Blake Benthall, 26, arrested after allegedly resurrected drugs and contraband goods market after original incarnation was shut down by the FBI last year

The FBI and Europol cracked down on the latest version of the Silk Road drugs and contraband goods market on Thursday, arresting its 26-year-old alleged operator and shutting its website.

Blake Benthall was arrested in San Francisco on Wednesday on federal charges related to his allegedly running Silk Road 2.0, an online market designed to let people buy and sell illegal drugs and other unlawful goods and services anonymously, said the United States attorney’s office for the southern district of New York.

US attorney Preet Bharara alleged Benthall, who went by the username “Defcon”, had attempted to resurrect Silk Road after its original incarnation was shut down by the FBI last year and its alleged operator, Ross Ulbricht, also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, was arrested.

Ulbricht, who authorities claim facilitated $1bn in illicit trades, has pleaded not guilty to charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and criminal enterprise. His trial is set for January.

“Let’s be clear – this Silk Road, in whatever form, is the road to prison. Those looking to follow in the footsteps of alleged cybercriminals should understand that we will return as many times as necessary to shut down noxious online criminal bazaars. We don’t get tired,” said Bharara.

The authorities said Silk Road 2.0, launched in November 2013, had enabled over 100,000 people to buy and sell illegal drugs anonymously over the internet.

The website operated on the Tor network, a network designed to allow anonymity online. Since its launch Silk Road 2.0 had allowed thousands of people to buy “hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services to buyers throughout the world, as well as to launder millions of dollars generated by these unlawful transactions,” according to the US attorney’s office.

In September, authorities say, Silk Road 2.0 had sales of approximately $8m per month and about 150,000 active users. The site had over 13,000 listings for controlled substances, including, among others, 1,783 listings for “psychedelics”, 1,697 listings for “ecstasy”, 1,707 listings for “cannabis”, and 379 listings for “opioids”. Silk Road 2.0 was a marketplace for illegal services too including fraudulent identification documents and computer-hacking tools and services.

US law enforcement successfully infiltrated Silk Road 2.0’s support staff, gaining access to restricted areas of the site. The authorities said their infiltration allowed them to interact directly with Benthall throughout his operation of the website.

Blake Benthall, in a photograph on his Instagram account

According to the complaint Benthall used his own email address to communicate with the service provider for Silk Road 2.0’s server. Federal agents also claim that IP addresses, obtained from Google, and their physical surveillance of the suspect and Defcon’s online activity further tie Benthall to the username. Agents monitoring Benthall during a visit to relatives noticed Defcon go quiet when he left his relatives’ house, they say.

Benthall will appear in court in San Francisco later on Thursday. He is charged with one count of conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison; one count of conspiring to commit computer hacking, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; one count of conspiring to traffic in fraudulent identification documents, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison; and one count of money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

According to his Linkedin profile, Benthall was a former employee of SpaceX, PayPal billionaire Elon Musk’s space exploration company. A company spokesman confirmed that someone of the same name did work at the SpaceX for roughly the time period claimed by Benthall. On Twitter he describes himself as “rocket scientist, bitcoin dreamer”.