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Key player in Silk Road successor site
gets eight years in U.S. prison
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 [June 04, 2016]
By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) - A Washington state man was
sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison for his role in helping the
management of the successor website to Silk Road, an online black market
where illegal drugs and other goods were sold.
Brian Farrell, who prosecutors say was a staff member for Silk
Road 2.0, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Richard Jones in
Seattle after pleading guilty in March to a charge of conspiracy to
distribute heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.
Farrell, 27, was arrested in January 2015 as trial was under way in
the case of Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the original Silk Road,
which authorities say Ulbricht ran under the alias "Dread Pirate
Roberts."
Ulbricht, 32, was sentenced in May 2015 to life in prison after a
federal jury in Manhattan found him guilty on charges including
distributing narcotics.
Silk Road 2.0 was launched late in 2013, weeks after authorities had
shuttered the original Silk Road website and arrested Ulbricht.
 Like the original website, Silk Road 2.0 allowed users to
anonymously buy and sell drugs, computer hacking tools and other
illicit items, using the digital currency bitcoin, authorities said.
In November 2014, federal authorities in Manhattan announced they
had shut down Silk Road 2.0 and arrested its alleged operator, Blake
Benthall, who prosecutors say operated the website under the name
"Defcon."
Prosecutors say Farrell was a key assistant to Benthall and was part
of a small staff of online administrators and forum moderators,
using the moniker "DoctorClu."
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The alleged homepage to Silk Road 2.0, the successor website to Silk
Road, is seen in a screenshot labelled Exhibit A from a U.S.
Department of Justice (DOJ) criminal complaint filed against Blake
Benthall November 6, 2014. REUTERS/DOJ/Handout via Reuters
In court papers, prosecutors said that during a search of his
residence in Bellevue, Washington, in January 2015, Farrell said he
worked as Defcon's righthand man.
A lawyer for Farrell did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
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