Roger Thomas Clark, the 54-year-old man who the Department of Justice says was one of the masterminds behind the Silk Road, is awaiting extradition to the US in a Thai jail cell.
Clark, who the DOJ believes is actually Canadian, was nabbed on December 3 in an operation that was conducted by Thai police and American Feds.
It’s believed that while Ross Ulbricht, a San Francisco resident who is currently serving a life sentence for his part in the Silk Road case, actually built the site, it was Clark who came up with the idea in the first place. (Clark is even credited with coming up with Ulbricht’s Pricess Bride-inspired nom de guerre, Dread Prate Roberts.)
In a statement to the press, FBI Assistant Director Diego Rodriguez heaped scorn on Clark and his attempts at fleeing justice saying:
The arrest of Roger Thomas Clark shows again that conducting criminal activities on the Dark Web does not keep a criminal out of law enforcement’s reach. As alleged, Clark was paid at least hundreds of thousands of dollars to act as a counselor to Ross Ulbricht’s black-market bazaar, Silk Road. Clark may have thought residing in Thailand would keep him out of reach of U.S authorities, but our international partnerships have proven him wrong.
By the time it peaked out, the Silk Road is believed to have put more than $200 million worth of Bitcoin in its founders’ pockets. The illicit drug bazaar was shut down in 2013, though several copycats have emerged since then.
If convicted on the charges he’s facing in the US, Clark could wind up spending 30 years behind bars.