If you want to buy a book online, at this point pretty much everyone goes to Amazon.com. Right? If you want to buy shoes? Zappos. Domain name? Godaddy. An 18 year old Brazilian girl’s virginity? eBay. A one way flight to Brazil? Kayak. But where do you go if you want to anonymously buy illegal drugs like heroin, cocaine, meth, molly, LSD etc… all from the privacy and comfort of a web browser? Well, up until 3:15pm on Wednesday October 2nd, for all these illicit purchases and more you could have gone to a website called SilkRoad.
What happened Wednesday at 3:15pm? After months of painstaking investigation, the FBI swooped in and arrested the long sought-after mastermind of this highly illegal anonymous drug marketplace. Who was this mastermind? Was it a secretive Russian hacker living in Moscow? A Chinese internet tycoon operating from a private yacht in international waters? Actually, it was a 29 year old American named Ross Ulbricht who operated most of his empire out of a San Francisco coffee shop. When he was arrested, he was actually using the free wifi at a public library.
This story is long, but completely insane, totally worth reading all the way through. In case you need some teasers, this story involves billions of dollars worth of drug transactions, an enormous illegal fortune made entirely out of Bitcoins, fake passports and even a couple of hitmen.
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