When the internet first became mainstream, it brought with it a wave of excitement and optimism.

The World Wide Web is a vast network of websites designed to cater to your every whim.

But what if I told you that the sites, Google, and other search engines allow you to access

is just the tip of the iceberg?

The internet you use on a daily basis is merely the surface web.

Take a deeper dive and you'll find yourself on the dark web, a hidden, lawless part of the internet.

Here, you can find illegal markets where drugs, weapons,

and sinister services are offered. Welcome to the Silk Road. I'm Emily Campano, and this is

the Fox True Crime podcast.

Thank you. Launched in 2011, the Silk Road was an anonymous black market on the dark web, run by a man known as Dread Pirate Roberts.

The Silk Road was undetectable from your typical search engines, so accessing it was no easy feat.

Getting to the dark web required specific software known as a Tor browser.

The Tor browser allows users to access a network of onions,

which are messages wrapped in layers of encryption,

offering high levels of anonymity to those who use them.

Through the Silk Road, customers had access to a wide array of illegal products

available for purchase with cryptocurrency, including drugs, fake IDs, pornography, and weapons.

The site also offered dangerous and harmful services, such as hacking,

identity theft, and even murder for hire. The same year it was created, the Silk Road caught

the FBI's attention, leading them to launch an investigation into the site and its

mysterious kingpin. FBI Special Agent Chris Tarbell led the infamous Silk Road investigation,

dubbed Operation Onion Peeler. As the co-founder of Naxo, a cybersecurity firm, Chris continues

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