Silk Road facilitator extradited to U.S.

A man charged with helping maintain the now-shuttered Silk Road website, where people used bitcoin to buy drugs and hacking tools, was extradited from Ireland to the U.S.

Gary Davis, known online as “Libertas,” was arrested in January 2014, accused of acting as an administrator of the Silk Road site, which operated from 2011 to 2013. He’s charged with conspiracy to distribute narcotics and other crimes that carry a sentence of as much as life in prison. The extradition was announced Friday by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman.

Ross William Ulbricht, 34, was convicted in 2015 of running the Silk Road, where users spent $214 million on illegal goods. Ulbricht used the online alias “Dread Pirate Roberts,” taken from a character in the 1987 film The Princess Bride. He is serving a life sentence in a high security federal prison in Colorado.