http://finance.yahoo.com/news/irs-agent-discovered-identity-silk-185723006.html
ross started a website named 'silk road' to allow trading of contraband goods and drugs in the cyber underground. he made a cut on all transactions, and bit coin became the popular currency of choice. he promoted his site before launching it with a moniker called "altoid". his new moniker "dread pirate roberts" became notorious among silk road traders and federal agents who were looking for him. before using less of "altoid" in other sites, he inadvertently revealed his gmail address to other members who were interested to contact him for access to and info on silk road during its inception. he subsequently deleted any messages with his contact info in them when the site took off. and during years of raking in millions, ross relied heavily on "strong" vpn to run his online operations from the public wi-fi network in an sf library. unfortunately, someone who replied to him on another site quoted his message in his reply and thus logged and locked in his gmail id in cyberspace forever. those messages were lost or buried in the cyber cesspit for years until a young irs agent dug them with advanced search using google. piecing messages and posts of similar interests together, the agent was able to connect the dots the old fashioned way and produce the true id of the supposedly anonymous silk road master moniker.
ross started a website named 'silk road' to allow trading of contraband goods and drugs in the cyber underground. he made a cut on all transactions, and bit coin became the popular currency of choice. he promoted his site before launching it with a moniker called "altoid". his new moniker "dread pirate roberts" became notorious among silk road traders and federal agents who were looking for him. before using less of "altoid" in other sites, he inadvertently revealed his gmail address to other members who were interested to contact him for access to and info on silk road during its inception. he subsequently deleted any messages with his contact info in them when the site took off. and during years of raking in millions, ross relied heavily on "strong" vpn to run his online operations from the public wi-fi network in an sf library. unfortunately, someone who replied to him on another site quoted his message in his reply and thus logged and locked in his gmail id in cyberspace forever. those messages were lost or buried in the cyber cesspit for years until a young irs agent dug them with advanced search using google. piecing messages and posts of similar interests together, the agent was able to connect the dots the old fashioned way and produce the true id of the supposedly anonymous silk road master moniker.