Those who buy from Silk Road run the risk of Customs intercepting their package but many are happy to take that chance. On the Silk Road forum the disappearance of several other Australian sellers has been noted, but EnterTheMatrix appears to be the most brazen as they were in the top 1 per cent of sellers and had recently offered significant discounts such as a "one day only" Valentine's Day sale in order to entice a stampede of buyers. The consensus on the site appears to be that EnterTheMatrix was looking to cash out and disappear following increased attention from Australian law enforcement. Silk Road users were in disbelief this week. "One of the reasons it is so hard to understand why he would pull this scam is because he was making so much money anyway. His prices were high, his sales volume was high, too," wrote one.

Silk Road users have eBay-style feedback ratings, pay for goods using encrypted digital currency Bitcoins and access the site using the Tor network, making it very difficult for law enforcement to combat the trade. Customs and the Australian Federal Police have had some success using the old-fashioned method of intercepting parcels once they reach the country (as in the case of Howard), but many packages go unchecked and suspicious ones that are picked up rarely have identifying features. Customs says it seizes a "significant amount" of cocaine and MDMA in the mail that has been bought through Silk Road and claims its web is getting "tighter with every transaction". Customs believes its efforts have resulted in "an increasing trend on Silk Road, whereby several "anonymous" dealers have announced on forums that they will no longer sell to Australians or have imposed more stringent transaction rules on Australian buyers." "This demonstrates that Customs and Border Protection is actively disrupting this illegal trade in dangerous drugs."

Fairfax Media has seen posts on the Silk Road forum from last year where sellers refused to sell to Australians following many scam attempts by buyers, who claim not to have received packages. It is not clear how much Customs and the AFP had to do with this. Last year the AFP took action on several occasions against people who imported drugs through the postal system. In June Andrew Fennell was sentenced to two years and eight months imprisonment after police seized 533 pills sent to him through the post. Dr Monica Barratt of the National Drug Research Institute, who is researching Silk Road, said recent developments may reduce the sense of trust Australian buyers have in the Silk Road site and its vendors. "Nevertheless, while there is a demand for its products and there are vendors willing to sell, there will likely continue to be some Australian buyers willing to take the risk, whether that is on Silk Road or any other dark-web marketplace," she said.

Melbourne writer, journalist and blogger Eiley Ormsby, who has been closely following Silk Road for some time, said the EnterTheMatrix scam was similar to one pulled by Canadian heroin and amphetamine dealer Tony76 in April last year. She suspects the Australian sellers who left the site did so after being spooked by Howard's prosecution. "Howard was relatively small-time compared to a seller like EnterTheMatrix and it would not surprise me if the sentence was a wake-up call and they decided it was time to cut out," she said. But University of Canberra adjunct associate professor Nigel Phair, a former Detective Superintendent with the AFP, said he believed there was "little law enforcement" attention being paid to Silk Road and it was generally easy to get away with buying and selling on the site. Last year Carnegie Mellon professor Nicholas Christin estimated Silk Road was doing $22 million in annual revenue, and the site has been growing consistently as its notoriety has increased.