Housemates of Ross Ulbricht had no idea he was alleged Silk Road founder and online drug lord Ross Ulbricht, a 29-year-old former physics student, is accused of being a criminal mastermind. DODGY things often go down in sharehouses but this one takes the cake. Under his alleged online alias Dread Pirate Roberts he is believed to have founded The Silk Road, which the FBI calls the "most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the internet today." But to his San Francisco housemates he was just Josh, or Joshua Terrey, a subdued young adult who spent his days trawling through the web on his laptop, a Forbes magazine report reveals. "He seemed like a normal guy," said housemate Brandon, who lived with Mr Ulbricht for two months. Obviously he had a dark side, but he never showed any of that. In court documents, Mr Ulbricht is accused of having made up to $1.2 billion in revenue from selling recreational drugs through the Silk Road website. He is alleged to have ordered at least two contract killings and said to have placed an $150,000 bounty on the head of a Silk Road user who was seeking to extort him. But his housemates in West Portal, San Francisco, had no idea they were living with an internationally-wanted drug lord. So you can imagine the housemates had quite a 'holy crap' moment when Brandon picked up the San Francisco Examiner and saw the arrest on the front page. "Funny, looks like our subletter," Brandon texted fellow housemate Drew. He replied: "Not looks like. Is. The Silk Road was run on the virtual currency Bitcoin. The FBI swooped on Mr Ulbricht on October 3 and shut down the Silk Road. He was sitting in the science fiction section of a library in Glen Park, San Francisco, as he chatted online. The marketplace could only be accessed through highly sophisticated encryption technology and the black market items paid for with a virtual currency called Bitcoin. As news.com.au revealed last year, many Australians were even using Silk Road as a "Postman Pot" service, purchasing the backyard drug marijuana through the site. Mr Ulbricht told the housemates he had just returned from a stint in Australia when he stayed at the sharehouse for seven weeks. In his emails responding to an advertisement for the available room posted on Craigslist in late June 2013, Mr Ulbricht described himself as "good natured and clean/tidy." He said he was a currency trader who did some freelance IT work on the side but "mostly keep to myself, spending most of my time working." Drew told Forbes he had next to no belongings and shared little about his life. He also only wanted to pay his board in cash. The accused mastermind Ross William Ulbricht with his sister, Cally. Picture: Facebook Source: Facebook The Sunday Telegraph revealed at the weekend that he lived in Sydney for about six months during the site's early stages in 2011. An Australian friend, who said he was "gobsmacked" by the revelations, claimed Mr Ulbricht lived at a sharehouse on Bondi Beach. "He's the nicest guy," the friend told the newspaper. In San Francisco, though, he had begun to talk about the future. " (He was) talking a little bit about maybe starting a family in the next few years and getting to know San Francisco and live life more," Drew said. He's got all this money and he just sits in a not-particularly nice rental house in the Sunset [District] and just f***s around on the computer all day until he gets sent to prison. Read more at Forbes.