Silk Road admin would certainly be charged with running a continuing criminal enterprise if not RICO. He would most likely get a life sentence, or what amounts to one. Even if he is just charged for fairly large scale money laundering (which he is clearly guilty of running a mix for drug money) he would be facing twenty five years on that charge alone. Mods of this forum would also face similar sentences for being in authority positions. Although technically anyone who participates in illegal activity on this forum could be charged as a RICO participant, if you are charged under RICO you can get charged for the crimes of the enterprise rather than charged with your specific crimes. Participating on silk road or any other forum like this is not likely to get you a slap on the wrist, almost everyone who participates here in USA could face a life sentence if they wanted to give you one. Of course they will not give 150,000 people life sentences though. SR is kind of strange in that it is easily the largest (participant wise) named drug trafficking organization in the history of the world. Most DTO are considered large if they have a few thousand participants. The internet makes having over a hundred thousand participants operating under the same organization name much easier. The laws on the books certainly technically apply to SR participants, but the gov didn't have organizations like SR in mind when they made the laws (after all they probably don't want to give you a life sentence for ordering a gram of weed, even though by ordering a gram of weed here you are technically capable of being charged with RICO violations due to the structure of this organization). Under the Ryan Haight act it is actually illegal for American citizens to even have an account on this forum, since it is a website with the primary goal of trafficking in scheduled drugs.