Alleged Silk Road Administrators Arrested in Virigina, Australia, and Ireland

TechCrunch reported on rumors of arrests of some Silk Road administrators earlier this week, and those rumors have been confirmed. According to an official announcement  from the Southern District of New York Attorney’s office, the FBI, IRS-CI, and DEA have successfully arrested three individuals with suspected connection to the Silk road. The individuals named were Andrew Michael Jones, a/k/a “Inigo,” arrested in Charles City, Virginia, Gary Davis, a/k/a “Libertas,” arrested in Ireland, and Peter Phillip Nash, a/k/a “Samesamebutdifferent,” a/k/a “Batman73,” a/k/a “Symmetry,” a/k/a “Anonymousasshit”, was arrested in Australia.

The reasons they are being taken in vary from person to person slightly. Jones and Davis are being charged with being site administrators for the original Silk road, and Nash is being charged with running the Silk Road forums. The actual charges faced are blanketed over all of them, however. As seen in the official announcement about the arrests, they are “each charged with one count of narcotics conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison; one count of conspiracy to commit computer hacking, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; and one count of money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.”
Jones and Davis are moderators of the Silk Road 2 forums, and on the 20th, a Reddit post was made by Inigo’s girlfriend, announcing that he had been arrested. She announced that the men doing the arrests were doing the arrests around the world simultaneously. The methods used to find these suspects were not explained in any form in any of the announcements. So, until further announcements are made, we do not know how this all began.
Photo courtesy of Business Insider.

Jacob Sears

Jacob is a college student up in Alaska, currently studying Political Science. He's not heavily invested in bitcoin (have about 0.04 BTC to my name), but loves supporting it any way he can. He finds writing in the third person very disorienting, but hopes you like his articles. If you absolutely love them you can donate some spare coin to him by clicking here. Also, follow him on twitter @TotallyGeeky (or just click that cute little bird to the upper right)