section_path: Arrest and trial/Initial arrest
section_name: Initial arrest
paragraph_text: Initial arrest
  
  Law enforcement broke Silk Road's cover in a number of ways. A drug agency investigator infiltrated the site and became an admin, gaining inside information about the site operations. He found Ulbricht's chats showed Pacific time, narrowing down his likely location. Law enforcement seized a Silk Road server in Iceland. Ulbricht was connected to "Dread Pirate Roberts" by Gary Alford, an Internal Revenue Service investigator working with the Drug Enforcement Administration on the Silk Road case, in mid-2013. The connection was made by linking the username "altoid", used during Silk Road's early days to announce the website, and a forum post in which Ulbricht, posting under the nickname "altoid", asked for programming help and gave his email address, which contained his full name. On October 1, 2013, the FBI arrested Ulbricht at the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public Library and accused him of being the "mastermind" behind the site.
  
  To prevent Ulbricht from encrypting or deleting files on the laptop he was using to run the site as he was arrested, two agents pretended to be engaged in a quarrel to cause a commotion. Once Ulbricht was sufficiently distracted, according to Joshuah Bearman of Wired, several agents quickly moved in to arrest him while another agent grabbed the laptop and handed it to agent Thomas Kiernan. Kiernan then inserted a flash drive into one of the laptop's USB ports, with software that copied key files. Ulbricht was ordered held without bail.
  
  Law enforcement broke Silk Road's cover in a number of ways. A drug agency investigator infiltrated the site and became an admin, gaining inside information about the site operations. He found Ulbricht's chats showed Pacific time, narrowing down his likely location. Law enforcement seized a Silk Road server in Iceland. Ulbricht was connected to "Dread Pirate Roberts" by Gary Alford, an Internal Revenue Service investigator working with the Drug Enforcement Administration on the Silk Road case, in mid-2013. The connection was made by linking the username "altoid", used during Silk Road's early days to announce the website, and a forum post in which Ulbricht, posting under the nickname "altoid", asked for programming help and gave his email address, which contained his full name. On October 1, 2013, the FBI arrested Ulbricht at the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public Library and accused him of being the "mastermind" behind the site.
  
  To prevent Ulbricht from encrypting or deleting files on the laptop he was using to run the site as he was arrested, two agents pretended to be engaged in a quarrel to cause a commotion. Once Ulbricht was sufficiently distracted, according to Joshuah Bearman of Wired, several agents quickly moved in to arrest him while another agent grabbed the laptop and handed it to agent Thomas Kiernan. Kiernan then inserted a flash drive into one of the laptop's USB ports, with software that copied key files. Ulbricht was ordered held without bail.