Phone banks dedicated to the Federal Bureau of Investigation are shown during a tour of the Multi-Agency Communications Center (MACC) at an undisclosed location in the Chicago suburbs May 17, 2012. 
 
 NEW YORK U.S. law enforcement authorities have shut down "Silk Road," an anonymous Internet marketplace for illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine and criminal activities such as murder for hire, and arrested its alleged owner. 
 
 The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Wednesday it arrested Silk Road owner, Ross William Ulbricht, 29, known online as "Dread Pirate Roberts," in San Francisco on Tuesday, according to court filings. 
 
 Ulbricht, who holds an advanced degree in chemical engineering, appeared in federal court on Wednesday and a bail hearing was set for Friday. 
 
 His lawyer Brandon LeBlanc, a public defender, declined to comment. 
 
 Federal prosecutors in New York charged Ulbricht with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, the filing said. 
 
 "Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today," FBI agent Christopher Tarbell said in the criminal complaint. 
 
 The site was used by "several thousand drug dealers" to sell "hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs," he said. 
 
 The site, which has operated since early 2011, also offered tutorials on hacking ATM machines, contact lists for black market connections and counterfeiters, and guns and hit men for sale, according to the charges. 
 
 More than 900,000 registered users of the site bought and sold drugs using the digital currency Bitcoin. In recent media reports about the growing popularity of Bitcoin, the Silk Road website has emerged as part of a darker side to the use of digital currencies. 
 
 Through the site, according to the charges, users could buy drugs and have them shipped to an address. Investigators, posing as regular users on Silk Road, made more than 100 purchases of drugs, which were shipped to the New York area. 
 
 "DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS" 
 
 According to the complaint, Ulbricht, who shortened his alias from Dread Pirate Roberts to DPR when posting on Silk Road's forums, operated the site from San Francisco. 
 
 At times, he used computers at Internet cafes to access the servers running the website, which employed several technological tools to mask the location of its servers and the identities of its administrators and users. 
 
 The complaint described other aspects of Ulbricht's online presence: In a Google+ profile, he described himself as a fan of libertarian economic philosophy and posted videos from the Ludwig von Mises Institute, an Auburn, Alabama-based economics institute. 
 
 Reached by phone in Austin, Texas, Ubricht's parents said they had not known what their son was doing in San Francisco. 
 
 "He is a really stellar, good person and very idealistic," said Ulbricht's mother, Lyn Lacava. "I know he never meant to hurt anyone." 
 
 Ulbricht's father Kirk confirmed his son had received a master's in material sciences from Pennsylvania State University. His thesis was titled: "Growth of EuO Thin Films by Molecular Beam Epitaxy." 
 
 "He did amazing research on crystals and exotic materials they hoped would have some use for humans," Ulbricht said. "But it was very theoretical stuff." 
 
 The complaint against Ulbricht describes a darker side. During one correspondence with a Silk Road user, Ulbricht tried to call out a hit on another user with whom he had a dispute. That user, known online as "FriendlyChemist," was threatening to expose the identities of thousands of Silk Road users unless Ulbricht sent him money. 
 
 "I wouldn't mind if he was executed," Ulbricht wrote, offering personal details about his foe, including the fact that he was a married father of three, and the names of the city and province where he lived. 
 
 In a later post, Ulbricht wrote: "He is threatening to expose the identities of thousands of my clients." 
 
 "This kind of behavior is unforgivable to me. Especially here on Silk Road, anonymity is sacrosanct." 
 
 BITCOIN CONNECTION 
 
 During the raid, authorities seized $3.6 million worth of bitcoin, which was used instead of cash or credit cards to complete transactions on Silk Road. 
 
 The charges against Ulbricht said his website generated sales of more than 9.5 million bitcoin, roughly equivalent to $1.2 billion. 
 
 Authorities seized the currency by taking control of the digital "wallets" Silk Road used to store bitcoin. 
 
 In a corresponding civil asset forfeiture action, prosecutors claimed Silk Road and Ulbricht were liable to the government for the value of all transactions involving drug tracking and computer hacking, as well as for money laundering penalties, and a final amount would be determined at trial. 
 
