[HN Gopher] A $3B Silk Road seizure will erase Ross Ulbricht's debt
___________________________________________________________________
A $3B Silk Road seizure will erase Ross Ulbricht's debt
Author : jmsflknr
Score : 111 points
Date : 2022-07-11 13:53 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Very interesting, especially since SDNY had no idea about this
| and wasn't involved in coordinating this agreement
|
| The longer Ross is in there, the more friends in high places he
| will have, as so many people become familiar with online
| marketplaces, bitcoin lore, education about the technology, the
| corruption of the investigators, trial judge, unsatisfactory
| testimony by "expert witness", circular logic to undermine bill
| of rights protections for defendant, withheld evidence (that is
| not deemed exculpatory by the appeals court, but could have
| swayed a jury regardless) and seeing that this problem with Ross
| is still ongoing
|
| So many cases have been dropped for waaaaay fewer procedural
| problems
|
| To see this level of unorthordox coordination ongoing with the
| Federal Government and Ross, I am pretty confident other
| individuals will be able to use their employment and status in
| the public sector to alter Ross' conditions in his favor
| anewpersonality wrote:
| I have it on good authority that certain cypherpunks have
| joined the public sector with the secret, explicit goal of
| helping Ross.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| How do I get a message to them
|
| I thought it was weird nobody considered donating to a Trump
| campaign or PAC in exchange for a desired outcome, in 2020
| convicts and senators did that to mitigate consequences
|
| Free Ross raises enough money and have enough friends to get
| the conversations going, as seen by this article, so not
| doing that path seemed to have lacked inspiration
|
| Its easy to have tunnel vision, that path was still obvious.
| It is important that he also doesn't have to pay restitution,
| but I feel like the state sanctioned Presidential pay for
| play available in the US would have absolved that too
| anewpersonality wrote:
| Assange tried the same thing and destroyed his reputation.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Risky, alright
| toss1 wrote:
| That is not what destroyed Assange's reputation. Working
| for Putin after he ran out of money did that long before
| the obscure stunt you mention
| freedomben wrote:
| From what I know of Trump he is _very_ anti-drug and is a
| classic moralist (imposing his anti-drug morals by force on
| others) (despite himself engaging in behavior such as
| adultery that many people consider immoral). After all he
| did put that Mississippi guy who thinks the War on Drugs
| needs to be magnified significantly in as his attorney
| general. And he (allegedly) is good friends with Eric
| Ericson who (as a result of his son dying from overdose)
| has a personal jihad against opioids and wants to throw
| doctors in jail for prescribing them in good faith, and
| doesn 't care one wit that innocent law abiding people in
| pain are suffering from his advocacy. I would think Trump
| is the last person on earth who would be sympathetic to
| Ulbricht.
| asdfastawa wrote:
| >> I thought it was weird nobody considered donating to a
| Trump campaign or PAC in exchange for a desired outcome, in
| 2020 convicts and senators did that to mitigate
| consequences
|
| This pardon could not have been without some back-story:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/20/anthony-levandowski-
| pardoned...
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Sure you could impute some nefarious/corrupt intent
| (almost every pardon seems to have some "lobbyist" or
| personal attached, regardless of the President or even
| state governors), but the justification quoted in that
| article seems reasonable enough on its own:
|
| > "Mr. Levandowski pled guilty to a single criminal count
| arising from civil litigation. Notably, his sentencing
| judge called him a 'brilliant, groundbreaking engineer
| that our country needs.' Mr. Levandowski has paid a
| significant price for his actions and plans to devote his
| talents to advance the public good."
| Pakdef wrote:
| Where's the rest of the money going? (i.e.: most of it)
| wmf wrote:
| The government keeps it.
| Pakdef wrote:
| Makes sense... to the government.
| ArrayBoundCheck wrote:
| Ross got a raw deal. I think 15yrs would have been reasonable
| refurb wrote:
| He was bragging "they'll never catch me" (Forbes interview). He
| made the US govt and DEA look like fools.
|
| So they made an example out of him.
|
| If he was smart he should kept a lower profile and his first
| interaction with police (the multiple fake IDs) he should have
| shut it all down or pass the site to someone else.
|
| But hey ego and hubris gets the best of us.
| ArrayBoundCheck wrote:
| So because you pissed off someone in the government you get
| life in jail? That's not justice. That could be what happened
| but idk I hate the idea he's not getting released and IIRC he
| killed noone and robbed noone
| deadbunny wrote:
| If he's in prison for life without the chance of parole, why does
| it matter to him if his debt is paid off?
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| It basically means the money he gets while he is in prison he
| keeps. So if he works, he'll keep his salary. If someone puts
| money on his books, he gets to keep that. If he didn't keep up
| with his payments to his debt he would be on a more restricted
| regime. While it seems like a small thing for us, it's a pretty
| big deal for his quality of life since he was never going to
| pay that back so for the rest of his life he would have had
| less prison money than he earned.
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| You can definitely read the article to learn more about how it
| might affect him
| [deleted]
| jancsika wrote:
| HyprMusic wrote:
| It's mentioned in the article. Any money he would earn in
| prison would go towards paying off his debt, so this allows him
| to earn whilst in there and make his life marginally more
| comfortable.
| jumboshrimp wrote:
| There's a full paragraph in the article that answers this
| question.
| giarc wrote:
| RTA: "But the repayment of his restitution could mean that he's
| able to earn money in prison to share with family or friends
| without it being seized or garnished to pay his debts--or even
| keep any previously unknown caches of bitcoins that he may
| possess, so long as they aren't tied to the Silk Road or other
| criminal sources."
| chimeracoder wrote:
| Nobody is spelling the key point out: in prison, you are
| typically required to pay for basic essentials (everything from
| soap and shampoo to menstrual products[0]). Phone calls are run
| through a private company that has a monopoly and charges
| exorbitant rates. Entertainment (books, etc.) are heavily
| restricted and cost money - either directly or via secondhand
| trade.
