Dread Pirate Roberts alleged Silk Road Founder Ross William Ulbricht was arrested today.
Silk Road was a website that allowed users to trade whatever they wanted in bitcoins - including illegal drugs.  Today users of the Silk Road were greeted with a message that the site had been seized by the FBI.  The contents of the servers are now in the custody of the FBI, so users may be vulnerable to criminal complaints themselves.

A 39-page criminal complaint against Dread Pirate Roberts alleged Silk Road Founder Ross William Ulbricht alleges he "deliberately set out to establish an online criminal marketplace outside the reach of law enforcement or governmental regulation".

Silk Road is described as "the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today".  The criminal complaint against Dread Pirate Roberts alleged Silk Road founder Ross William Ulbricht says the site "sought to make conducting illegal transactions on the Internet as easy and frictionless as shopping online".

Bitcoin advocate Amir Taaki said of the Silk Road website: "People want drugs. The drugs war is probably a failed war. I want to get rid of cartels. The way to do that is for people to buy their drugs straight from the producer. That's what's cool about things like Silk Road - you can bypass gangs."

One affidavit alleges that on March 29 2013 alleged Silk Road founder Dread Pirate Roberts Ross William Ulbricht "solicited a Silk Road user to execute a murder-for-hire of another Silk Road user who was threatening to release the identities of thousands of users of the site."

FBI agents attempting to track the alleged Silk Road founder  Dread Pirate Roberts Ross William Ulbricht looked into the early promotion of the site. They found messages posted on drug discussion forums and Wordpress blogs by a user named "altoid". Agents tracked this name to a Gmail address, which they claim was registered to Ulbricht.

Ross William Ulbricht, who graduated from the University of Texas in 2006, may have obliquely referenced his alleged role as "Dread Pirate Roberts" on LinkedIn, where he had referred to spending the last few years "creating an economic simulation".

Watch alleged silk road founder Dread Pirate Roberts Ross William Ulbricht video here: