Have you heard about Ross William Ulbricht? Well if you haven’t here is what you need to know. The 29-year-old originally from Austin, Texas is known online as ‘Dread Pirate Roberts” or DPR and he is the owner of The Silk Road.
He is the son of Lyn Lacava and father Kirk, he also has a half brother named Travis Ulbricht.
He graduated from the University of Texas in 2006 with a bachelor of science degree in physics. The brainy guy also studied at the University of Pennsylvania School of Materials Science and Engineering for his master from 2006 to 2010.
Apparently Ulbricht’s online persona lived under the username “Dread Pirate Roberts,” which is a character from the 1987 film, The Princess Bride. On his Facebook we find several pictures of a younger Ulbricht just doing regular and normal youngsters stuff.
But we can tell you somewhere down the mind of the young advanced degree in chemical engineer there is a dark place very far from what’s normal.
According to the FBI he is a criminal mastermind; he created and was the only manager of an anonymous narcotics marketplace known as Silk Road. According to FBI agents, Ross’s Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today.
The site, which has operated since early 2011, did not only was used by ‘several thousand drug dealers’ to sell ‘hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs but 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. The drug trafficking site used untraceable BitCoin currency and generated sales of more than 9.5 million bitcoin, roughly equivalent to $1.2 billion.
He was busted yesterday Oct. 2 at a San Francisco public library. All indicates it was himself who revealed his identity more than once to ask questions in online forums.
The criminal complaint details how the FBI identified and located Ulbricht, who was living in San Francisco. He was in possession of 26,000 bitcoins, equal to about $3.6 million. Federal prosecutors in New York charged Ulbricht with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.
According to seized communications authorities also found out he was willing to solicit murder if the anonymity of the business was compromised.
In a Google+ profile, he described himself as a fan of libertarian economic philosophy, on Facebook he wrote an essay titled “Thoughts on FREEDOM” and on Linkedin he expresses new “goals” to “abolish the use of coercion and aggression amongst mankind”
He was set to appear in federal court today and a bail hearing was set for Friday.
You can find him on Facebook here, Google + here and his YouTube channel here.
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