Cybersecurity
Silk Road Served as EBay for Heroin ‘Dread Pirate’ Jury Told
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Silk Road, the online marketplace where prosecutors claim more than 1 million drug deals were done from 2011 to 2013, resembled a normal consumer site like EBay or Amazon.com, only with listings for cocaine, LSD and black tar heroin.
Ross William Ulbricht, 30, who prosecutors say went by the name of “Dread Pirate Roberts,” is on trial for creating Silk Road and running it until his arrest in October 2013. A federal agent who said he made more than 50 drug buys from Silk Road and went undercover as a site administrator, walked jurors through the process of anonymously trading money for bitcoins and then using the digital currency to buy drugs with a few clicks of a computer mouse.