His attorneys, David Thomas and Paul D. Petruzzi, declined to comment. Now shuttered, Silk Road was a notorious marketplace for illicit drugs. Earlier this month, judges sentenced a Maryland father and son – who sold drugs on Silk Road and similar marketplaces under the screen name XanaxMan – to prison on money laundering charges. They forfeited nearly 3,000 bitcoin. In another case tied to the marketplace, the Justice Department in 2022 announced it seized cryptocurrency stolen from Silk Road worth $3.36 billion. Also in 2022, the Justice Department announced it seized bitcoin worth more than $3.6 billion that had been stolen from the Bitfinex exchange. A married couple from New York later pleaded guilty to money laundering in the case. — Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.