Silk Road, AKA the “eBay of drugs,” was a hidden internet site on the Tor network where you could buy drugs and hire hitmen, anonymously, with a simple double-click. The site was operating smoothly for years, turning its owner into a millionaire (and a killer) until he slipped up.

Ross Ulbricht, the criminal mastermind behind the site, has been arrested by the FBI and charged with conspiracy of money laundering, narcotics trafficking and computer hacking. Before Silk Road, Ulbricht, known as “Dread Pirate Roberts” on the site, was an engineer publishing papers on organic solar cells – he’s a pretty smart bloke – also dabbling in economics. In 2008, according to his LinkedIn profile, his goals shifted from physics and chemistry, to libertarianism.

I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and aggression amongst mankind. Just as slavery has been abolished most everywhere, I believe violence, coercion and all forms of force by one person over another can come to an end

Silk Road was, in many ways, the apotheosis of free market economics. Bitcoin was used as a “crypto-currency” to avoid pesky governments sticking their noses in and ensuring complete anonymity with purchases. Messages and transactions on the site were routed through multiple destinations making it nearly impossible to know where they originated from.

Here’s what the site looked like in its hay-day:

See where it got the “eBay of drugs” moniker from?

When a Silk Road user dubbed “FriendlyChemist” obtained a list of names and identities of Silk Road customers and threatened to expose it unless Ulbricht paid $500,000, “Dread Pirate Roberts” (DPR) decided to hire a hitman to have “FriendlyChemist” silenced.

The Feds had been tracking Ulbricht’s every movement though. The facepalm-worthy moment came when he posted an incriminating question to Stack Overflow, a Q&A site used by software developers, using his real name.

How can I connect to a Tor hidden service using curl in php?

He quickly changed his name to “frosty” on the site, but it was too late. The post had triggered enough red flags and the authorities were onto him. Silk Road is now the most famous Tor hidden service around and Ross Ulbricht is behind bars and in a lot of trouble.

Here’s a couple pictures of him – look how “normal” he looks.

[Source : Business Insider, Slate]