FBI Agent's Library Sting On Silk Road Accused

An undercover FBI agent cracked the Silk Road case when he watched Ross Ulbricht log-on as Dread Pirate Roberts in a public library, a court heard.

Investigators discovered links between Ulbricht and the illegal drugs marketplace but needed to catch him in the act of logging on to be sure.
Posing as a support staff member at Silk Road, an agent called Jared Der-Yeghiayan sent a private message asking him to log on while he was in Glen Park Library in California.
After logging in, agents who were inside the library approached Ulbricht and arrested him, a court in New York heard.
Prosecutors first started investigating the site after drug-filled envelopes were discovered at Chicago's O'Hare airport in 2011.
They tracked the username of the person running the site - Dread Pirate Roberts - but two years later they still had no idea who he was.
That was until a tip-off from the Internal Revenue Service pointed to the 30-year-old. At that point, a plan was put into place to confirm their suspicions.
Mr Der-Yeghiayan, who had covertly taken over the Silk Road account of a trusted user who had been arrested, encouraged Ulbricht to log on at a public library, while plainclothes agents milled around.
At the moment Dread Pirate Roberts was flagged as "available" online, they moved in and arrested Ulbricht, and seized his laptop.
The jury was also shown online postings by Dread Pirate Roberts, including one which said: "Who knew a softie could lead an international narcotics operation. But yea, I love you guys."
Ulbricht claims that he set up the website - a notorious dark net marketplace - as an "economic experiment" but handed it over to a shadowy figure using the Roberts alias when it became an exchange for illicit items.
The black market website sold $200m (£131m) worth of drugs to customers around the world until it was closed down in 2013.
Ulbricht has pleaded not guilty to seven charges of narcotics trafficking, criminal enterprise, computer hacking and money laundering. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.
The trial continues.



Sky News