|
| Prisoners work jobs that are exempt from minimum wage and can
| pay as little as 25C//hour.
|
| Having your wages garnished while in prison is a _huge_ deal
| because it limits your ability to take care of yourself (both
| literally, but also your ability to trade items with others for
| protection).
|
| If you don't have access to money in prison, you're screwed.
| Unless you have some other valuable asset (such as connections
| on the outside that you can leverage), you are likely to be a
| target for other inmates, and you're going to be a filthy,
| starving wreck.
|
| The exact details vary depending on the type of prison, the
| location, and other factors, but in general: having the debt
| wiped out would almost certainly be a huge deal for his quality
| of life in prison, and would literally extend his expected
| lifespan.
|
| [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/25/prison-
| pe...
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| You aren't required to pay for basic supplies, prison
| commissaries periodically give out hardship packages which
| include things like sample packages of soap and toothpaste,
| since withholding basic hygiene products is cruel and unusual
| punishment.
|
| Garnishing prison wages is fucking brutal and stupid though.
| Prison laborers typically make less than a quarter per hour,
| so that isn't going to do shit in terms of repaying any
| debts, it's just a spite play to make someone's life
| miserable.
|
| Honestly, if I was Ross I'd refuse to leave my cell and act
| insane till I got placed in solitary. In most prisons you can
| still have books in solitary, you just lose out on yard and
| TV access, which is still a great trade if you're getting
| regularly beaten and hate raped.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > You aren't required to pay for basic supplies, prison
| commissaries periodically give out hardship packages which
| include things like sample packages of soap and toothpaste,
| since withholding basic hygiene products is cruel and
| unusual punishment
|
| You're describing the idealized scenario, which isn't
| exactly wrong, but it doesn't represent the reality that
| many prisoners actually live in. Yes, it varies - not every
| prisoner will have the same experience, even within the
| same prison - but having access to basic necessities is by
| no means a given in prison, and having wages garnished
| makes that much harder.
|
| https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/11/18/indigence/
| skilled wrote:
| https://archive.ph/RlmJA
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Still in for life without parole.
| 323 wrote:
| That tends to happen when you create "The Amazon for drugs".
| [deleted]
| f0xJtpvHYTVQ88B wrote:
| It's what tends to happen you express ideas that judges find
| dangerous:
|
| > All the evidence shows that you viewed Silk Road both as
| above the law and the laws didn't apply, and in this context
| also very dangerous.
|
| > Your own words I have looked at very carefully and I have
| reread certainly more than once in this whole process. They
| reveal a kind of an arrogance and they display an intent that
| is very important to the Court's determination, [...]
|
| https://www.scribd.com/doc/283722300/Ross-Ulbricht-
| Sentencin...
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Should also happen for creating "Amazon" after a certain
| point.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| and pay hitman to kill people you dont like ...
| neb_b wrote:
| He was never charged for that
| pxmpxm wrote:
| That's the same as thing as "it didn't happen" right?
| mzs wrote:
| The person you replied to didn't say that. In US details
| like that are used for sentencing though and in this case
| it was.
| cduzz wrote:
| Ah, apparently so; his murder-for-hire behavior wasn't part
| of the trial but only considered in the sentencing.
|
| He should have teamed up with the Sacklers
| citilife wrote:
| > his murder-for-hire behavior wasn't part of the trial but
| only considered in the sentencing.
|
| Not only that (shouldn't consider outside claims that
| haven't been evaluated by the jury). The DEA withheld
| evidence that he could have used in his defense and later
| DEA agents went to jail for corruption (attempting to steal
| funds and it appeared setting him up).
|
| Further, there wasn't a warrant for his records; they just
| took them and monitored his traffic. SCOTUS refused to hear
| the case (doesn't mean it was reasonable or not, they have
| discretion to skip stuff).
|
| Many people (myself included) believe the government
| officials in this case were attempting to steal the funds
| and set him up to take a fall so they can take the funds
| for themselves.
|
| A lot of this can be actually seen on the wikipedia --
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht
| willcipriano wrote:
| What you expect good people like the Sackler family to
| compete with some upstart on the internet? The medical
| industrial complex doesn't make a dime when you buy your
| opioids out of band, we can't have that. Those medical
| degrees aren't going to pay for themselves.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| This plus all the people we in the US fund to be in prison,
| for minor drug crimes, some of which are legal now.
|
| The crime isn't that you did something wrong. It's that you
| didn't make the right person richer by doing so.
| adra wrote:
| Sorry, two wrongs don't make a right, and this guy
| facilitated selling drugs in large quantities.
|
| Your fatalism only shuts down the discourse of workable
| solutions. You may as well be a shill for "the man" as
| you're working for the status quo agenda holding this
| attitude.
|
| Your moral cry for the small time user is in alignment
| with me though. I'd decriminalize low amount possession
| and drug use since locking up drug users almost certainly
| pushes people who are vulnerable to collapse into
| definitely collapsed positions.
|
| A civilized people would want the road to success to be
| the incentivized over pushing people down who are then
| unable to escape (statistically).
| [deleted]
| netr0ute wrote:
| Does not compute
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Sorry, two wrongs don't make a right, and this guy
| facilitated selling drugs in large quantities.
|
| Selling drugs in large quantities isn't inherently
| unethical or immoral.
|
| Trying to hire a hit man to have someone else murdered in
| an incredibly specific and graphic way, on the other
| hand, is inherently both unethical and immoral.
| lupire wrote:
| restes wrote:
| This and the parent's argument are just whataboutism.
| bcassedy wrote:
| Whataboutism is a valid concern when discussing justice
| imo
| whatshisface wrote:
| That tends to happen when you _try to hire a hitman._
| f0xJtpvHYTVQ88B wrote:
| Those charges were dropped[0]. Maybe because there was
| nothing to them and they were just used to poison the well.
| Maybe the FBI agents who had access to the DPR account who
| stole bitcoin planted it in the first place[1].
|
| [0] https://reason.com/2018/07/25/ross-ulbrichts-murder-
| for-hire...
|
| [1] https://news.bitcoin.com/rogue-silk-road-agent-admits-
| to-ste...
