Justice Department Busts the Amazon of Drugs, Seizes Its Untraceable Loot Shane Harris - Foreign Policy
go to original October 3, 2013

It was the Amazon.com of the illegal drug trade. An online black market in which cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and LSD were bought and sold by anonymous customers and dealers, using untraceable digital currency. U.S. authorities called it "the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet..." And today, they announced they've taken it down.

In a criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday, the Justice Department announced that the online market Silk Road has been wiped off the Internet and its profits seized. Since its inception in 2011, Silk Road has been the bane of federal drug enforcement agents, who knew full well what the illicit marketplace was selling but were largely powerless to do anything about it. As of last month, there were more than 13,000 listings for illegal drugs of all varieties on Silk Road, the government said in its complaint.

Silk Road, which operates through an extensive network of routers that lets users remain anonymous, enabled several thousand dealers to distribute hundreds of kilograms of illicit substances, as well as other illegal goods and services, to more than a 100,000 buyers, federal prosecutors allege.

The site, which also sold hacker services and even advertised murder for hire, obscured transactions by requiring they be conducted in Bitcoin, an electronic currency "designed to be as anonymous as cash," prosecutors charge.

Read the rest at Foreign Policy

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