The genuine identity of the Dread Pirate Roberts has been disclosed by IRS Special Agent Gary Alford. Where the FBI, DEA, and Homeland Security failed to locate the Silk Road founder, Alford succeeded. Alford claims that crime is a human issue rather than a technological one.
Gary Alford, the tax investigator who exposed Dread Pirate Roberts as the creator of Silk Road, has discussed how he gained access to the legendary inventor of the dark web and how it ultimately resulted in Ross Ulbricht's arrest.
According to Alford, a "alphabet soup" of law enforcement organizations, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), had been attempting for some time to identify the person operating the dark web marketplace but had been unable in doing so.
Alford, an IRS Special Agent, said he addressed the crime as a problem involving people. Alford didn't know anything about the workings of blockchain or Silk Road when he started his inquiry, but that didn't stop him. Never has technology been the bad guy.
"We're not exploring technology, we're not investigating these things," says Alford. We're looking into folks.
Alford started by imagining himself as Dread Pirate Roberts and deciding what he would do if he ran a darknet drug store. He instantly understood that he would require people to be aware of its existence and where to find it.
Alford's intuition turned out to be accurate. Alford eventually discovered a post from 2011 by a person going by the name "altoid" using no analysis method more sophisticated than Google search. "Has anyone seen Silk Road yet?" was posted by altoid in a chat room.
That one sentence contained the seeds of Ulbricht's ultimate destruction. Eventually, Alford was able to connect the altoid account to the email rossulbricht@gmail.com.
Alford emphasized throughout the webinar that cryptocurrency had nothing to fear and that technology is never to blame for criminal activity. Alford had no prior knowledge of blockchain when he started his inquiry into Silk Road, but he always believed he could learn.
Because I didn't even have my own personal computer when I first started, Alford urged people not to be afraid of cryptocurrencies. "I just had my work computer since I assumed I would only be conducting tax investigations," the author said. I therefore started off with essentially nothing. I am currently the program manager for our cyber forensics unit at headquarters.