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| That wasn't what he was convicted for.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| Killing someone and not getting caught is actually not
| equivalent to not killing anyone. What a bizarre line of
| argument that people make about this guy.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Are you aware of how rule of law works? There was no
| conclusive proof that anyone were murdered in this whole
| case. The justice system does not work on baseless
| accusations and it's a good thing your bias isn't going
| to affect it.
| detaro wrote:
| The justice system does not consider the murder-for-hire
| attempts "baseless accusations". From the sentencing
| document:
|
| > _The Court must determine whether these allegations
| have been demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence
| and I find that there is ample and unambiguous evidence
| that Ulbricht commissioned five murders as part of his
| efforts to protect his criminal enterprise and that he
| paid for these murders. [...] The Court finds that the
| evidence is clear and unambiguous and it far exceeds the
| necessary preponderance findings_
| hamiltonians wrote:
| it's nuts. even murderers can get parole.no parole is a huge
| injustice
| duped wrote:
| Congress banned parole for federal crimes back in 1987. If
| you get convicted in federal court you have to do the entire
| sentence.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Didn't he try to order a bunch of hits though?
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Those charges were all dropped. There was likely intent on
| his side but no murder were conclusively proven to have
| taken place. I do believe he will be paroled/commuted
| eventually under another president, perhaps in another
| decade or so.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| ya but he still tried to have people killed, and at one
| point, he thought the murder had taken place because the
| FBI sent a fake pic.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The charges were dropped due to the seriousness of the
| charges that remained (and the corrupt Fed that would
| complicate the matter) but the judge found sufficient
| evidence of intent to order the hits (e.g. messages
| specifically ordering the hits, sending payment for the
| hits in the amount of $650k in bitcoin from wallets found
| on his laptop, writing in his journal "I ordered some
| people killed" and "they were killed") that those
| attempted hits were used as a sentencing enhancement for
| the other charges he was found guilty of - namely the
| criminal conspiracy and maintaining a criminal
| enterprise.
|
| And "without parole" is a meaningless thing in Federal
| prison since there is no parole. If you commit Federal
| crimes, you get to do Federal sentences.
|
| See page 20 onwards for the evidence that the judge
| weighed about the ordered hits: https://www.supremecourt.
| gov/DocketPDF/17/17A559/20426/20171...
| tptacek wrote:
| Those charges were _not_ dropped. They were predicates of
| his conspiracy charge. The murders-for-hire were charged
| conduct, brought into the trial and rebuttable by the
| defense, and considered during sentencing.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Of the six murder indictments trumpeted by the U.S.
| government in the days following Ulbricht's Oct. 2013
| arrest, five have fallen off the table and the sixth sits
| untouched in a separate indictment (legalese for an
| unproven allegation) that was purposefully left out of
| the upcoming trial. https://www.dailydot.com/crime/silk-
| road-murder-charges-ross...
|
| Ross Ulbricht's Murder-for-Hire Charges Dropped by U.S.
| Attorney https://reason.com/2018/07/25/ross-ulbrichts-
| murder-for-hire...
|
| The conspiracy charges were related to computer hacking
| and trafficking narcotics, not murder-for-hire which from
| all the evidences presented was a scheme set up to
| collect payments from him.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's right there in the (final, superseding) indictment,
| and in the PSR (I think? one of the sentencing filings).
| This isn't a big controversy for us to hash out; you can
| just go read it.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Dropped charges are dropped charges. It's right there in
| the title and rather baffling how you are glossing over
| them as if they are alien scriptures.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm literally staring at the superseding indictment right
| now. Page 7. Go look. He was charged, and those charges
| were not dropped. I don't know what title you're
| referring to.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| That's a narcotics conspiracy charge, due to "intent to
| prevent the communication by the Employee to a law
| enforcement officer ofthe United States of information
| relating to the commission and possible commission of a
| Federal offense".
|
| Dude didn't end up in jail for murder, because the murder
| charges were dropped. D.R.O.P.P.E.D. Words have meanings
| and you are twisting them.
| tptacek wrote:
| See upthread, where I took the time to pull up a bunch of
| other drug kingpin indictments to find similar charging
| structures, and trivially found one (I'm staring at it,
| too). I'm sorry they didn't charge the murder-for-hire
| scheme the way you'd have preferred them to, but they
| certainly did charge it, and the Reason article you're
| citing is plainly, obviously, factually, irrefutably
| wrong. The article says "Those charges were no part of
| what Ulbricht was actually tried and sentenced for."
| Obviously, they were.
|
| You are going to have a hard time getting me to take an
| opinion piece that commits a factual error that refutes
| its premise more seriously than the actual source
| documents that contradict it.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| >they certainly did charge it
|
| Yes they did charge them, and then dropped them. That's
| what happened. Charges and convictions are not the same
| concept, and it's quite amusing you have the galls to say
| anyone else is "wrong".
| tptacek wrote:
| Yeah, you're wrong. I think what's happening here is what
| Kasey said: you're working exclusively from stuff like
| this Reason article, which is plainly wrong, and I'm
| working from the PACER docket of the case, which, uh,
| isn't. He was convicted of the charge that included the
| murder-for-hire scheme as its predicate.
