Ross Ulbricht Got a $31 Million Donation From a Dark Web Dealer, Crypto Tracers Suspect
When Ross Ulbricht received a $31 million bitcoin donation last weekend from an unknown source, many observers saw it as more than a very nice welcome-home gift. Rumors swirled that the creator of the Silk Road, less than five months after receiving a pardon from Donald Trump that saved him from a lifetime in prison, was sending himself a trove of his stashed criminal proceeds from his days running the dark web’s first black market more than a decade prior.
Now cryptocurrency tracing investigators say they’ve arrived at a stranger explanation: The money wasn’t originally Ulbricht’s, and didn’t come from the Silk Road. Instead, they suspect it came from a different long-defunct dark web black market: AlphaBay.
The crypto tracing firm…
