtues worth respect which is perhaps why, even now, he finds himself with strong support for clemency.

Silk Road Programmer Pleads Guilty for Covering Up His Darknet Involvement to FBI and IRS

Silk Road computer programmer Michael R. Weigand pleaded guilty for providing false statements regarding his involvement with the darknet marketplace.

Silk Road programmer confesses

Weigand served as a tech advisor for the darknet leaders, and also utilized his skills as a programmer to fix any vulnerabilities the illicit marketplace encountered. Serving as a backend technician, the Silk Road operator also confessed that he had previously lied to the IRS and FBI about his involvement with Silk Road darknet market.

In addition, he had used Bitcoin (BTC) on the darknet website for his own gains. Finally, the computer programmer was alleged to have removed evidence leading to Silk Road from a London apartment in 2013.

Weigand is sentenced to five years in jail for his wrongdoings. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) chose to charge him for concealing his involvement with the darknet and misinforming the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), rather than for the crime itself. Weigand’s five-year prison term is nowhere as hefty as that of Silk Road founder, Ross Ulbricht, who is sentenced to prison for life.

Speaking about the now-defunct Silk Road and the charges against Weigand yesterday in US court, acting attorney Audrey Strauss said:

“Silk Road was a secret online marketplace for illegal drugs, hacking services, and a number of other criminal activities. When Weigand was questioned by law enforcement in 2019, he falsely claimed not to have done anything at all for Silk Road. For his various false statements, Weigand now faces potential prison time.”

Weigand’s sentencing is scheduled for December.

For some law enforcers, this serves as a perfect depiction of how Bitcoin’s underlying public ledger has made it hard for cybercriminals to hide from law enforcement forever, as the transactions that they conduct run on a blockchain, which can be easily accessed.

Crypto makes financial crime easier to track

Paxful chief compliance officer Lana Schwartzmann brought up the advantages of cryptocurrency adoption in a regulatory discussion about cryptocurrency, by indicating that digital assets could easily be traceable and tracked.

She referenced the infamous Twitter Bitcoin hack targeting moguls such as Bill Gates and Elon Musk that overtook the internet by storm a few months ago, and how the huge crypto heist that ran on the platform was resolved within a matter of weeks. The culprits were also caught and punished accordingly by US law enforcement.

Different Stances on Cryptocurrency Risk Revealed, Many Still Link Crypto to Cyber Fraud

In a global survey on cryptocurrency understanding comparing perspectives of banks, governments, and professionals in the cryptocurrency industry, findings revealed that many were divided in their stance on digital currencies.

556 respondents in the cryptocurrency industry were surveyed, including banks, financial intelligence units, cryptocurrency exchanges, and banking professionals. Authorities worldwide were questioned, and results revealed general disagreement on the safety of cryptocurrency use.

While it should come as no surprise that the cryptocurrency industry exuded the most positive sentiments regarding crypto, governments and traditional financial institutions still viewed crypto as a gateway for crimes such as money-laundering, dark web activities, terrorist funding, and more. 70% out of 556 participants indicating this as a main concern.

The survey showed that cybercrime activities fueled by digital assets translated to around 1% of all transactions. However, with digital transactions on the rise, it also indicated that many criminals leveraged crypto to bypass the scrutiny of financial regulators. The report read:

“While cryptocurrency use by criminals only accounts for around 1% of all transactions, it remains an attractive venue for those avoiding the traditional financial system.”

For professionals in the cryptocurrency industry, they were more likely to view crypto assets as a potential integration for business purposes in the future.

The survey, conducted by the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists in collaboration with the Royal United Services Institute, also showed that most respondents viewed cryptocurrencies as being too volatile to be an alternative for fiat currencies for the time being.

However, despite the skepticism around cryptocurrency for financial inclusion, many were open to the idea that cryptocurrencies may be highly relevant in the future. The findings read:

“Respondents predict both an increased role for cryptocurrency in day-to-day payments in the future as well as a decrease in cryptocurrency use for illicit activities, especially as compared to how it is viewed now.”

In the report, most have indicated that Bitcoin was the most known cryptocurrency asset, but since cybercriminals have used as payments for trafficking drugs and weapons on the Silk Road, it appears as though its reputation has been marred.