|
| I don't know if there was some other more overt "murder"
| charge that he had that was later dropped (I only see the
| original and the superseding indictment). But if that
| happened, the only material implication of it is that
| they changed the structure of how they charged the
| murder-for-hire scheme. They did not give up on that
| charge; in a significant sense, they bet (and won) their
| case on it --- as the sentencing memoranda point out as
| well.
|
| This thread is an interesting example of how powerful the
| Internet folklore about Ulbricht is. Like, it stands up
| against the primary source documents of a conviction and
| sentencing! The sentencing documents must be what's
| wrong, not the Reason article! It's pretty fascinating,
| just sociologically.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| >Yeah, you're wrong.
|
| About what I needed to know the type and to stop reading
| the drivel that ensued. Anyone who opens like that is of
| such a specific type that I no longer wish to waste my
| time with. At the time of his sentencing I would've
| believed such things, but the world has evolved and will
| continue to evolve. Feel free to believe what you want
| but time will show that fairness lies anywhere but on
| your side.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| >This thread is an interesting example of how powerful
| the Internet folklore about Ulbricht is.
|
| I imagine this is just self defense mechanism at work -
| if you concede to the reality that a libertarian drug
| utopia took around 3 years to devolve into cliche South
| American narco violence, you'll end up with that oh-so-
| uncomfortable step of having to revisit your worldviews.
| notch656a wrote:
| Wasn't it the FBI/DEA that offered the narco-violence?
| Kind of throws a wrench into your libertarian utopia
| claims, when the murder-for-hire is a result of state
| intervention.
| tptacek wrote:
| The "intervention" here is setting up a murder-for-hire
| sting?
| notch656a wrote:
| I'm referring to both the offering of murder for-hire by
| federal undercover/informants, as well as the government
| creating the concocted problem of the release of names
| for which they offer a violent solution. I don't think
| even in the indictment is there any murder-for-hire not
| offered by federal agents or informants.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| That's the irony of it all - when faced with a real world
| issue of extortion and theft, given the opportunity the
| libertarian drug utopia solution matches the one of a
| Central American cartel.
|
| All those libertarian manifestos that Ulbricht dabbled in
| are just a marketing veneer of the stereotypical criminal
| organization.
| notch656a wrote:
| So far you've proven that FBI and DEA offers of murder
| for hire do not fit in line with 'Libertarian' utopia. I
| don't think anyone is contesting that.
|
| Ulbricht wasn't living in a utopia, nor are many people
| going to argue his acts perfectly reflect some vague
| notion of any utopia.
| [deleted]
| kasey_junk wrote:
| The OP is referring to the reason article they linked to.
| They are not noting that said article is an opinion piece
| that is in a long running series advocating on behalf of
| Ulbricht via libertarian ideals not via the actual law.
|
| Nowhere in that opinion piece does it backup its titles
| assertion nor link to any of the legal documents.
| Basically op is arguing based on storytelling not law.
| everforward wrote:
| Those charges had some issues. He tried to arrange a hit on
| someone who he thought had stolen $800k in Bitcoin from
| him, but it turns out one of the FBI agents stole the money
| and framed someone else. There's also some accusations that
| the agents pushed him to order the hit.
|
| The two taken together could be construed as entrapment,
| but the charges were dropped so there isn't a conclusive
| answer.
| knodi123 wrote:
| Yeah, but Ulbricht had multiple fake passports, and was
| assumed to have an unknown but enormous amount of hidden
| cash, and loyal contacts in lots of countries. Not to mention
| lots of experience living and traveling under a cover
| identity. He's a much bigger flight risk than a run-of-the-
| mill murderer.
| upupandup wrote:
| he's never getting out because they want to set a precedent for
| anyone attempting to run a marketplace like this.
|
| yet he's step brother is still free. its a mystery.
| chefkoch wrote:
| Never heard about his step brother?
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| Whispers from Inmates say Ross Ulbricht is having a horrible time
| in prison, unable to adjust to the culture and politics of it.
| Prison is a dangerous place, and it's said he's very much not
| doing well.
|
| If this helps provide himself with some prison currency being
| able to buy from the store, that could go a long way towards
| helping him have something to trade to help the living hell he is
| going through.
| canjobear wrote:
| > If this helps provide himself with some prison currency being
| able to buy from the store, that could go a long way towards
| helping him have something to trade to help the living hell he
| is going through.
|
| Or it will make him even more a target because he has access to
| resources.
| mysore wrote:
| i really wish we could get this guy out of prison. he does not
| deserve to be there for longer than 10 years.
| mullen wrote:
| He really did try to have someone killed. Ulbricht is exactly
| the kind of person who should be in prison.
| homonculus1 wrote:
| I have a bridge to sell you, best view in the Bay Area.
| mullen wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32057717
|
| You might want to give me a really good price.
| splintercell wrote:
| How many years do you think someone should get for a
| murder-for-hire scheme?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| If my memory serves the government never brought that as a
| charge at trial. In part, I think, because they wanted to
| not discuss that the agent Ross tried to buy the hit(s)
| from wound up stealing money from the Silk Road.
| tptacek wrote:
| Your memory does not serve you right, and the murder-for-
| hire scheme was in fact part of the charges he was tried
| for.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Per Wikipedia - "Ulbricht was not charged in his trial in
| New York federal court with any murder for hire".
| Wikipedia does say that there was evidence that was shown
| at trial about the murder for hire thing and that it did
| weigh against him in sentencing - which seems odd to me
| that crimes you haven't been charged with or convicted of
| could impact your sentence.
|
| Wikipedia also says "Ulbricht was separately indicted in
| federal court in Maryland on a single murder-for-hire
| charge, alleging that he contracted to kill one of his
| employees (a former Silk Road moderator). Prosecutors
| moved to drop this indictment after his New York
| conviction and sentence became final"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Arrest
| tptacek wrote:
| That's right, he was charged with a "Narcotics
| Trafficking Conspiracy", with 4 overt acts, a, b, c, and
| d, and b and c were the murder-for-hire schemes. The
| overt acts of a conspiracy charge are the guts of the
| charge itself, and the prosecution has to prove them at
| trial.
