Followup on one of the worlds I’ll never visit

I previously mentioned 2 worlds explored that I’ll never enter.

One of those worlds has been closed until further notice.

The alleged mastermind behind the website Silk Road is now in federal custody. The person known publicly as Dread Pirate Roberts was arrested last week. His site is alleged to be the vehicle for sales of large amounts of illegal drugs.

The feds seized what is reported to be 600,000 Bitcoins in his personal folder along with 26,000 Bitcoins of customer funds. That’s reportedly around $80M worth of bitcoins.

Business Insider reports FBI Struggles To Seize Alleged Silk Road Founder’s 600,000 Bitcoins Worth $80 Million.  The FBI is having trouble getting to the money since they don’t have the private key to the wallet. Here’s how the article describes the situation:

The Bureau is in a position equivalent to having seized a safe belonging to a suspect with no idea of the combination – and no hope of forcing it open any other way.

The Guardian has more:  Silk Road shutdown: how can the FBI seize Bitcoins?

If you don’t want to get caught, don’t be stupid

The Guardian also reports Five stupid things Dread Pirate Roberts did to get arrested.

Looks like Mr. Pirate Roberts wasn’t so smart.

According to the article, he dropped not-so-subtle hints on his LinkedIn site that he was doing nefarious stuff.  He posted his real name in conjunction with asking for help with coding and used his real picture on 9 fake IDs. Why so many? So he could show ID to rent servers. I doubt you have to appear in person to rent servers from across the country, or in another country (at least that’s my guess, never having had exposure to that world) so a fake picture on your fake idea would really reduce your risk.

Check out the article for all the not-so-smart alleged moves made by the alleged drug peddler.

All of this is interesting to me as a glimpse into another world that is several light years removed from the world I live in. The technology angle is interesting, again as a glimpse into high-end tech that I never deal with.