 The raid on Wednesday was not the first time the U.S. government has made arrests related to Silk Road. 
 
 Earlier this year, authorities in South Carolina arrested Eric Daniel Hughes, known on Silk Road as "Casey Jones," and charged him in state court with drug possession. The Drug Enforcement Agency seized units of bitcoin, which Hughes allegedly used to purchase drugs from the online market. 
 
 Bitcoin, which has been around since 2008, first came under scrutiny by law enforcement officials in mid-2011 after media reports surfaced linking the digital currency to Silk Road. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Daniel Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Bernadette Baum) ||||| It appears the Federal Bureau of Investigation has finally cracked down on Silk Road, the underground marketplace where users could buy cocaine, heroin, meth, and more using the virtual currency Bitcoin. The Verge has obtained a copy of the criminal complaint, civil forfeiture complaint, and protective order filed in the Southern District of New York against Ross Ulbricht, who is alleged to be the mastermind behind the site and the handle Dread Pirate Roberts. 
 
 Ulbricht is being charged with narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy. The site, which is only accessible through the anonymizing Tor network, has been pulled and replaced with an FBI notice. The Silk Road forums are still operating, suggesting they were hosted on a different server. 
 
 
 
 
 
 The complaint is based on statements made by Christopher Tarbell, an FBI agent who has been tracking Silk Road out of the cybercrime division in New York. Tarbell acknowledges "undercover activity" by himself and other law enforcement agents, something users have suspected for a long time. 
 
 Law enforcement officers have made more than 100 purchases on the site 
 
 Law enforcement officers have made more than 100 purchases on the site since November of 2011, according to the complaint, and had the drugs shipped to New York for analysis. "Samples of these purchases have been laboratory-tested, and have typically shown high purity levels of the drug the item was advertised to be on Silk Road," Tarbell says. 
 
 Silk Road did $1.2 billion worth of business between February of 2011 and July of 2013, the FBI says, earning Dread Pirate Roberts $79.8 million in commissions using current Bitcoin rates. That number is difficult to pin down, however, because Bitcoin's price has fluctuated so much during that time. Silk Road had 957,079 registered users who did 1.2 million transactions between February of 2011 and July of 2013, the FBI says. 
 
 Dread Pirate Roberts once ordered a murder of a user who was attempting to blackmail him 
 
 The FBI reportedly located the server in "a certain foreign country" on which the Silk Road website was hosted, but does not specify where. It appears from the complaint that the FBI was monitoring Dread Pirate Roberts' private messages through the site. 
 
 Dread Pirate Roberts once ordered a murder of a user who was attempting to blackmail him, the complaint alleges. A user named FriendlyChemist wanted $500,000 from Dread Pirate Roberts, or else thousands of Silk Road identities would be published. Dread Pirate Roberts solicited a hitman through Silk Road to "put a bounty on [FriendlyChemist's] head." 
 
 When quoted a price of $150,000 to $300,000, Dread Pirate Roberts called the price high, saying he had a hit done "not long ago" for $80,000. The parties agreed on a price of $150,000, or 1,670 bitcoins, and the hitman reported the job was done. However, the FBI could not find any evidence of a related homicide and Ulbricht was not charged with murder. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ross Ulbricht, who is accused of running Silk Road. 
 
 According to the complaint, Dread Pirate Roberts was actually Ross Ulbricht, a 29-year-old living in San Francisco. "I studied physics in college and worked as a research scientist for five years," Ulbricht says on his LinkedIn profile. "Now, my goals have shifted. I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and agression amongst mankind ... I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force." 
 
 Astonishingly, the complaint says that Ulbricht was confronted by Department of Homeland Security officials back in July after seizing a shipment of fake IDs that used Ulbricht's photo. Agents visited him at his San Francisco apartment, where Ulbricht declined to answer questions but told them that "hypothetically," anyone could order such documents on a website called Silk Road. 
 
 Ulbricht has an active social media presence, including a Facebook page, Google+ account, Stack Overflow account, defunct Twitter account, and YouTube channel, which seems surprising considering the cautiousness Dread Pirate Roberts supposedly used in covering his and Silk Road users' tracks. Ulbricht used an email address that contained his name to contact developers to work on a Bitcoin startup, and one of his public YouTube videos appears to include his phone number. The FBI quotes from some of these social media postings in its complaint. 
 
