"U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Current Secret Service Investigations and Seizures: Baltimore Field Office
The U.S. Secret Service (USSS) has partnered with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Drug Enforcement Agency, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on an investigation into the Silk Road, a black market criminal marketplace located on The Onion Router network. Silk Road acts as a criminal eBay, allowing the purchase of counterfeit and genuine identification, counterfeit currency, narcotics, weapons, biological agents, and criminal services. The sole currency accepted and transacted on Silk Road is Bitcoins. The site has an annual revenue stream of over $250 million and a user base in excess of 300,000. The purpose of this investigation has been to focus on the identification of the site's main administrator, referred to as Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR).
Of recent noteworthy interest was the determination that the suspect who had sent Ricin to President Obama earlier this year was a vendor on the Silk Road site. A critical component in this investigation has been the ongoing undercover operation between an undercover agent (agency undisclosed per AUSA) and the site administrator, which has resulted in the site administrator soliciting the agent to commit a murder for hire, for which the government received a total payment of $80,000.
On May 1, 2013, an arrest warrant was issued pursuant to a sealed indictment in U.S. District Court of Maryland, charging DPR with violations of Title 21 USC 846 (Conspiracy to Distribute a Controlled Substance), Title 18 USC 1512(a)(1)(c) (Attempted Witness Murder), Title 18 USC 1958(a) (Use of Interstate Commerce Facilities in Commission of Murder-for-Hire), and Title 18 USC 2 (Aiding and Abetting). The investigation has utilized numerous buy-thru operations for weapons, identification, narcotics, and explosives to identify high value targets on the site. The USSS is responsible for the forensics and cyber analysis in this ongoing criminal investigation and, along with our interagency partners, will attempt to identify the site's origin and the identity of the site administrator. As a result of this ongoing investigation, approximately $5.5 million has been seized by the USSS and ICE-HSI.
