The Silk Road has been defunct for nearly five years after Ross
Ulbricht, who founded the dark web staple, was apprehended, arrested,
and given a life prison sentence
without parole. Now, the US courts have caught up with Roger Clark,
Ulbricht’s alleged mentor, adviser, and confidant in all things related
to the dark web marketplace. This past Friday, the US Attorney’s office
announced Clark’s extradition to the United States to face newly
unsealed charges for his role in Silk Road’s operation.
The indictment
states that Clark (also known as “Variety Jones,” “VJ,” and “Cimon”)
was a “real mentor” to Ulbricht over the course of Silk Road’s
operation, and he ran much of the back end of the site. He allegedly
hired programmers to maintain and speed up the site, maintained and
created rules for the Silk Road community that were meant to inform
Ulbricht about the site’s security vulnerabilities, and collected intel
on local law enforcement’s efforts to thwart the site, among other
things.
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| silk road screenshot |
Clark is also charged with a slew of conspiratorial charges,
including narcotics trafficking and money laundering. If convicted, he
faces 10 years to life in prison. Clark was arrested and detained by
Thai police nearly three years ago. When a reporter for Ars Technica interviewed him there in 2016,
he bragged that the Thai police only seized his closed and encrypted
laptops, and they could spend decades trying to decrypt those hard
drives. He claimed that until they did, they’d have no hard and fast
evidence of his crimes.
“They don’t have s*** on me,” he said at the time. “I’m not going [to the US]. It’s an impossible circumstance.”
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