Australia Considering Extraditing Silk Road Moderator to U.S.

The Australian government is deciding whether to extradite the moderator of the shuttered black market website Silk Road, Peter Phillip Nash. He was arrested in Australia and two of the site's administrators were arrested separately in the U.S. and Ireland as they were reviving the site into a "Silk Road 2.0" back in December. They had been charged with conspiracy to engage in narcotics trafficking, computer hacking and Money Laundering Money Laundering Money laundering is a blanket term to describe the process by which criminals disguise the original ownership and proceeds of criminal conduct by making such proceeds appear to be derived from a legitimate source.Money laundering is an issue that traverses countless industries and sectors, which includes the financial services space. Though criminal money may be successfully laundered without the assistance of the financial sector, billions of dollars’ worth of criminally derived money are laund Money laundering is a blanket term to describe the process by which criminals disguise the original ownership and proceeds of criminal conduct by making such proceeds appear to be derived from a legitimate source.Money laundering is an issue that traverses countless industries and sectors, which includes the financial services space. Though criminal money may be successfully laundered without the assistance of the financial sector, billions of dollars’ worth of criminally derived money are laund Read this Term.

Silk Road, dubbed as the internet's biggest black market for illegal drugs, aimed to facilitate such transactions anonymously through enabling sales with bitcoins. It was shut down in October and its owner Ross William Ulbricht was arrested and accused of drug trafficking, soliciting murder, facilitating computer hacking, and money laundering. All of the site's 26,000 bitcoins were seized by the FBI, in addition to what was assumed as Ulbricht's personal fortune of 144,000 bitcoins. Today, the combined haul is worth nearly $100 million.

Nash appeared in court last week and formally waived his extradition rights. A spokeswoman for the Attorney-General said, "The Australian Minister for Justice must now determine under section 15B of the Extradition Act whether to surrender Mr Nash to the United States of America."

A forum post from October, attributed to Nash, said:

"It is highly likely these formed are under LE control, please exercise EXTREME causation if you are still using this site. The criminal co,plaint indicates that the servers have been imaged since mid-2012, they have accress to all site communications (PMs etc.), and the only way to take down a .onion site other than by compromising the Private Key Private Key Private keys or secret keys are defined as a string of characters used with an algorithm to both encrypt and decrypt code. The primary application of this alphanumeric key is designed to send or access cryptocurrency securely.As its name suggests, secret keys are only shared with the key’s generator, helping provide a layer of security against hackings or theft.Private keys are stored in digital wallets. When a cryptocurrency transaction is initiated, the wallet generates a digital signature usi Private keys or secret keys are defined as a string of characters used with an algorithm to both encrypt and decrypt code. The primary application of this alphanumeric key is designed to send or access cryptocurrency securely.As its name suggests, secret keys are only shared with the key’s generator, helping provide a layer of security against hackings or theft.Private keys are stored in digital wallets. When a cryptocurrency transaction is initiated, the wallet generates a digital signature usi Read this Term associated with it is by seizing the server, right now it seems that that is now the case. This will be my final post on these forums and I needed to say what an honor and a privilege it has been to serve the SR community. My best advise right now is to consider the worst case scenario and plan accordingly."

If extradited to the United States and found guilty, the charges entail a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.