VOLUME XXXIII NO. 15
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF UTD — WWW.UTDMERCURY.COM
OCTOBER 7, 2013
Over 1.4k likes on facebook.com/theutdmercury | Hundreds follow @utdmercury on Twitter | By UTD students, for UTD students: continuously in print for more than 30 years
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University doctors and denies access to digital documents related to accused alumnus. PAGE 3
IN THE
EMPIRE BUSINESS Ross Ulbricht, 2006 grad, arrested for running multi-million dollar online black market FBI links Ulbricht to Dread Pirate Roberts identity through social media, email accounts Silk Road marketplace was hidden in the Deep Web, used untraceable Bitcoins Ulbricht’s former UTD roommate gives insight to college days in exclusive interview Feds seize Ulbricht, shut down site Story by SHEILA DANG/MANAGING EDITOR Photo Illustration by CATHRYN PLOEHN/GRAPHICS EDITOR and DANIEL LEEPER/MERCURY STAFF
The FBI arrested a UTD alumnus on Oct. 1, allegedly the leader behind Silk Road, an underground black market website. Ross Ulbricht, a 2006 graduate, was arrested in a branch of the San Francisco Public Library and indicted on charges in money laundering, computer hacking and narcotics trafficking conspiracy. The Department of Justice seized Silk Road’s website, an anonymous marketplace most known for its offerings of a variety of narcotics, including everything from marijuana to Afghani hash. The department also seized $3.6 million worth of Bitcoins, a digital currency that’s difficult to track and the only currency accepted by Silk Road vendors. According to the indictment from the U.S. District Court in Maryland, Ulbricht operated Silk Road under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts, a character from the movie “The Princess Bride.” In November 2012, Dread Pirate Roberts, or DPR, paid an undercover agent $80,000 to kill a Silk Road administrator who had stolen Bitcoins from users. The undercover agent then sent a doctored photo to DPR depicting a dead body to prove the murder, the indictment stated.
In a separate incident documented in a criminal complaint against Ulbricht, a Silk Road vendor from White Rock, British Columbia began blackmailing DPR in March, threatening to release the names and addresses of thousands of Silk Road’s vendors and customers unless he was paid $500,000. DPR then agreed to pay a hit-man 1,670 Bitcoins, the equivalent of about $150,000, to kill the vendor. While the hit-man supposedly sent a photo to prove the murder, Canadian authorities found no record of a man in White Rock with the name DPR provided, nor an incident of a homicide in the town around that date, according to the criminal complaint. Despite these events, it was connections to Ulbricht’s personal email and social media accounts that led to his arrest. According to the criminal complaint, posts written in January 2011 to a forum for users of the drug called shrooms and another website called Bitcoin Talk, asked users whether they had bought drugs from the Silk Road website. The questions were posted by someone with the username “altoid,” and were deemed by the FBI to have been written with the intention of
College roommate opens up about Ulbricht MIGUEL PEREZ Mercury Staff
Silk Road and the Deep Web JOSEPH MANCUSO Mercury Staff
Silk Road, the online black market that generated millions of dollars in drug sale commissions, was shut down by various federal agencies on Oct. 2. Notorious for the ease at which users could buy illegal drugs, the website had been in operation since January 2011. Silk Road was able to remain hidden from authorities by being hosted on the Deep Web, a hidden group of websites not detected by standard search engines like Google or Bing.
Int’l students slammed by scam Con men pose as law enforcement, exploit fear of deportation for money
PARTH PARIKH/STAFF
Mechanical engineering grad student Srinath Iyengar is just one of several UTD students who have been targeted. ANWESHA BHATTACHARJEE Web Editor
By the time the clock struck five on Sept. 23, Srinath Iyengar, a mechanical engineering graduate student and native of India, had been threatened with deportation, cheated of $2,200 and led through a two-hour emotional roller-coaster ride. It started with a call at around 1 p.m. from a man who identi-
fied himself as a police officer. Iyengar was ordered to leave any building he was in and go to a secluded space where no one would be able to hear him. The caller informed Iyengar that his I-94 form, a document that proves an immigrant’s entry status in the United States, was incomplete and that he had been repeatedly notified by email to correct it online. Since he had failed to respond in the designated timeframe, a lawsuit had been filed by the American Embassy against him in India and he had two options available — seven weeks in prison and deportation or pay a fine. “I didn’t believe him initially, and I thought he was pulling a fast one on me,” Iyengar, a mechanical engineering graduate student, said. “Then he started listing out everything he knew about me — where I study, my name, my date of birth and my father’s name — not many people know my date of birth and my father’s name … that’s when I thought this was legitimate.” Turns out, Iyengar’s first instinct was spot-on. The caller turned out to be part of a scam that targets international students and cons them into transferring large amounts of money into their account. Iyengar opted to pay a fine over deportation and was then transferred to another caller, who claimed to be from the Department of Homeland Security. He was asked to take public transport or drive by himself to the nearest Walmart, put $2,400 on a Green
The alleged drug lord the FBI arrested on Oct. 1 is a far cry from the friendly and intelligent man who attended UTD, according to a former college friend. “(Ross) was a lot of fun. Just reading the indictment about him — it was like reading about a completely different person,” said former roommate and UTD alumnus Aaron Arnold. “He was just a really fun, outgoing kind of person; not at all the kind of person that would allegedly order a hit on someone.” Arnold roomed with Ulbricht in a Phase V apartment from 2003 until Ulbricht graduated in 2006 with a bachelor’s in physics. According to Ulbricht’s LinkedIn page, he was an Academic Excellence Scholar and had scholarships from the College of Engineering and Nanotech Institute. During his time at UTD, Ulbricht was part of the
Bike thief caught
Non-affiliated male threatens to kill student when discovered; UTDPD urge vigilance with personal property
See full story on page 5
CONNIE CHENG/STAFF