From wikipedia:
Silk Road was an online black market and the first modern darknet market, best known as a platform for selling illegal drugs. As part of the dark web, it was operated as a Tor hidden service, such that online users were able to browse it anonymously and securely without potential traffic monitoring. The website was launched in February 2011; development had begun six months prior. Initially there were a limited number of new seller accounts available; new sellers had to purchase an account in an auction. Later, a fixed fee was charged for each new seller account.
In October 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shut down the website and arrested Ross William Ulbricht under charges of being the site's pseudonymous founder "Dread Pirate Roberts". On 6 November 2013, Silk Road 2.0 came online, run by former administrators of Silk Road. It too was shut down, and the alleged operator was arrested on 6 November 2014 as part of the so-called "Operation Onymous”.
Ulbricht was convicted of eight charges related to Silk Road in U.S. Federal Court in Manhattan and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole
- Ross Ulbricht's entry in this repository
- Ross Ulbricht on Wikipedia
- Silk Road (marketplace) on Wikipedia
- @Free_Ross on Twitter (Run by his mother, Lynn Ulbricht)
- FreeRoss.org
- 2013 - Ulbricht's Personal Log
- 29-Apr-2013 Forbes Magazine - Collected Quotations Of The Dread Pirate Roberts, Founder Of Underground Drug Site Silk Road And Radical Libertarian by Andy Greenberg
- 30-Mar-2015 Wired Magazine - DEA Agent Charged With Acting as a Paid Mole for Silk Road by Andy Greenberg
- April 2015 Wired Magazine - The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1 - The Rise of Silk Road by Joshuah Bearman
- May 2015 Wired Magazine - The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2 - The Fall by Joshuah Bearman
- 12-Jan-2016 Wired Magazine - In Silk Road Appeal, Ross Ulbricht's Defense Focuses on Corrupt Feds by Andy Greenberg
- 29-Nov-2016 Wired Magazine - Ross Ulbricht's Lawyers Say They've Found Another Corrupt Agent in Silk Road Case by Andy Greenberg
- 31-May-2017 Wired Magazine - Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht Loses His Life Sentence Appeal by Andy Greenberg