Silk Road: British police to arrest dealers after FBI sting on internet drugs baron
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The man who seized the title of world’s biggest online drugs baron has been arrested in the US in the second police undercover sting in 13 months targeting the notorious Silk Road underworld marketplace.
Blake Benthall, a 26-year-old from San Francisco, was held after police unmasked him as the man behind Silk Road 2.0, the successor to the trail-blazing drug-dealing network that operated in the darkest recesses of the internet.
An operation was continuing in Britain last night with police expected to arrest drug sellers or buyers linked to the site that turned over millions of pounds every month. Its 150,000 active users across the world using the anonymity of the so-called Dark Net to arrange deals.
The year-old network was taken down after an undercover officer posing as an administrator managed to breach restricted areas of the site to identify Mr Benthall, according to the FBI.
Mr Benthall – who was known to users as Defcon – is the second head of a Silk Road operation to be arrested and face years in prison if found guilty of drug dealing on a huge scale.
The founder of the original site, Dread Pirate Roberts, was named by the FBI last year as the libertarian activist Ross William Ulbricht, who is awaiting trial following his arrest after a two-year infiltration operation by the FBI. His network was said to have been behind the sale of drugs worth $1.2bn (£760m).
Silk Road 2.0 emerged within five weeks of the closure of the first site, using near identical techniques to create “one of the most extensive, sophisticated and widely used criminal marketplaces on the internet today”, according to an FBI statement.
“Let’s be clear – this Silk Road, in whatever form, is the road to prison,” the US attorney Preet Bharara said as he announced the arrest. “Those looking to follow in the footsteps of alleged cyber criminals should understand that we will return as many times as necessary to shut down noxious online criminal bazaars. We don’t get tired.”
At least four people were arrested in Britain following the shutdown of the first Silk Road site as investigators traced sellers after investigators breached the security of the site. In a statement last night, the National Crime Agency said it was “supporting a range of investigations”.