If you’re not sure what the “Silk Road” is, you can get the entire breakdown here. From SFGate:
A San Francisco man accused of running the huge online drug marketplace known as Silk Road, and of seeking to have two people killed to protect the lucrative enterprise, is innocent of all charges filed against him, his attorney said Friday.
Federal prosecutors allege that Ross William Ulbricht, 29, is “Dread Pirate Roberts,” the once-anonymous administrator of a website that allowed visitors to shield their identities as they bought and sold cocaine, heroin and other drugs.
The site, now seized, resembled mainstream retail businesses like Amazon or eBay, with the operator collecting commission on deals.
Ulbricht was arrested Tuesday in the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public Library and appeared in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Friday. He faces charges that include narcotics trafficking, money laundering and attempting to murder a witness.
The detention hearing was put over until Wednesday. Prosecutors said they expect to transfer Ulbricht to the East Coast, where he faces a criminal complaint filed in New York and a grand jury indictment handed down in Maryland.
Ulbricht did not enter a plea. But his public defender, Brandon LeBlanc, said after leaving the courtroom, “We deny all charges,” while declining further comment. Ulbricht, a Texas native who moved to San Francisco a year ago, remains in custody.
Federal investigators spent two years infiltrating Silk Road, which used Tor, a free software that was designed to hide online communications, and bitcoins, an anonymous digital currency, to conceal user activities. The FBI said it located Ulbricht by tracking his online activity.
Twice in the past year, authorities alleged, Ulbricht sought to have people executed to protect Silk Road, though in both cases the threats apparently weren’t real.
In one case, they said, Ulbricht paid $80,000 in bitcoins to have a former website employee tortured and killed after he was arrested. But according to prosecutors, the anonymity of Silk Road backfired on Ulbricht after he asked a purported drug smuggler to carry out the hit.
The smuggler was actually an undercover agent, the government said – the same agent who had arrested the employee.
