Ross Ulbricht, the founder and operator of dark net's biggest marketplace for narcotics called Silk Road, was arrested in October 2013 and charged with money laundering, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic narcotics, and procuring murder. Recently, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole on all the charges but the one of procuring murder.

Ulbricht started the marketplace back in 2010, with free market ideology as his driving ideal. In time, while enforcing its rules and principles, Ulbricht turned into a criminal. Both the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the FBI had their investigations as early as 2011.

At the time of the arrest, the FBI seized 144,000 bitcoins which belonged to Ulbricht, worth $28.5 million. The seizure had a large impact on bitcoin's exchange rate at that time. The website was shut down shortly after that.