 Ulbricht and his best friend and former roommate, René Pinnell, talking about when Ulbricht first moved to San Francisco. 
 
 Ulbricht was confronted by Homeland Security in July 
 
 The FBI used information from Comcast in the investigation and collaborated with US Customs and Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security. The site had more than 13,000 listings in the "drugs" category at the time it was shut down. 
 
 René Pinnell, Ulbricht's friend since age 10, says Ulbricht was trading Bitcoin and other currency to make a living. The two were living together until about five months ago, when Pinnell moved in with his fiance. "I don't know how they messed it up and I don't know how they got Ross wrapped into this, but I'm sure it's not him," Pinnell told The Verge. 
 
 
 
 ||||| Memo to Miley Cyrus: when you sing about “dancing with Molly,” you’re hyping a drug most of your fans won’t get to experience—at least, not the good stuff. 
 
 What you get, how you “roll,” what’s the pure, clean Molly, a.k.a. MDMA, a.k.a. Ecstasy. You’re rich, and your handlers only buy the best stuff from the best dealers. When you dance with Molly, Miley, you can be pretty sure it’s not going to kill you. 
 
 These people, on the other hand, likely got their stash from some random dealer at a party or a concert. It was probably cut with something, probably methylone, a.k.a. bath salts. It’s probably why all those Molly users died in the span of a week, experts say—not from dancing with Molly but getting a bad drug laced with something bad that killed them. 
 
 Before you blame Miley for promoting deadly drugs, consider this: it’s very rare to die from the good Molly. And there’s a much safer way to buy the good stuff than from some idiot at an electronic-music show. It’s a place on the Internet called Silk Road. 
 
 Silk Road, for the uninitiated, is the eBay of illicit substances, from MDMA to LSD. You can buy legal stuff like computer equipment and jewelry, but that’s not what most people are looking for. Because you have to travel through an encrypted wormhole to get there, and because you have to use a difficult-to-trace, encrypted currency to pay for anything, it’s a relatively safe place to buy drugs. And because not only the sellers but the kinds of drugs the site sells are rated and ranked by hundreds of users, it’s a relatively certain way to ensure that the drugs on offer aren’t cut with crap and aren’t going to kill you—at least, not if you avoid taking too much of them. 
 
 All that, say the site’s moderators and drug-policy experts, means Silk Road and other venues like it offer the best available compromise to the ongoing debate about getting high in America. While outright legalization, regulation, and taxation might be the best way to ensure unadulterated drugs are as safe as possible to people who are going to use drugs no matter what the law says, Silk Road is a close second. 
 
 “People die from ecstasy because of overdose and low purity,” said Silk Road’s founder, known to the world only as Dread Pirate Roberts, in a rare interview conducted via messages on the site with The Daily Beast. “These people don’t know what they are taking and how much, but it’s the best they can do because of all the damage prohibition has done to the market for drugs. Silk Road is repairing that damage.” 
 
 The site, he boasts, has “some of the purest drugs on the planet with well-defined dosages and a community of support for people seeking harm-reduction advice. We have some of the most responsible, dedicated, and brave individuals that make up our community.” 
 
 And it really is a community. The site’s long-term vendors have built up their reputations over months and years, accumulating hundreds of positive comments, nicknames like “Queen of Silk Road,” and the kind of public adoration normally reserved for the neighborhood barber. Those who screw customers over, on the other hand, are quickly outed and ostracized. 
 
 Silk Road appears to be booming. It now has more than 10,000 listings for drugs, including nearly 2,000 for marijuana, the most popular option. A six-month “crawl” of the site by Carnegie Mellon University researcher Nicholis Christin provides the best educated guess of Silk Road’s numbers. In late 2011 and early 2012, Christin concluded that the site’s operators were pulling in $92,000 a month in commissions, based on $1.2 million in revenue for those selling goods. The total number of those vendors and the number of items sold doubled from when Christin began and finished his research. 
 
