Silk Road 2.0 took a roughly 8 percent cut of every transaction, so he was making as much as $500,000 a month, part of which he used to pay a dozen anonymous users to help him with customer service.

In 2014, the former UK National Crime Agency (NCA) officer, Paul Chowles, assisted in the arrest of Thomas White, a man "who had launched Silk Road 2.0 less than a month after the FBI had shut ...