|
| Try this: Google [federal narcotics conspiracy "murder
| for hire"] (it's not a rare combination of factors!),
| pull up some DOJ press releases (I found several on the
| first search results page), and then look them up in
| PACER. I'm looking at Roger Key (a.k.a. "Luchie")'s 2015
| indictment right now, and it's similar. This isn't some
| weird finagling the prosecutors did with Ulbricht; it's
| just how you get charged for this kind of conduct.
|
| This notion that prosecutors somehow gave up on the
| murder-for-hire charge is Internet folklore. It's just
| not real. What complicated the charge isn't some bungling
| spy story about the agents involved, but the fact that
| the murder was a set-up and he didn't actually have
| anyone killed. But the prosecution established that
| Ulbricht tried to, and that's also the simplest and most
| reasonable conclusion to reach given the facts. I've
| never read an exculpatory explanation of Ulbricht's
| payment to arrange murders that made any sense at all.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I'm having a hard time squaring your comment with the
| wikipedia article that you seem to agree with. Ulbricht
| wasn't convicted on murder for hire charges and the time
| he was charged on a murder for hire thing that charge was
| dropped.
|
| You seem to be saying that the reason he wasn't
| charged/convicted is because nobody was actually
| murdered. That seems hard for me to believe because the
| state would have known nobody was actually murdered when
| they were writing the indictment (which alleges the
| murder for hire plot) or when they were bringing the
| original charges.
|
| It's also true that agents involved in the plot, the
| agent Ulbricht thought he was buying the hit from
| specifically, were arrested and convicted for stealing
| from the silk road. I think it's way more plausible that
| the government decided not to go in to the extent of the
| corruption of their officers at trial, because it would
| provide a good reason to think about what other
| government dishonesty their might be, rather than the
| government deciding that they can't charge attempted
| murder for hire because nobody died.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2015/03/dea-agent-charged-acting-
| paid-...
| tptacek wrote:
| 51% of Wikipedians can believe whatever they'd like to,
| but the primary source documents are right there for you
| to read. Nobody was actually murdered because the murder-
| for-hire scheme was an FBI sting.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| But the primary source documents all agree that Ulbricht
| wasn't charged or convicted with murder-for-hire and that
| the agent Ulbricht contracted with was arrested and
| convicted for corruption-related crimes. It's also
| obviously not true that somebody has to be dead for the
| state to charge murder-for-hire related crimes. If that
| were the case, the state wouldn't have agents pretending
| to be hitmen to catch people trying to hire hitmen.
| tptacek wrote:
| I really don't know how to state this any more plainly:
| he was charged, in the same manner as other drug kingpins
| have been charged, with a narcotics conspiracy whose
| overt acts --- in the indictment, as charged behavior,
| which the jury had to find true beyond a reasonable doubt
| --- were comprised of two different murder-for-hire
| schemes. He was convicted of that charge. He appealed,
| and his appeal didn't contest that charge or any of the
| findings of fact (or, for that matter, testimony leading
| up to that finding of fact) for that charge.
|
| The second bit, about nobody needing to be dead for him
| to be charged, we agree on.
|
| One reason I think people are confused about this is that
| there was a second prosecution, by a different team of
| prosecutors in a different case (out of Baltimore?) that
| charged the murder-for-hire scheme more directly. That
| may be, but he was still charged for it in the SDNY case,
| which earned him a life sentence.
|
| SDNY was not evasive about this! They not only indicted
| for the murder-for-hire scheme, won a conviction on it,
| and had him sentenced based in large part on it, but also
| crowed about it in their press release. I'm sort of
| baffled by the extremely common belief that the DOJ
| "dropped the charges" about the murder-for-hire scheme.
| They did more or less the opposite thing.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| "Ulbricht, 31, of San Francisco, California, was
| convicted of the following seven offenses after a four-
| week jury trial: distributing narcotics, distributing
| narcotics by means of the Internet, conspiring to
| distribute narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal
| enterprise, conspiring to commit computer hacking,
| conspiring to traffic in false identity documents, and
| conspiring to commit money laundering."
|
| https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ross-ulbricht-aka-
| dread-pi...
|
| Noticeably not on that list is anything related to
| murder, attempted murder, solicitation of murder, or
| murder-for-hire.
|
| If I understand you correctly you are saying that the
| attempted murder is an element of his continuing criminal
| enterprise - or something like that. I don't believe this
| though and I haven't seen any evidence of this from you.
| Googling for people who are convicted for hiring fake
| hitmen I see that they are charged with things like
| "Solicitation of murder" and not "Continuing criminal
| enterprise."
|
| Ulbricht was not charged with murder for hire in New York
| and he wasn't convicted of it ever. Ulbricht was charged
| with murder for hire in Maryland and those charges were
| dropped.
| tptacek wrote:
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/ross-ulbricht-
| creator-a...
| ALittleLight wrote:
| This press release does not claim that Ross Ulbricht was
| convicted of murder or anything related to it. It says
| "found guilty yesterday on all seven counts in
| connection" and, later "ULBRICHT, 30,
| of San Francisco, California, was found guilty of: one
| count of distributing narcotics, one count of
| distributing narcotics by means of the Internet, and one
| count of conspiring to distribute narcotics, each of
| which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a
| mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years; one count of
| engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, which
| carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a
| mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison; one of
| count of conspiring to commit computer hacking, which
| carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; one
| count of conspiring to traffic in false identity
| documents, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years;
| and one count of conspiring to commit money laundering,
| which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
| The maximum sentences are prescribed by Congress and are
| provided for informational purposes only, as the sentence
| will be determined by the judge. ULBRICHT is scheduled to
| be sentenced on May 15, 2015."
