The FBI promises a perpetual, futile drug war as it shuts down Silk Road 2.0

Today, the FBI seized the Darknet market Silk Road 2.0 and arrested its alleged operator, Blake Benthall. The former SpaceX employee now faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years for "conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking," and could end up behind bars for the rest of this life.

The website DeepDotWeb has confirmed that two other Darknet markets, Hydra and Cloud 9, have also been seized by the FBI. But the remaining Darknet markets -- and there are a lot of them -- appear to be functioning normally.

The FBI promises a perpetual, futile drug war as it shuts down Silk Road 2.0

I have read that they are planning to shut down some 400 onion sites as a result of this latest task force. My understanding that the Silk Road 2.0 was infiltrated since day one, and the undercover FBI agent even got paid in bitcoins for his work on the website. The young man who was busted, Blake Benthall apparently had a google based email account that made it easy for the FBI to link him to and was a bit foolish to living lavishly after what happened to the original silk road. The Silk Road 2.0 was not nearly as large as the original and the FEDs have only seized a fraction compared to the original Silk Road bust.

While there are a lot who think this will have an effect on the dark web drug market, I think the supply and demand is simply too high and many more online marketplaces will appear to fill the void. They are simply playing a game of whack a mole. Many have already speculated that the Silk Road 2.0 was setup as a honeypot.

It will be interesting to see how this effects the BitCoin.

a reply to: jrod

I remember surfing the original Silk Road a couple of years ago after I found out about it. It was my first and last trip to the dark web. On that site you could shop for all things black market, including hit men and if I recall, child porn. It blew me away. I agree the drug war is a sham along side being a complete waste of money but if this Silk Road was anything like the original one, I can see why the Feds shut it down.

So probably not a good idea to launder Bitcoins?

a reply to: Swills

Considering that after Silk Road 1 was busted, scores of similar sites popped up, the same thing will happen again. They took down several other sites too, however there still are many more. At best this latest bust takes the bust rate to about 2% of the illegal vendors out there.

If the site was so bad, then why did the FBI let it run for almost a year before shutting it down?

My guess is they needed to make sure they would seize enough assets to make it worth it. Most people learned after silk road 1 and took their business elsewhere.

I must say I feel like they are trying to send us a message with this bust being right after election day.

a reply to: jrod

They can't have internet people encroaching on their turf. America can only have one drug mafia.........America.

if as they say they can trace 400 sites that they want to close down then then they are doing us Tor user a service because we don't want to use sites that can be tracked.

Let them continue to do the security testing for us if they like because it will improve the system and if they can close it down then let them because its about time we had something new and maybe faster.

These .onion sites all use Bitcoins if you want to buy anything and I don't trust BT or offers to kill my misses being anything other than a police sting operation and far too many users on these sites are nothing but sick perverts who have not moved to the deep, deep web

That being said, it is good when I want to screen scraped a lot of data from the internet and the provider wants to limit usage for anyone that does not pay a fee and as far as I can see the Tor system does seem to work and I trust it in that respect more than even the paid VPN services.

Long live Tor or what ever takes its place but don't think these type of systems are going away because it will one day become a crime to buy sugar (Hope that's not slang for any drugs) without paying extra taxes or having a licence and Tools like Tor will give us a way to fight back.

Just to add my thoughts

I've never used Silk Road or the dark web for that matter, wouldn't know where to start I find ATS a challenge sometimes

Anyway after Silk Road 1 was shut down the second one I just thought that's bait for the people attempting to use it again and the FBI were actually behind its start up, just to get snare people. To use SR2 you had to be pretty silly I think

But then I also thought, with the legalisation of weed gaining more momentum maybe the FBI shut it down, why allow people to order their weed online when they can make them go to a shop and buy it .. Putting the money back into the government

I don't know just something I thought

a reply to: jrod

Oh it was that bad. The FBI let it run for their own reasons, such as building evidence and perhaps even posing as hitmen. Who knows, but definitely building their case. Sure there are other sites, the FBI's only hope is to scare those sites with fear of being discovered and arrested.