According to Chainalysis, of the $1 trillion cryptocurrency transactions that were processed in 2019, only 1.1% of them were found to be illicit.

$1 Billion in Bitcoin Moves From Silk Road Wallet, a Format Update or a Hack?

69,370 Bitcoins (BTC) just moved from an address known to be connected to the infamous Silk Road darknet marketplace for the first time in five years in what could be a hack or a way to keep up with the Bitcoin network’s address format. At the time of writing, the BTC moved is valued at nearly $1 billion.

Crypto intelligence firm Ciphertrace has reported that an anonymous crypto user has just moved over $1 billion in Bitcoin from an address associated with the Silk Road darknet marketplace—speculating the wallet was either hacked or the user is trying to stay up to date with the Bitcoin network.

According to Ciphertrace on Nov. 3, the BTC was moved in two transactions and equated to almost one billion dollars in Bitcoin. The anonymous crypto user reportedly first sent a test transaction on 1 BTC, before then moving a further 69,369 Bitcoin from the Silk Road wallet address.

The crypto intelligence firm offered a plausible explanation that the BTC transactions were an effort to switch to a new address format and stay up to date with the BTC network. However, as the original address associated with the Silk Road darknet market has recently become a popular hacking target, they could not rule out the possibility that the wallet was finally cracked.

According to Ciphertrace:

“These movements could possibly mean that the wallet owner is moving funds to new addresses to prevent hackers from accessing the wallet.dat file or that hackers have already cracked the file.”

The last time the funds were moved from the wallet associated with the Silk Road darkweb market was in April 2015. The wallet has reportedly been circulating among darknet hackers for the last two years, with some hackers being so bold as to call on google to lend them a quantum computer to crack the address and the private key.

Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht is currently serving a double life sentence for his role as a darknet marketplace entrepreneur after being found guilty of money laundering, computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics. He is in the seventh year of his sentence and it would appear that he is unlikely to ever be released without a pardon. He is 36 years old. The darknet marketplace was officially shut down in 2013.

In September 2020, Silk Road computer programmer Michael R. Weigand pleaded guilty for providing false statements regarding his involvement with the darknet marketplace.

US Government Now Holds $1 Billion in Bitcoin After Silk Road Seizure Using Blockchain Analysis

The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) recently requested the Northern District of California to seize $1 billion in Bitcoin from an unnamed hacker. The DoJ has asked to lock down on approximately 69,370.22491534 Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), Bitcoin SV (BSV), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

The person behind the wallet referred to as “Individual X,” has allegedly managed to hack the Silk Road to steal the cryptocurrencies. Individual X has agreed to sign over the funds earlier this week, making the funds the largest crypto seizure in Bitcoin history.

The address “1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbh,” now contains crypto assets that are worth over $1 billion dollars. This address was Bitcoin’s fourth-largest address which was dormant for around five years up until a few days ago.

The Bitcoin wallet addressed was tied to Silk Road, which was operating between 2011 to 2013 as a dark web marketplace facilitating transactions of illegal goods including drugs and unlicensed weapons using BTC.

Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm supported law enforcement agents to identify the largest wallets with connection to Silk Road. The blockchain analytics firm used the Chainalysis Reactor, following the money from Silk Road, to another wallet, then subsequently to Individual X’s wallet.

It was then found that Individual X liquidated some of the funds, but most of the funds were still held in the individual’s wallet as Bitcoin’s price surged, until they were seized and moved to the US government’s wallet.

With the seizure of digital assets, the US government has become one of the biggest holders of BTC. Previous similar incidents involving BTC held in authorities’ custody have been sold at federal auctions.

US Government at a Loss of $9.9 Billion Due to Auctioning of Bitcoin

Estimates by market analysts have shown that the United States Government has forgone gains amounting to $9.9 billion through the auctioning of Bitcoin (BTC) since 2014.

While exercising its regulatory powers, the US Government has clamped down on Bitcoin amid other related assets that were a product of fraud, or generally illicit proceeds from an organized syndicate.

Among the prominent website channels Bitcoin was seized from was Silk Road, the darknet platform founded by Ross Ulbricht. The platform was notorious for being a marketplace for all things illegal including the sales of heroin, and money laundering to mention a few. Bitcoin serves as one of the main mediums of exchange on the platform. Upon the clampdown of Ulbricht and early users, the US Government seized some Bitcoin, estimated to be worth about $1 billion according to a Blockchain.news report.