|
| So, we have... 1. distributing
| narcotics 2. distributing narcotics via the
| internet 3. count of conspiring to distribute
| narcotics 4. engaging in a continuing criminal
| enterprise 5. conspiring to commit computer
| hacking 6. conspiring to traffic in false
| identity documents 7. conspiring to traffic in
| false identity documents
|
| That's all seven and none of them are murder, conspiracy
| to commit murder, attempted murder, or solicitation of
| murder.
| jokabrink wrote:
| I think I can clear it up: The accusation of murder-for-
| hire would not hold up. The FBI would not be able to
| prove the required elements for the deed, because in
| order to prove it, the FBI would need to actually drive
| or mail something with the intent of murder [1].
|
| In the released indictment [2] (Apparently there seems to
| be a superseding indictment), DPR was charged on four
| counts. Count one is "Narcotics Trafficking Conspiracy",
| none of the counts are "Murder-For-Hire". _But_ , there
| are three overt (motivating) acts for the "Narcotics
| Trafficking Conspiracy": a) Provide a platform for
| selling drugs b) Solicit a murder-for-hire c) Logging in
| as admin on Silk Road
|
| So, while the charge "Murder-For-Hire" probably seems
| hard to prove (as stated above), using the intent of it
| to justify the count "Narcotics Trafficking Conspiracy"
| worked here. In a sense, I believe, DPR can not be
| labeled officially with "murder-for-hire", but in order
| to protect his "Continuing Criminal Enterprise" and as
| such commit "Narcotics Trafficking Conspiracy" it appears
| that he would have committed a "murder-for-hire" crime.
|
| Sources:
|
| [1] https://www.springsteadbartish.com/federal-criminal-
| defense-...
|
| [2] https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-
| sdny/legacy...
| tptacek wrote:
| Not so much: the distinction you're talking about, of how
| much the FBI would actually have had to do to charge
| their sting, is I believe what attempt liability (and,
| really, inchoate liability in general) is all about (this
| comes up a lot in child sex stings).
|
| What seems more likely is that the murder-for-hire thing
| is messier than the broader, abstract things he was
| charged with, and they had him dead to rights on that
| stuff anyways. Without meaningfully contesting and
| refuting the murder-for-hire stuff, it's relevant conduct
| for the sentencing; it did the work the DOJ needed it to
| do.
|
| The big issue in these discussions is the idea that the
| murder-for-hire stuff was prejudicial --- that it wasn't
| a part of the case, but was allowed to hang over the case
| to taint the jury. But that's clearly not true; he was
| indicted for it, twice, in the SDNY case.
| jokabrink wrote:
| > it did the work the DOJ needed it to do.
|
| Certainly. And no wonder that the other charges from the
| Maryland District were dismissed.
|
| > he was indicted for it, twice, in the SDNY case.
|
| You mean, he was charged and found guilty of "Murder-For-
| Hire"? This I don't follow. I thought overt acts serve
| the purpose of evidence for the charges/counts rather
| than being charges itself.
|
| In any case, DPR clearly concluded, that paying someone
| to kill someone else in order to preserve his
| anonymity/enterprise was OK. He even committed it.
| tptacek wrote:
| You're right: they're explicitly not charges themselves.
| They're evidence of a broader inchoate crime.
| notahacker wrote:
| > I've never read an exculpatory explanation of
| Ulbricht's payment to arrange murders that made any sense
| at all.
|
| This. The mental gymnastics involved in people pivoting
| from "the justice system is awful, especially the way
| they've treated poor little Ulbricht" to "the only
| possible standard for judging Ulbricht's character and
| intentions is the decisions the justice system made or
| didn't make" is Olympian.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm just saying, they got black-and-white evidence that
| Ulbricht arranged to pay for a murder, and the Internet
| has weird stories about how the payment and later murder
| "confirmation" were some kind of communicative act
| between Ulbricht and other associates that didn't have
| anything to do with arranging an actual murder, and it
| all makes just literally no sense at all. I'm not making
| a normative claim about the fairness of the US justice
| system, I'm just saying that if you're trying to pay off
| a witness, the absolute last way you'd ever structure
| that payment is as a _phony murder for hire scheme_.
| notahacker wrote:
| I agree. My beef's entirely with the people
| simultaneously claiming we can't agree with the justice
| system's verdict, but also that we absolutely can't form
| our own negative judgements of Ulbricht's actions because
| apparently the only relevant standard for whether orders
| like "can you change the order to execute rather than
| torture" made Ulbricht a terribly unsympathetic character
| is a claim it wasn't the basis of the judicial verdict...
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Did he?
|
| I would appreciate being reminded as to the facts of that.
| I've always felt skeptical of that claim, but I haven't
| spent the time to research it.
|
| It just felt like that would be the exact thing an
| organization would pin on him if they wanted to destroy his
| life.
|
| It's entirely possible he did, but I remind you that in an
| era where Epstein probably didn't kill himself, it's really
| hard to just take things at face value.
|
| EDIT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32057717 is a
| pretty good overview.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| The thing is, prison has a lot of variances. A life sentence
| in prison has him in the darkest prison world.
|
| Martin Shkreli was in the easiest parts of prison for
| example. Ross is in the lifer prison with the hardest
| criminals.
|
| It's said he's struggling a lot because you have to join the
| racist white groups in lifer prison, and his morals don't
| allow that. But you have to, or you have no protection, and
| may get killed.
|
| The US prison system is a far scarier place than anyone
| thinks about. You essentially have to stay blind to what
| happens inside, or you couldn't with good conscious send
| anyone there.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I can understand why he was sentenced to prison but I've
| never really understood why Ulbrict was put in a high
| security prison. He's basically harmless without a
| keyboard.
| guerrilla wrote:
| To make an example... deterrence.
