Variety Jones (aka Cimon) and Smedley (Smed) Charger are pseudonyms of individuals reported to have been closely involved with the founding of the

darknet market A darknet market is a commercial website on the dark web that operates via darknets such as Tor or I2P. They function primarily as black markets, selling or brokering transactions involving drugs, cyber-arms, weapons, counterfeit currency, stole ...

Silk Road The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and reli ...

Involvement

According to security researcher Runa A. Sandvik, Variety Jones joined Silk Road in 2011 as a

marijuana Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various tra ...

seed vendor, opposed to the

war on drugs The war on drugs is a Globalization, global campaign, led by the United States federal government, of prohibition of drugs, drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the Unite ...

. Working closely with

Ross Ulbricht Ross William Ulbricht (born March 27, 1984) is an American serving life imprisonment for creating and operating the darknet market website Silk Road from 2011 until his arrest in 2013. The site operated as a hidden service on the Tor network ...

, they were to act as a

penetration tester A penetration test, colloquially known as a pen test or ethical hacking, is an authorized simulated cyberattack on a computer system, performed to evaluate the security of the system; this is not to be confused with a vulnerability assessment. T ...

financial advisor A financial adviser or financial advisor is a professional who provides financial services to clients based on their financial situation. In many countries, financial advisors must complete specific training and be registered with a regulatory ...

and

mentor Mentorship is the influence, guidance, or direction given by a mentor. A mentor is someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person. In an organizational setting, a mentor influences the personal and p ...

, and was the person who suggested the "Dread Pirate Roberts" title Ulbricht used. According to seized chat logs, Jones was also the one to suggest the first alleged murder for hire, though it did not actually take place. Smedley joined the site as a

coder A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

following the

Gawker ''Gawker'' is an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers and based in New York City focusing on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded in ...

user influx as a relatively highly paid employee. Unfinished projects included encrypted

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

system "Silk Mail" and other prospective financial and internet projects. At times it appeared Smedley reported directly to Jones.

Identities

Research into these individual's identities has been conducted via tracking

blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a ...

Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...

transactions, confidential sources, rare Thai marijuana seeds and rationalisation of aliases. Consequently, it has been suggested Smedley's true identity could be Mike Wattier, a U.S. web developer living in

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

. Variety Jones could be Roger Thomas Clark, a Canadian also living in Thailand. On December 3, 2015, Clark was arrested in Thailand and faced extradition to the United States.

Detainment and extradition

Nearly a year after his arrest and detainment in Thailand, Clark claimed he had "top secret information" for intelligence officials close to Prayuth Chan-o-cha, prime minister of Thailand's military government. While fighting extradition in Thailand, where he slept on a concrete floor, Clark maintained that he had knowledge of a corrupt FBI agent involved with Silk Road. Clark was extradited to the United States on June 15, 2018. He was charged with narcotics trafficking conspiracy; narcotics trafficking; distributing narcotics by means of the internet; conspiracy to commit, and aid and abet, a computer hacking conspiracy; conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent identification documents; and money laundering conspiracy. In January 2020, Clark pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute narcotics. Facing a maximum of 20 years in prison, his sentencing was delayed several times and, as of September 2022, was set for January 26, 2023.https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-clark-901

References

Dark web Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{crime-bio-stub