Md. Man Involved In Silk Road Website Pleads Guilty
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Last month, the FBI shut down Silk Road, a sophisticated criminal marketplace online. Now, two men--including one from Baltimore--have pleaded guilty to their involvement with the website.
Mary Bubala has more.
A site administrator and a drug dealer both pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy for their ties to Silk Road, a billion dollar underground online drug market.
Jacob George IV, 32, of Edgewood admitted to federal investigators he had been buying heroin from dealers on the streets of Baltimore and then reselling it on the Silk Road website.
"Crimes that used to occur on the streets are now occurring over the Internet," said U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein. "Our law enforcement officers have followed the bad guys onto the Internet. They think they are anonymous but the reality is they can be traced."
The feds traced Curtis Green, an administrator of the site, to his home in Utah. Officials say they caught him by following the drugs and the money.
"Law enforcement agents actually made a controlled delivery of drugs to an administrator of the Silk Road website, so he had arranged this anonymously over the Internet but he had to provide an address for the drugs to be delivered and that led them right to his door," Rosenstein said.
According to his plea agreement, Green worked for the creator of Silk Road--29-year-old Ross Ulbricht--who's also charged in Maryland for ordering the torture and murder of Green.
The FBI arrested him and shut down the site last month but a new website with the same name and look is now up offering an itemized list of illegal drugs.
On Twitter last week, the Silk Road's purported new operator announced, "Silk Road is back up. Deja vu, anyone? #WeRiseAgain."
Green faces a maximum of 40 years in prison and George faces up to 20 years. The two men will be sentenced in February.
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