The court filing describes the darknet as an underground online marketplace. Darknet vendors included everything from hacker groups to international hitmen. And the only form of payment accepted on Silk Road was Bitcoin.
“From 2011 until October 2013, when it was seized by law enforcement, Silk Road was the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet, serving as a sprawling black-market bazaar where unlawful goods and services, including illegal drugs of virtually all varieties, were bought and sold regularly by the site’s users.”
“While in operation, Silk Road was used by thousands of drug dealers and other unlawful vendors to distribute hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs and other unlawful goods and services to well over 100,000 buyers, and to launder hundreds of millions of dollars derived from these unlawful transactions.”
In October, the DOJ released its updated framework for crypto enforcement, which indicates the agency’s efforts to crack down on the billion-dollar cybercriminals.