The US Marshalls began auctioning the BTC assets from all sources as early as June 2014 with the first proceeds coming in at $18,740,000 for 29,657 BTC from the recognized winning bidder Tim Draper. The second batch of auctions in the same year involved 50,000 BTC, which was given away for $19,000,000. The sharp difference in price may be a resultant effect of the prevalent market price of the asset at the time.

One of the Silk Road Bitcoin auctions involved some 44,341 BTC whose winning bid $14.6 million. Per all the auctions conducted by the US Marshalls to date, a total of $151.4 million have been raised, a sum that will have topped about $10.1 billion given Bitcoin’s current values above $50,000 to date. The forfeited gains amounted to $9.975 billion dollars.

There are indications that the US government still has seized Bitcoin in its reserves per the Blockchain.news report, and there have been no announced plans to auction any at this time.

Silk Road Founder Agrees to Use Seized Bitcoin Worth $3Bn to Clear off $183m debt to US government

According to a court filing first reported by Wired media outlets, about $3 billion worth of seized Bitcoin in connection to an unnamed Silk Road hacker will be used to absolve Ross Ulbricht of his $183 million debt to the US government.

Ulbricht is the founder of the now-defunct online illegal drug marketplace ‘the Silk Road,’ which used Bitcoin to facilitate the sale of several illegal items like drugs, weapons, and other illegal items.

The Silk Road marketplace is commonly recognized as the first dark web marketplace, which started its operations in 2011. In 2014, the FBI seized the marketplace and arrested its founder Ross William Ulbricht (a.k.a. Dread Pirate Roberts). But before the FBI shut down the site in 2015, the marketplace was hacked by someone who made off with 69,370 BTC.

After the site was shuttered down in 2015, the authorities convicted Ulbricht for a range of crimes, including computer hacking and sentenced him to life in prison without parole. As a result, Ulbricht was ordered to pay $183 million in restitution related to Silk Road’s total sales.

In November 2020, the government seized the hacker’s 69,370 BTC. In 2021, the Justice Department made a deal with Ulbricht which saw him forfeit any claim he might have to the funds. In exchange, the department will use the recovered Bitcoins to pay his restitution when the cryptocurrency is auctioned. Currently, there is no set date on when the auction for the seized Bitcoin will take place.

Silk Road’s Moral Complexity

Silk Road was known as the place to go to broker murder-for-hire, child pornography, illegal drugs, and malware – such as keyloggers, password stealers, and remote access tools. The marketplace used Bitcoin as its currency and Tor for anonymity.

Silk Road had more than 100,000 buyers and was able to launder hundreds of millions of dollars derived from illicit transactions. At the time of its takedown, Silk Road had almost 13,000 listings for controlled substances and many more listings offering illegal services, such as murder for hire, computer hacking and others, which translated into commissions of 600,000 Bitcoin and sales of 9.5 million Bitcoin.

Although Silk Road used blockchain to obscure the money trail and discourage tracking, the US government authorities used a third-party Bitcoin attribution firm and were eventually able to trace the allegedly stolen funds to Bitcoin addresses owned by hackers.

Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht Apologizes to the Public on the Eve of His 10th Year in Prison

Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht who is currently serving a double sentence in prison for his role in running a distribution network that allows buying and selling hard drugs through the use of Bitcoin made a statement on Friday describing his emotions on the eve of his 10th year in prison.

According to a Twitter post via his account run by a loved one, Ross shared that he regrets his actions as the mastermind of Silk Road. He admitted to having caused a lot of pain and ruined his life when he looked back at his many errors.

Ulbricht was arrested and sentenced to life in prison on seven charges in 2013; distribution of narcotics, distribution of narcotics over the Internet, conspiracy to distribute narcotics, furthering a criminal enterprise, conspiracy to hack a computer, conspiracy to smuggle using false identification, and money laundering.

Ulbricht received proceeds through Bitcoin from about 1,229,465 transactions over the two-year operation from his ‘darknet’ website as stated by court documents.

