Alleged Silk Road Hitman has Been Arrested by Canadian Police

Drama surrounding the now-defunct dark web marketplace Silk Road has all but disappeared.

A 42 year old man is facing extradition to the United States to be charged of conspiracy to violate U.S. narcotics laws, conspiracy to import narcotics and money laundering conspiracy. The person’s name is James Ellingson, and according to Vancouver Sun, he has been arrested by Vancouver police on October 29.

The U.S. alleges that Ellingson had been in contact with Ross Ulbricht, also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, as both a drug dealer and later on – a hired assassin. Ellingson’s own moniker was redandwhite, hinting towards involvement with Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang.

Accusations of a wetwork requested by Ulbricht have been frequently brought up during his own trial. He was never found guilty of murder for hire, nevertheless the accusations appeared to have influenced his final sentence, as he received a double life sentence plus 40 years without the possibility of parole on exclusively non-violent charges – as stated by the Ulbricht family in a petition, asking for a clemency.

The allegations were based on messages, found on Ulbricht’s computer. The messages contained apparent blackmail attempts by another Silk Road user, with the moniker FriendlyChemist. Allegedly, Ulbricht’s reaction was to put “bounty on his head” – and the man for the job was redandwhite.

No actual murder appears to have happened. That being said, the transaction mentioned in the communications is real indeed and can be observed on the publicly available ledger.

Interestingly, even though we are ten months into a bear market, the US dollar value of the transaction is still in excess of $8,000,000.