Like I said, screw the drug war but I don't support hit men.

a reply to: tavi45

Not enough violence with the online drug trade to justify the drug war so they just claim it is associated with child porn and hit-men to influence the masses to be against anonymous markets.

The average internet user is ignorant to the dark web. I had never even heard of the Silk Road until it got busted last year, since then the online dark market and the Tor network has grown. Since then I have discovered a lot a things on the other side.

To me this latest bust was more for PR than actual justice. The sites that went down were all either rumored to be infiltrated by the FEDs or were set up to serve as honey pots.

What will happen is even more security features will come out and the FBI, NSA, DEA, and friends will continue their little game of whack a mole without ever making a dent in the drug market.

a reply to: jrod

Whats sad is they only made 17 arrests and 4 have been released already without charge.

All that money and work fot less than 20 people......i would not be proud about that!

And I hear SR 2 only got busted cause the idiot in charge registered the server with his personel email! The most retarded american policeman could have caught that!

I gotta ask is this news good or bad?

originally posted by: Swills
a reply to: jrod

Oh it was that bad. The FBI let it run for their own reasons, such as building evidence and perhaps even posing as hitmen. Who knows, but definitely building their case. Sure there are other sites, the FBI's only hope is to scare those sites with fear of being discovered and arrested.

Like I said, screw the drug war but I don't support hit men.

Fear never works as a deterant.

originally posted by: deadeyedick
I gotta ask is this news good or bad?

Good as the guy running SR was a idiot and risked the sercurity of many people.

a reply to: crazyewok

You caught that too, my understanding he used a google based personal email too which made it even easier for the police. SR 2 also was infiltrated since it's inception by the FBI.

From what I've read they have confiscated somewhere around $20-30 million in bitcoins which more or less shows that the Drug War is more about asset seizure than getting drugs off the streets. The original SR had hundreds of millions worth of bitcoins seized, far larger than this latest bust

With all the bitcoins the FEDs now control, you can bet they will be using them to set up drug deals in the future. They hope to scare the other online markets out of business, but the law of supply and demand is much more powerful than alphabet's ability to enforce their laws.

Here is an excerpt from the FBI's takedown notice Source:


Wow... Now, I must admit to making my own terribly lousy dad jokes, but jeezzzzusss FBI that was woeful!

Others the FBI tried but put in the bin.
"We're on you like Silk Panties"
"Silk road 2.0? More like Silk Road 2 point Oh No!"
"Smooth roads? Son, you just arrived in Detroit"

a reply to: jrod

Yeah im not a SR user nor a drug user but I value my internet privacy and have learned just enough to know if you want to keep a low profile DONT LINK ANYTHING WITH YOUR REAL ID......EVER!

a reply to: crazyewok

Sure it does, to an extent. There will always be that criminal element that takes the risk. The internet, both dark and current, will always be monitored and policed.

Risk vs reward will be the name of the game. Right now the FBI is letting everyone know they can still get you on the dark web.

The CIA got tired of people stepping on their territory. Silk Road always seemed like a big monitoring device to be honest. See who's willing to "bypass" regular internet and black market trends to go on the net, also to see what they're into.

The war on drugs is complete and utter nonsense. It speaks volumes that Washington DC just legalized weed, while most of the country? Criminals. And still people vote.

However, Silk Road also had pedophiles as one poster pointed out, so the right thing was done here, partially.

originally posted by: Swills
a reply to: crazyewok

Sure it does, to an extent. There will always be that criminal element that takes the risk. The internet, both dark and current, will always be monitored and policed.

Risk vs reward will be the name of the game. Right now the FBI is letting everyone know they can still get you on the dark web.

They can only get you if stupid.

400 sites and 17 arrests is pathetic to the extreme.

They only caught the SR guy are they were lucky he was really really really dumb.

He practicaly did the polices job for them, i would not be surprised if he had cuffed himself begore the police arived!

a reply to: crazyewok

They can get you no matter what. It only depends on when and how they choose.