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| We all remember he was trying to get a handful of people
| assassinated right?
| lbotos wrote:
| On one hand, that makes sense if we think of him as just the
| person who built the computer platform, but on the other this
| is the logic the courts used to justify his sentence:
|
| "Using the online moniker "Dread Pirate Roberts," or "DPR,"
| ULBRICHT controlled and oversaw every aspect of Silk Road,
| and managed a staff of paid, online administrators and
| computer programmers who assisted with the day-to-day
| operation of the site. Through his ownership and operation of
| Silk Road, ULBRICHT reaped commissions worth more than $13
| million generated from the illicit sales conducted through
| the site. ULBRICHT also demonstrated a willingness to use
| violence to protect his criminal enterprise and the anonymity
| of its users, soliciting six murders-for-hire in connection
| with operating the site, although there is no evidence that
| these murders were actually carried out."
|
| Should a drug kingpin who built a global network that
| facilitated the transfer of illegal substances who was
| willing to kill people to protect that enterprise only get 10
| years?
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm all for drugs to be decriminalized in
| the US, but where the line is crossed for me is that this
| person was willing to KILL others in service of making money.
| notch656a wrote:
| The US criminal justice system is supposed to presume
| someone is innocent until proven guilty. He was never
| convicted of the murder-for-hire but yet it was taken into
| account for his sentencing. That is not right and short-
| circuits due process.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sentencing has always had unprovable stuff considered.
| Your friends and family will come in to tell what a
| wonderful person you are, none of it verifiable and often
| entirely bullshit.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Sentencing has always had unprovable stuff considered.
| Your friends and family will come in to tell what a
| wonderful person you are, none of it verifiable and often
| entirely bullshit.
|
| True, but I see a bigger problem with sentencing being
| based on conduct _that the defendant was acquitted of_.
| The concept is supposed to be that if you were acquitted,
| you didn 't commit the crime.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| He wasn't acquitted of the murder-for-hire stuff.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Murder-for-
| hire_...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That's just as much a refutation of your comment as it is
| of mine. Remember saying this?
|
| >>> Sentencing has always had unprovable stuff
| considered.
|
| But still, looking outside this trial, sentences being
| handed out based on acquitted conduct is very much a
| thing that happens, and it shouldn't be allowed.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The issue at play there is the different standards for
| conviction vs sentencing.
|
| The standard for conviction is "beyond a reasonable
| doubt". The standard for something to be considered in
| sentencing is "perponderance of the evidence".
|
| As such, it's possible for a judge to take a look at a
| case where a conviction couldn't be obtained, but
| consider the evidence to be compelling enough to use in
| sentencing for something else.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Sorry, but "we don't have enough evidence to claim that
| you did this, but we _do_ have enough evidence to put you
| in jail for five years " is not a coherent perspective.
|
| And it's not relevant anyway. Once you're acquitted, you
| didn't commit the crime. Hazy evidence that you did
| commit the crime might be something the sentencing judge
| can legitimately consider, but it's necessarily overruled
| by the fact that you didn't commit the crime, which is
| something the sentencing judge _must_ consider.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Once you're acquitted, you didn't commit the crime.
|
| No. "Not guilty" is not the same as "innocent".
|
| Not guilty means they could not _prove_ you committed the
| crime _beyond a reasonable doubt_ ; that it's _possible_
| that you 're innocent.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Sorry, but "we don't have enough evidence to claim that
| you did this, but we do have enough evidence to put you
| in jail for five years" is not a coherent perspective.
|
| That's true, but that's not relevant, because that's not
| the scenario. The standard for criminal conviction is not
| the standard for "to claim that you did this", it is the
| standard to determine the maximum legal criminal
| punishment.
|
| The standard for a judge to assign punishment within the
| range specified by the statute under which a person was
| convicted is lower, because _by definition_ the facts
| which allow _the maximum sentence in that range_ have
| been established beyond a reasonable doubt.
|
| > Once you're acquitted, you didn't commit the crime
|
| Legally "didn't commit the crime" (and thus not allowing
| separate punishment for the crime) is not the same as
| "did not do something substantially similar to the crime"
| (which therefore might be eligible for sanctions other
| than separate criminal punishment, such as enhancements
| _within_ the statutorily authorized range of punishments
| for another crime, civil liability, or all kinds of
| different things.)
|
| Heck, it doesn't even mean "did not commit a crime with
| substantially identical elements within the jurisdiction
| of a separate sovereign with concurrent jurisdiction",
| though that's not directly relevant to this case.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Heck, it doesn't even mean "did not commit a crime with
| substantially identical elements within the jurisdiction
| of a separate sovereign with concurrent jurisdiction",
| though that's not directly relevant to this case.
|
| I don't think you'll find many people arguing that this
| is a state of affairs that makes any sense. My position
| in this thread takes the form "the justice system is
| doing something that is self-evidently insane". And
| that's also what I would say here. Being insane in one
| way doesn't stop you from being insane in another way.
|
| > The standard for criminal conviction is not the
| standard for "to claim that you did this"
|
| And this just isn't true. The standard for making the
| claim is the standard for conviction. As far as the law
| is concerned, the conviction _is how you make the claim_.
| As a person, if you make the claim in the absence of a
| conviction you 'll run into serious legal problems.
| Unless, apparently, you're handing down a sentence for
| some other crime, in which case anything goes.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > As a person, if you make the claim in the absence of a
| conviction you'll run into serious legal problems.
|
| No, you won't. Heck, as a person, you can make the same
| claim _in court_ and _win a sizable payout based on it_
| with evidence insufficient for a criminal conviction,
| even if the elements required for civil liability are
| identical to those for the crime, because the standard of
| evidence in a civil case is preponderance of the
| evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt like a criminal
| conviction.
