Topic: Operator of Silk Road 2.0, Blake Benthall, arrested yesterday by FBI agents in S - page 4. (Read 8418 times)

There are other darknet marketplaces: https://dnstats.net/

Even better would be something like the technology of Monero + the technology of OpenBazaar.

You seem to think this is good news.

Care to give a reason?

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Money...it makes people do dumb things.  He bought a tesla and I'm sure he felt like he was living the high life.  Not any more!

So he thought it was a good idea to basically mock the U.S. Government/Law Enforcement by setting up a similar drug market, naming it the same thing, and operating it out of the same state?

This sounds like Darwinism at it's finest. Why would you feel the need to be so cavalier?

On the other side, if the enforcers of laws were not able to seize the bitcoin used for the trading, business could continue without problems in other dark markets.

This operation is darwinistically selecting the best operators for dark markets of the world. The lousy ones are shut down, the best are not.
Just a few iterations of this and they will be threading water.

Apparently they needed one year and probably some 9-10 months of operations to take down SR 2.0 (and other markets).
And this having a mole inside the operation pretty from the start of it.
Now, if DefCon had not used his Gmail account, how much time they would need to locate him?
If he was using a mail account from another, not US friendly, country, like Iran or Sudan or Venezuela, how many months of work would they need?
Had he used Tor to access these services?

People doing this sort of business must learn to use multiple layers of anonymization, not just one.

On the short term, it is possible to see increased supply of bitcoins into the market (not only exchanges), because the feds' actions may have consequences,
like the need for extra cash to relocate and also more bitcoins spent (and then converted to fiat) for new fake IDs.

I'm not too sure how Irish law works. There was some legal reason the USA had to auction the bitcoins from the original silk road. Does Irish law allow them to directly sell the seized bitcoins, or will they have to auction them too?

It seems a sizable amount of bitcoins were seized (how?), quoting from article on Arstechnica:

However, in its investigation of Silk Road 2.0, the government took a different technical tack. In a statement issued by the US Attorney’s Office about the arrest, a spokesperson said, ”During the Government’s investigation, which was conducted jointly by the FBI and [Homeland Security Investigations], an HSI agent acting in an undercover capacity (the “HSI-UC”) successfully infiltrated the support staff involved in the administration of the Silk Road 2.0 website and was given access to private, restricted areas of the site reserved for Benthall and his administrative staff. By doing so, the HSI-UC was able to interact directly with Benthall throughout his operation of the website.”

According to the criminal complaint filed in US Court today, the HSI undercover investigator got in on the ground floor with Silk Road's second incarnation. "DPR2," the original operator of the new site, created a forum to discuss launching a replacement site on a hidden site on the Tor network on October 7, 2013—less than a week after the original site was seized. The undercover investigator was invited to join the forum, and the next day was granted forum moderator privileges; by January 2014, the investigator was a paid staff member, receiving 16 payments in Bitcoins totalling about $32,189 based on current exchange rates.

FBI ARRESTS BLAKE “DEFCON” BENTHALL, ALLEGED OPERATOR OF SILK ROAD 2.0 [UPDATED]
Site is down—arrest nearly a year after feds nabbed Ross "DPR" Ulbricht of Silk Road 1.0.
With that level of authorized access—and with communications directly with Benthall—the FBI and HSI would have been able to gather evidence directly from the site’s server and then use other measures to de-anonymize the individuals associated with it. It’s possible that the investigators may have allowed the site to continue to operate for a period of time to act as a “honeypot” to gain further information about transactions being passed through the marketplace. According to the criminal complaint, "foreign law enforcement authorities" imaged the Silk Road 2.0 server on May 30—which means the site was allowed to continue to operate for five more months while the FBI, HSI, and partner law enforcement organizations gathered data.
That's likely how Irish authorities got information required to stage a drug raid yesterday in Dublin, seizing approximately $200,000 worth of LSD, Ecstasy, and other drugs as well as $18 million in bitcoin. The Irish Examiner reports the raid was the "result of an international drug trafficking investigation into the sale and supply of controlled drugs on an encrypted layer of the internet known as 'the Darknet'."  The operation is part of a broader FBI/Europol operation called 'Onymous," the Examiner reports—"an international day of action to disrupt global activity on the Darknet and remove certain websites and forums is to conclude within the next 24 hours."

S'up Blake, welcome to your new home babe!

Blake Benthall

Honestly, what did he expect. That it wouldn't get shut down.

I am just surprised he was that old. I was guessing it was run by some 16 year old kid.

There are definitely some interesting questions
Whether the price will react with an upswing or a downswing on this news
And how much the government payday is ^_^

So, Cloud 9 and Hydra have multisig and not confiscable, and Silkroad2 while has no multisig, doesn't hold customer's coins on escrow (AFAIK, the admin stopped escrow after a hack). So all they can confiscate is Blake's personal coins only. I hope he have learned from Ulbricht story and keeps them really safe. Maybe he even set some fiat aside for the trial.

did it lessen last time? and the silk road isnt their only site... theres like 20 of em that do the same thing

Agora aside, there are at least 15 other darknet markets.

agoramarket is still alive and it was already the new nr 1 drugs market

This will be an interesting thing to watch.  "What do you mean we can't take the Bitcoins?"  This may be the first test of government being confounded while trying to seize Bitcoins.  Let's see what they do.

I'd love to see them try.

Good.

Price rise?