Investigators Describe Buying Drugs On Silk Road Website
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Investigators testified Wednesday about how they made undercover drug buys on the Silk Road website.
Ross William Ulbricht, the website's founder, is on trial, charged with criminal conspiracy, drug trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering.
The undercover agents were the first to testify in the trial. One described receiving a shipment of heroin mailed from the Netherlands with a German stamp, WCBS 880's Irene Cornell reported.
Investigators Describe Buying Drugs On Silk Road Website
An investigator told jurors Silk Road was elaborately designed to avoid detection by law enforcement. Buyers had to use Bitcoin, the anonymous digital currency. A buyer's guide instructed shoppers not to use abandoned buildings as mailing addresses because they would raise suspicion and, if expecting a delivery, not to answer the door or sign for the package, the investigator testified.
Ulbricht's lawyer, Joshua Dratel, said during opening arguments Tuesday his client launched the website as an economic experiment was fooled into taking the fall when investigators concluded it was used for drug dealing.
Dratel said Ulbricht was no drug dealer and should be found not guilty.
Prosecutor Timothy Howard, however, told jurors that the Silk Road website was an online shopping paradise for the sale of dangerous illegal drugs, and that Ulbricht was the kingpin of the digital criminal enterprise, WCBS 880's Irene Cornell reported. To avoid exposure, said the prosecutor, Ulbricht was even ready to have people murdered.
The prosecutor said Ulbricht enabled more than 1 million drug deals on Silk Road, earning about $18 million.
Ulbricht disputes he operated online under the alias "Dread Pirate Roberts," a reference to a swashbuckling character in "The Princess Bride."
He also is charged in Baltimore federal court in an attempted murder-for-hire scheme.
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