Suspect confesses to founding Silk Road

Ross Ulbricht, the man suspected of running the illegal Silk Road trading hub, has confessed to founding the site. However, he was not the manager of the marketplace, his lawyer says; that would be someone else.

According to Ulbricht’s lawyer Joshua Dratel, Ulbricht handed over the reins to other people after just a few months, when managing the site became ‘too much’ for him. “It was an economic experiment,” says Dratel.

Ulbricht would therefore not be Dread Pirate Roberts, the manager of the illegal marketplace. According to lawyer Dratel, he is still at large. “Silk Road 2.0 was online within two weeks,” said Dratel, suggesting that it was also founded by ‘DPR’. That is remarkable; the alleged administrator of Silk Road 2.0 has now also been arrested.

Ulbricht was arrested when he logged into the marketplace admin panel with his own laptop in a library. According to his lawyer, that indicates that he is not the Dread Pirate Roberts. “He took extensive measures to protect his identity,” said Dratel. “Would he really log into a public library?”

Instead, Ulbricht was eventually lured back by the ‘real’ administrators of the website, who would have wanted to put the blame on him. The lawyer notes that Ulbricht lived a modest lifestyle, which would not match the alleged 18 million dollars in bitcoins he would have earned from his Silk Road activities.

The US prosecutor acknowledges the latter, but according to the prosecutor, Ulbricht intended not to stand out and eventually spend his fortune in another country. “The suspect was caught in the act,” he notes.

The government also accuses Ulbricht of wanting to have six people killed, including one who wanted to reveal his identity. According to lawyer Dratel, there is no reason to assume that those six people really exist; at least one of them was a police informant. The allegations are also not part of the formal indictment, Dratel notes.