The founder of online drug portal، Silk Road، Ross Ulbricht has been sentenced to life imprisonment by the US state.
According to federal prosecutors، Mr. Ulbricht’s website hidden in the “dark web” had sold more than $200 million worth of illegal narcotics anonymously.
The 31-year old website founder، was found guilty at New York for charges of conspiracy to commit drug trafficking، money laundering as well as computer hacking.
The Silk Road website was shut down back in 2013، when police had arrested Ulbricht. Back in February he was convicted of operating the illegal narc selling website for nearly three years time since 2011.
The Silk Road took its name from the infamous Silk trade route spanning across Europe، Asia and parts of Africa.
The online website gained notoriety through media and online chatter. But the site was only accessible through Tor – a system that enables users to access the website without revealing their personal details as well as their IP and country of log in.
Tor was initially created to provide political and social activists anonymity for their campaigns، it was created by the US government. However the system has flunked down to be used to mask illegal narcotics trafficking.
The site uses the virtual currency Bitcoin for the online narcotics transactions، as this method of virtual currency is hard to trace or monitor. Apart from narcotic substances the site had also offered black market deals of hacking tools and stolen passports.