I heard that the owner of silkroad was caught because he asked a question or advertised in this forum.
IIRC Ross was caught because he did not do a good enough job concealing a package containing drugs; not to do with this forum.
Ross was caught by the FBI for two reasons
- 1 (primarily) - The CAPTCHA on the login page of SR1 was leaking the IP address of the SR server, which after using additional tools available to the FBI was able to be traced to IP addresses of locations that were near where Ross lived as well as IP addresses associated with Ross -- Some speculate that the FBI engaged in some kind of illegal/unconstitutional activity to find this IP address
- 2 - Ross posted here soliciting programmers to help with a project described in a way that matched SR. IIRC, there was also someone who posted on another forum with the same "altoid" handle that registered with the same email address, and subsequently changed the email associated with that account
Re the topic - no shield is not the FBI lol
