Man Charged With Operating Silk Road 2.0, a Black Market Website

A California man has been arrested and charged with operating an online marketplace created to be a successor to the original Silk Road website, a black market for drug sales and other illegal activity that used Bitcoins.

Silk Road 2.0 was formed last November "to fill the void" left by the government's seizure of the original website, according to a criminal complaint filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

The original website was "designed to enable users anywhere in the world to buy and sell illegal drugs and other illegal goods and services anonymously and beyond the reach of law enforcement," the complaint said. Silk Road 2.0 was "virtually identical to Silk Road 1.0 in its appearance and function," the complaint added.