The Silk Road founder is still very much present in the crypto space despite his sentence. He introduced a decentralized social protocol (DSP) in 2021 stating how it will operate and the problems to solve.

Support for Ulbricht

Ulbricht has continued to receive support from crypto enthusiasts around the globe. Most of his supporters feel his sentence is unfair and therefore deserves a second chance.

The ‘ClemencyForRoss’ support group on Twitter made a Twitter post on Friday stating that Ulbricht doesn’t deserve to die in prison because he is a first-time offender, his charges were non-violent and he has shown an exemplary life by giving help to others in prison.

According to a news report by Blockchain.News, a billboard in Times Square was rented for several months in 2020 by Ulbricht’s supporters to campaign for his release.

Some of Ulbricht’s supporters believe that he only created a safe space for conducting business and the government is only after him because they didn’t get a share from his proceeds.

$1 Billion Worth of Bitcoin Moved from US Law Enforcement Seized Wallets

In March 2023, over 50,000 Bitcoin (BTC) worth $1 billion were moved from multiple wallets connected to US law enforcement seizures. The transfers included three transactions, with the majority being internal transfers. However, about 9,861 BTC was sent to Coinbase, with the remaining BTC consolidated into two wallet addresses.

The BTC was seized by US agencies from the Silk Road marketplace in November 2021. The Silk Road was an online black market and one of the first darknet markets to accept Bitcoin payments, helping to popularize crypto use. The marketplace was launched in 2011 by its American founder, Ross Ulbricht, under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts.” U.S. law enforcement agencies confiscated multiple items from Ulbricht, including hoards of BTC, which have been auctioned from time to time.

In 2014, popular Bitcoin proponent Tim Draper bought nearly 30,000 BTC in one of these auctions. Another auction for 50,000 BTC was held in October 2015, where the US Marshals Service auctioned 21 blocks of 2,000 BTC and one block of 2,341 in an online auction.

While only a small portion of the 50,000 BTC was sent to Coinbase, the movement of billions worth of BTC from US enforcement agency-linked wallets evoked wild reactions and even wilder theories from Twitter users. Some pointed out that if US agencies decided to sell their Silk Road Bitcoin, it would put significant selling pressure on the market. At the same time, a few others questioned the timing of the sale.

The movement of such a large amount of Bitcoin highlights the growing adoption and usage of cryptocurrencies in the financial industry, as well as the potential for misuse and criminal activity. Despite this, the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies, blockchain, offers a transparent and secure way to track transactions and prevent fraud.

US Government to Sell Seized Silk Road Bitcoin

The United States government has announced plans to sell more than 41,000 Bitcoin that were seized as part of the case against Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. The news comes from a filing submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on March 31, which detailed the ongoing proceedings against James Zhong.

The U.S. government authorities have already begun liquidating roughly 51,352 Bitcoin (BTC) seized in the Ulbricht case. The filing reported that officials sold around 9,861 BTC for over $215 million on March 14, which leaves approximately 41,491 BTC remaining.

According to the court filing, “The Government understands it is expected to be liquidated in four more batches over the course of this calendar year.” It remains to be seen how the Bitcoin market will react to such a large influx of cryptocurrency hitting the market, but it is likely that this news will generate significant interest among investors.

Silk Road was an online black market that allowed users to purchase illegal goods and services using Bitcoin. The website was shut down by the FBI in 2013, and its creator, Ross Ulbricht, was arrested and sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2015.

The U.S. government’s seizure of the Bitcoin associated with Silk Road was one of the largest cryptocurrency seizures in history. At the time, the Bitcoin was worth roughly $1 billion, although its value has since increased significantly.

This announcement from the U.S. government is just the latest in a series of moves to regulate the cryptocurrency industry. Regulators around the world are increasingly concerned about the potential for cryptocurrencies to be used in illegal activities such as money laundering and terrorism financing. As a result, we can expect to see further scrutiny of the industry in the years ahead.

In conclusion, the U.S. government’s decision to liquidate the seized Silk Road Bitcoin is likely to have a significant impact on the cryptocurrency market. Investors will be closely watching the market to see how it reacts to such a large influx of Bitcoin, and regulators will be keen to ensure that the cryptocurrency industry is not used for illegal activities. We will continue to monitor this developing story and provide updates as they become available.