Federal prosecutors in Orlando say the chief technology officer of a Texas company was illegally selling painkillers on the Silk Road website and was among the top vendors on the now-defunct drug marketplace.
Matthew Verran Jones, who works for Data Paradigm Inc. in Dallas, has been charged with illegally distributing a controlled substance on Silk Road as well as outside the website.
Federal authorities shut down Silk Road last year and charged its 29-year-old founder with building a drug empire that had an estimated $1.2 billion in sales.
But before Silk Road was brought down, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Orlando bought painkillers, sedatives and other drugs from multiple sellers on the website.
According to a recently unsealed criminal complaint filed in Orlando, Jones, 44, opened a Silk Road account in April 2013 and used the alias "CALIGIRL."
Since then, CALIGIRL made 685 sales. The profile was among the top 5 percent of all Silk Road vendors, the complaint said.
DEA agents said they made two undercover buys from CALIGIRL's Silk Road account and six other undercover purchases from CALIGIRL outside the website using an encrypted program, the complaint said.
Authorities have bought or seized more than 1,300 oxycodone and hydrocodone pills from Jones, authorities said.
Agents also learned Jones frequently traveled to Colombia, where he bought the oxycodone he later sold online.
Jones was arrested Thursday in Broward County, where he remained jailed Friday.
The case is the latest local DEA investigation into Silk Road.
Last fall, Orlando federal prosecutors filed charges against Delaware physician Olivia Bolles, alleging she sold hundreds of prescription drugs illegally on Silk Road and shipped them to Central Florida.
Agents found more than 600 sales between Bolles' "MDPro" account and Silk Road users, records filed in her case said.
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