[tor-talk] Silk Road taken down by FBI

[Al Billings]

I would assume they were digging into the origins of the Silk Road, tracking down references as you quote below. It isn't clear how they actually got his name and if they had it before customs intercepted him importing fake IDs. The paperwork claims that this was a random customs check but that could easily be misinformation and they had his name on a list or somesuch. 

-- 
Al Billings
http://makehacklearn.org


On Wednesday, October 2, 2013 at 1:13 PM, Ted Smith wrote:

> Page 26 paragraph 38 (I think) is where it has the first indication of
> how they caught him.
> 
> Summary:
> 
> * The very first mention of the Silk Road was from a user named
> "altoid" on a forum
> * Someone else named "altoid" on the bitcoin forums advertised for
> developers, using an email like firstname.lastname at gmail.com (mailto:firstname.lastname at gmail.com)
> 
> It's not clear how the FBI found the hosting server for the Silk Road,
> but I'd guess that it's from tracking his purchases.
> 
> After having his name, the FBI could find his:
> 
> * political beliefs (which matched those of the Silk Road
> operator)
> * location
> * stackoverflow account