Silk Road was, at its height, uniquely successful and making an absolute mockery of the United States government's capacity to regulate drug trafficking. In addition, he fashioned himself an anti-establishment persona, going by the handle "Dread Pirate Roberts" online.

He was unique in his magnitude of success. Governments can successfully magnify their enforcement ability by making an example of outliers.

It was a forum that mocked the government's ability to regulate drug trafficking and therefore he was prosecuted?

I find that hard to believe.

There are multiple examples of federal law enforcement making examples of particularly brazen instances of flouting federal law that are disproportionate to the actual harm caused. Kevin Mitnick is a classic example.

Here's the thing about the US federal law enforcement: there aren't actually a lot of them. In a country of 380 million people, there are 38,000 agents. Google employs more people than the FBI. If the US citizenry decided to take collective action against them, the federal domestic police force alone could not stand against the citizenry.

This shapes where they apply their resources. To be most effective, they need to be visible so that people don't start to think of them as toothless, because mass-resistance to their general police activities would actually work. So they pursue cases into the dust to generate high-profile images of lawbreakers having a really awful time to discourage other lawbreakers.

He was prosecuted because he broke US drug law. But he was prosecuted to the extent he was prosecuted because Silk Road had made headlines as something untouchable by federal authority. That's the kind of Capone energy that the federal law enforcement cannot abide and survive as an institution.

Which is all different from “running a forum mocking drug enforcement capability” which makes it sound like he was a satirist.

> I find that had to believe.

Inconceivable!

Dread Pirate Roberts is legend, look up the silk road marketplace.

Theres probably a movie or two about it too

Oh so it was a marketplace, not a forum. Like one that allowed people to openly transact illegal goods? That makes more sense.

It's weird that GP seemed to purposely obscure that.

Yes, it was the biggest drug market on the dark web at that time, and the 50,676 bitcoins seized by the feds from then is today worth 5,3 billion dollars to give you an idea.

Also there was a long side story with disappeared bitcoins, presumably stolen by federal investigators.

American Kingpin by Nick Bilton is an excellent book covering Silk Road and what makes this unique