On October 2, 2013, FBI agents arrested Ross Ulbricht at the Glen Park library in San Francisco while he was logged into Silk Road as administrator. The seizure ended the era of the first major darknet marketplace.
The Arrest
Agents distracted Ulbricht while an agent grabbed his laptop before he could close it—capturing him logged in as "Dread Pirate Roberts" with access to the backend.
$28.5M
Bitcoin seized
144K BTC
From Ulbricht wallet
Life
Prison sentence
Investigation Methods
- Early forum posts linked to personal email
- IP leak from server misconfiguration (disputed)
- Undercover agents on staff
- Controlled purchases and Bitcoin tracing