Silk Road suspect Ross Ulbricht has been denied bail at a hearing in a New York federal courtroom.

According to Forbes’ Andy Greenberg, government prosecutors also have accused him of four new murders-for-hire.

Ulbricht is accused of being Dread Pirate Roberts, the mastermind of the notorious Silk Road website, which used Tor and Bitcoin to enable illegal online drug transactions. It was shuttered in October 2013.

A previous Silk Road employee turned government informant admitted to being involved in a scenario to stage his own murder as a way to satisfy Ulbricht’s alleged demands.

Meanwhile, Silk Road copycat sites have emerged, attempting to pick up where the original left off.

Ars will update this story as it develops.

UPDATE 12:45pm CT: Greenberg reported further based on the Ulbricht hearing:

[Assistant United States Attorney Serrin Turner] said that Ulbricht had not only sent messages to two would-be hitmen—an undercover agent on one of those two occasions—asking to have a witness and a blackmailer killed, but had followed up by ordering the killing of the blackmailer’s associate and three people who lived with him. Mysteriously, Turner said that in none of the cases were actual victims found; In the first, FBI agents say they faked the death of alleged former Silk Road employee Curtis Green to convince Ulbricht the murder had taken place. But the outcome of the other five murders remains unexplained. Nonetheless, Turner argued, “the evidence is crystal clear that the defendant intended these murders to happen.”

UPDATE 1:15pm CT: The Wall Street Journal also quoted Turner from the court hearing.

"It was not just a fantasy," prosecutor Serrin Turner said. "It was $730,000 that this man spent to try to kill six people."

The Journal added that Ulbricht's attorney, Joshua Dratel, said the government only had "indirect allegations," noting that prosecutors have never claimed Ulbricht handled drugs or was capable of orchestrating murders.

Turner replied, "Somebody heading a cartel in Colombia never touches the drugs."