LONDON, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A British university drop-out who ran an illicit website closed down by the U.S. FBI was Friday jailed for five years and four months.
Liverpool Crown Court heard that Thomas White, 24, took over the running of a notorious dark website Silk Road after the FBI closed it in 2013. He ran the dark web business selling illegal drugs and for hoarding a catalogue of horrific child sex abuse images he wanted to sell for profit.
White, who left his accounting degree at Liverpool John Moores University after a single term, was an administrator of the Silk Road, but within a month of its shutdown he launched Silk Road 2.0.
It used technology to allow users to anonymously buy and sell drugs, computer hacking tools and other illegal goods, using the digital currency bitcoin.
Although he had no legitimate income, White paid 14,000 U.S. dollars up front to rent a plush apartment on Liverpool's world-famous city water front, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
"Though investigators can't be sure how much money he made, around 96 million dollars' worth of goods were traded on Silk Road 2.0. White took between 1 and 5 percent commission on each sale from the tens of thousands of users," said a spokeswoman for Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA)
When NCA officers raided his flat they discovered a laptop under his bed containing the most severe level of indecent images of children.
NCA investigators also uncovered White's online chat with an administrator of Silk Road 2.0 where he said he wanted to set up a paedophiles' website "because there is money to be made from these people."
A vast amount of encrypted material was discovered on White's computer. It contained data hacked from the FBI, NASA, users' details from Ashley Madison, a website billed as enabling extramarital affairs, the database of the U.S. Fraternal Order of the Police, the equivalent of the UK's Police Federation. It is not believed White hacked the data himself.
White was arrested at his apartment in November 2014 and at the same time the FBI raided the U.S. operation.
The NCA said White was self-taught at computers and spent his days staying up late gaming. He was believed to own 50 bitcoins, which investigators seized, with a current value of around 252,000 U.S. dollars.
The NCA identified White by tracking parcels of drugs he ordered through the original Silk Road website
White pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, money laundering and making 464 category A indecent images of children.
Ian Glover from the NCA said: "Thomas White and his online associates believed they could use the dark web to anonymously commit crimes with impunity. But this case shows that those who try to hide behind the apparent security of anonymising software will be identified and brought to justice.
"Close working with American partners in the FBI, Homeland Security and the Department of Justice has resulted in the take down of global illegal drug empires and the targeting of associated money laundering, primarily involving crypto-currencies.
"This has been a complex, international investigation and follows previous investigations led by the NCA into dark web criminality, and working with our international partners, the UK is fast becoming an increasingly hostile environment for dark web crime," said Ian Glover.