 Of the various items sold, “weed” made up 13.7 percent, followed by “drugs,” 9 percent, and then “prescription,” 7.4 percent. The U.S. was the most common supplier, with 43 percent of all sales. Most items were listed for less than three weeks, most sellers stayed on the site for about 100 days, and more than 96 percent of them received perfect feedback ratings, a five out of five. 
 
 “It appears at first glance that Silk Road sellers are highly reliable,” Christin wrote, though he attributed that in part to the site’s escrow system, wherein buyers don’t release the funds they’ve committed to a purchase until they’ve received (and, if they want, tested) a product. He also noted that Internet users tend to “disproportionately use positive feedback when rating online experiences. In fact, over 99 percent of the feedback (on eBay, in a recent study) was positive.” 
 
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 The more money flows in, of course, the more likely it becomes that the cops will eventually try to get involved. After Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recently criticized Silk Road, DEA sources were telling reporters that they’re “keeping tabs” on the site. Another similar venture, Atlantis, abruptly shut down this week, citing “security concerns” that may well have been a law-enforcement issue. 
 
 Silk Road is still alive and well, at least for now. 
 
 “Silk Road will exist as long as prohibition is in place, and unfortunately it is safer than flat-out prohibition,” said Neill Franklin, executive director of the nonprofit Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “It’s an in-between.” 
 
 That’s why anti-prohibition advocates are cheering the site on, if a little uneasily. The case for Silk Road is exactly the one for outright legalization, says Harvard University economics professor Jeff Miron, Silk Road is fine, he told The Daily Beast—“I have no objection to a Consumer Reports for drugs”—but the site still falls short of what a regulated market could accomplish. 
 
 “It’s still an underground market,” Miron says. “And with an underground market, you can’t sue the manufacturer if you get a bad-quality commodity.” 
 
 So, yes, legalization is better, if you’re the type who favors legalization. But the problem, acknowledges Miron, is that the United States is a long way away from legalization. 
 
 “It’s going to take an ‘allegedly conservative’ second-term Republican president, secretly libertarian, enough of a non-pothead, a stoner who in other ways seems very stable, normal, and middle class” to convince the conservative wing of Americans that prohibition is bad policy, he says. “He’ll have to be conservative on a lot of things, to have enough credibility when he says, ‘This is the wrong way.’” 
 
 Legalization may take a complete generational shift, says Franklin. Now that marijuana is legal in Colorado and Washington, he says, he expects to see the movement spread until the ban on weed is lifted nationwide. After that, who knows? 
 
 “Once we start seeing the benefits of the policy for marijuana, what if we do something different with cocaine and heroin?” Franklin says. “It’s only a matter of years before young people of today are in positions of influence and power.” 
 
 Dread Pirate Roberts says he’d welcome the competition—though not the regulation. 
 
 “I wouldn’t stand in the way of the loosening or eliminating of drug laws so that we could all more easily provide the service Silk Road does,” Roberts wrote. “What I AM against is the agents of the state being involved at all. If they had simply left people to their own devices and allowed them the freedom to choose as I have at Silk Road, we’d have an economy so productive and robust it would be generating wealth for centuries to come, with more than enough for everyone.”
– The FBI has pulled the plug at least temporarily on a website accused of serving as a sort of Amazon.com for illegal drugs, reports the Verge. Undercover agents reportedly made dozens of purchases on the Silk Road website since late 2011, and the FBI today announced the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, aka "Dread Pirate Roberts," reports Reuters. He faces a slew of charges, including narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy. Anyone who manages to reach the site is now greeted with an FBI notice announcing that it's been seized. So what is, or was, Silk Road exactly? Last week, Winston Ross at the Daily Beast provided an in-depth primer. "Silk Road, for the uninitiated, is the eBay of illicit substances, from MDMA to LSD," he writes. It offers legal merchandise, too, but drugs are the main attraction. "Because you have to travel through an encrypted wormhole to get there, and because you have to use a difficult-to-trace, encrypted currency to pay for anything, it’s a relatively safe place to buy drugs." And, a la eBay, sellers are ranked, "a relatively certain way to ensure that the drugs on offer aren’t cut with crap and aren’t going to kill you." Click for his full post.