The trial of Ross Ulbricht begins

The man who is accused of creating the largest underground online store, Silk Road, will be put on trial for the first time today - 15 months after he was detained in the San Francisco library along with his laptop, authorized on the Silk Road website under the Mastermind account. He faces numerous charges, including the spread of drugs, computer hacking, money laundering, as well as a special article that is used against the drug mafia.

If the 30-year-old Ross Ulbricht does not conclude a deal at the last moment with the accusation, the hearings will begin today in the court of New York. The accused himself stubbornly insisted on holding a trial, and his alleged alter ego (Dread Pirate Roberts) created a real cult of the digital economy of a new type and gathered many fans around him. Therefore, the process promises to be very interesting.

Evidence against Ulbricht collected serious. A file (diary) was also found on his laptop, where Ulbricht logged his criminal activity in detail.
')
It remains unclear only the question of how the FBI was able to de-anonymize the user Tor. Perhaps, for this they used some illegal methods . Ulbricht's lawyers, who are partly funded by donations from the bitcoin community, well-known professionals under the leadership of Joshua Dratel (Joshua Dratel), probably have trumps in their sleeves and try to use them to the full extent.


Ulbricht laptop screen photography

Today, a jury will be selected among the residents of New York, who will have to pass a verdict.

Presumably, the process will last at least a month. It is not entirely clear how open it will be to the public, but one thing is clear: we will surely find out more details about the activities of the underground online store, as well as the methods of special services to de-anonymize users .

Silk Road was not the first place in Onion's hidden network where drugs were sold, but quickly became the largest exchange. The site was founded in early 2011, and became widely known in June of the same year after an article in Gawker . The browser emphasized the convenience of the store: high-quality photos of the product, user reviews, the reputation system of sellers. All this favorably distinguished Silk Road from criminalized street trading.

In the summer of 2013, the head of the largest underground online stock exchange Dread Pirate Roberts managed to give an interview to Forbes . He said that his activity had an ideological basis: “We are talking about the potential for a fundamental shift in the structure of power in the world. People can now control the flow and distribution of information and money flows. Sector by sector, the state is squeezed out of the equation, and power is returned to people. This is a good example of how technology transforms society and the whole world order.

UPD. On the first day, Ross Ulbricht admitted that he had invented and founded Silk Road, but had declared his innocence, because all illegal operations were carried out by third parties, and he did not control the stock exchange. Dread Pirate Roberts is a different person.