[9] In October 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shut down the Silk Road website and arrested Ulbricht.

[9][3] Silk Road 2.0 came online the next month, run by other administrators of the former site,[10] but was shut down the following year as part of Operation Onymous.

In 2015, Ulbricht was convicted in federal court for multiple charges related to operating Silk Road and was given two life sentences without possibility of parole.

[15][16] The name "Silk Road" comes from a historical network of trade routes started during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) between Europe, India, China, and many other countries on the Afro-Eurasian landmass.

[7] Silk Road was operated by the pseudonymous "Dread Pirate Roberts" (named after the fictional character from The Princess Bride), who was known for espousing libertarian ideals and criticizing regulation.

[21] On 23 June 2013, it was first reported that the DEA seized 11.02 bitcoins, then worth a total of $814, which the media suspected was a result of a Silk Road honeypot sting.

[22][23] The FBI has claimed that the real IP address of the Silk Road server was found via data leaked directly from the site's CAPTCHA and it was located in Reykjavík, Iceland.

IT security experts have doubted the FBI's claims because technical evidence suggests that no misconfiguration that could cause the specific leak was present at the time.

[24][25] Henry Farrell, an associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, analyzed Silk Road in an essay for Aeon in 2015.

[26] He noted that Ulbricht created the marketplace to function without government oversight but found it difficult to verify anonymous transactions.

[26] Due, in part, to off-duty research conducted by IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent Gary Alford,[27] Ross Ulbricht was alleged by the FBI to be the founder and owner of Silk Road and the person behind the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts" (DPR).

Further searching into this altoid profile led him to a post about an open position that told interested applicants to contact what was Ross Ulbricht's personal email.

[40] The FBI initially seized 26,000 bitcoins from accounts on Silk Road, worth approximately $3.6 million at the time.

[39] Users of an underground site called The Hidden Wiki posted her personal information there, including her address and Social Security number.

[57] In late November 2016, Ulbricht's lawyers brought forward a case on a third DEA agent, who they claim was leaking information about the investigation and tampered with evidence to omit chat logs showing conversations with him.

[13] In February 2013, an Australian cocaine and MDMA ("ecstasy") dealer became the first person to be convicted of crimes directly related to Silk Road, after authorities intercepted drugs that he was importing through the mail, searched his premises, and discovered his Silk Road alias in an image file on his personal computer.

[64] Australian police and the DEA have targeted Silk Road users and made arrests, albeit with limited success at reaching convictions.

[19][65][66] In December 2013, a New Zealand man was sentenced to two years and four months in jail after being convicted of importing 15 grams of methamphetamine that he had bought on Silk Road.

When the Silk Road marketplace first began, the creator and administrators instituted terms of service that prohibited the sale of anything whose purpose was to "harm or defraud".

A sister site, called "The Armoury", sold weapons (primarily firearms) during 2012, but was shut down, due to a lack of demand.

The official sellers guide stated the prohibition of any sale of goods that were meant for harm or fraud, but allowed for prescription drugs, pornography, and counterfeit documents.

[95] The complaint published when Ulbricht was arrested included information the FBI gained from a system image of the Silk Road server collected on 23 July 2013.

[102] Silk Road had a Tor-based book club that continued to operate following the initial site's closure and even following the arrest of one of its members.

[107] Around this time, the new Dread Pirate Roberts abruptly surrendered control of the site and froze its activity, including its escrow system.

[108] On 13 February 2014, Defcon announced that Silk Road 2.0's escrow accounts had been compromised through a vulnerability in Bitcoin protocol called "transaction malleability".

[109] It was later reported that the vulnerability was in the site's "Refresh Deposits" function, and that the Silk Road administrators had used their commissions on sales since 15 February to refund users who lost money, with 50 percent of the hack victims being completely repaid as of 8 April.