Ross William Ulbricht, the mastermind behind the Silk Road underground website, has had a significant portion of his ill-gotten gains forfeited by the government. According to a recent court ruling, Ulbricht’s 144,336 Bitcoins, seized from his laptop computer in 2013, have been sold for a whopping $48,238,116.
Ulbricht was found guilty in 2015 of distributing narcotics, distributing narcotics by means of the Internet, conspiring to distribute narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit computer hacking, conspiring to traffic in false identity documents, and conspiring to commit money laundering.
The forfeited funds were the subject of a parallel civil forfeiture action filed in Manhattan federal court in 2013. United States District Judge Katherine Forrest entered a Stipulation and Order today in which Ulbricht withdrew his claim to the Proceeds, and the Proceeds were forfeited to the United States.
Ulbricht created Silk Road in January 2011 and owned and operated the underground website until it was shut down by law enforcement authorities in October 2013. Silk Road emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet, serving as a sprawling black-market bazaar where unlawful goods and services, including illegal drugs of virtually all varieties, were bought and sold regularly by the site’s users.
While in operation, Silk Road was used by thousands of drug dealers and other unlawful vendors to distribute hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs and other unlawful goods and services to more than 100,000 buyers, and to launder hundreds of millions of dollars deriving from these unlawful transactions.
The civil forfeiture case is being handled by the Office’s Money Laundering and Asset Forfeiture Unit. Assistant United States Attorney Christine Magdo is in charge of the case.
Key Facts
- State: New York
- Category: Drug Trafficking|Cybercrime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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