|
| The high burden of proof required for criminal conviction
| specifically exists as a narrow purpose failsafe that
| doesn't apply in other contexts even within the criminal
| justice system.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The standard for making the claim is the standard for
| conviction.
|
| Again, this isn't true. The standard for evaluating a
| claim is different for conviction versus sentencing.
|
| > As a person, if you make the claim in the absence of a
| conviction you'll run into serious legal problems.
|
| No, you won't, at least not necessarily. Libel would be a
| civil action, and as with sentencing, the standard is
| lower in a civil trial. This is, for example, why OJ
| Simpson got acquitted in criminal court but was deemed
| culpable for the murders in civil court.
| notch656a wrote:
| Being wonderful or not wonderful isn't a crime though.
| His sentencing included presumption of an unproven crime.
| The US justice system is explicitly based on not
| considering someone guilty of a crime until proven
| guilty. You have no right to not be considered a
| wonderful or horrible person, but you do have a right to
| not be considered guilty of the crime until convicted.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The US justice system is explicitly based on not
| considering someone guilty of a crime until proven
| guilty.
|
| For a criminal conviction, the standard is "proof beyond
| a reasonable doubt".
|
| For sentencing, judges can consider evidence under a
| different standard, "preponderance of the evidence". As
| prosecutors introduced evidence of the murder-for-hire
| allegations in trial, the judge was permitted to consider
| it.
| saurik wrote:
| FWIW, that probably shouldn't be taken into consideration
| either? I'd argue they should "clean room" the sentence
| by having a second judge read an assessment of the
| evidence by the first judge and have them conduct the
| sentencing, lest sentences be more about how people look
| than what they did (and allowing laws to continue to be
| overly harsh but with enough last minute exceptions that
| no one "important" has reason to complain).
| akira2501 wrote:
| Your behavior before, during, and after the crime are
| incredibly relevant to your sentencing. The court is
| trying to determine the best course of action to prevent
| repeating the behavior and minimize future potential
| harms, these things must be considered. This is not a
| "one size fits all" or "strictly by the numbers"
| question, and we are not benefited as a society by
| treating it that way.
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| From what I understand it was proven that he solicited,
| which is a crime in itself, regardless of whether or not
| it was carried out.
| notch656a wrote:
| He was not convicted of any murder/homicide related
| solicitation.
| tptacek wrote:
| Again, this is false. The murder-for-hire scheme was a
| predicate to a conviction charge, and the prosecution was
| obligated to prove it. He was found guilty of the
| associated charge.
| notch656a wrote:
| Again, this is false. None of the things Ross was
| convicted of are "predicated" of a murder related act for
| a conviction. Murder, conspiracy for murder, solicitation
| for murder would be. General drug-related conspiracies in
| no way are predicated of something homicide or murder
| related for a conviction.
| tptacek wrote:
| The murder-for-hire scheme was in fact charged conduct,
| was introduced at trial, was rebuttable by the defense,
| and he was found guilty of the associated charge.
| notch656a wrote:
| tptacek wrote:
| It's going to take you more than one snarky sentence to
| explain what's deceitful about Ulbricht being charged
| with a conspiracy for which half of the predicate overt
| acts were murder-for-hire schemes. They're spelled out in
| detail in the indictment.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I don't know the details of this case, but I read above
| that at least some of these were made up by agents?
| tptacek wrote:
| The Internet believes a bunch of stuff about this case
| that is trivially refuted by reading the actual case
| documents.
| Phlarp wrote:
| Did anyone die as a direct result of Ross giving an order
| / paying for a murder?
|
| Did the police investigating Ross misrepresent these
| murders to him while they were occurring?
|
| Did the police investigating Ross attempt to enrich
| themselves by stealing illicit funds from his drug
| enterprise or by selling him details of the pending
| investigation?
|
| I'll give you that the courts have repeatedly held the
| police can legally do most of these things, and that even
| having lying/stealing cops running the investigation
| doesn't invalidate the fruits of that investigation.
| Perhaps you could also concede that a lot of observers
| are going to have difficulty seeing the difference in
| these two shades of grey?
| tptacek wrote:
| (1) No, because they were an FBI sting.
|
| (2) Presumably not, because they held up in court.
|
| (3) I have no idea, and don't see the relevance to
| Ulbricht. By all means, prosecute any corrupt FBI agents
| that were involved.
|
| I'm not making a grand normative claim about the justice
| of the Ulbricht sentence (I think he's a monster, but
| also that sentences in general are too high). I'm simply
| establishing that the _extraordinarily common_ Internet
| narrative of "Ulbricht was never charged with a murder-
| for-hire scheme, and rumors about it were prejudicial to
| the case" is irrefutably false. That's as far as I go
| with this stuff.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Did anyone die as a direct result of Ross giving an
| order / paying for a murder?
|
| I'm pretty sure it's highly illegal to take actions that
| you _think_ will lead to a murder, even if the plot if
| unsuccessful.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Yes; please people let's actually look at what happened
| at trial, at sentencing, and at appeal.
|
| Here's the indictment:
| https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-
| sdny/legacy...
|
| Page 5 of the indictment includes the murder-for-hire
| activity as part of the first count ("Narcotics
| trafficking conspiracy"). Ulbricht was convicted on this
| count of the indictment.
|
| Here is Ulbricht's appeal against sentence to the Second
| Circuit Court of Appeals:
| https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1862572.html
|
| Ulbricht doesn't even bother arguing that the court was
| wrong in considering the murder-for-hire during
| sentencing, only that they shouldn't merit a life
| sentence because they probably didn't actually take
| place.
|
| https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-
| circuit/1862572.html#foot...
| tptacek wrote:
| JFWIW: that's the first indictment; there's a superseding
| indictment introduced later that makes the murder-for-
| hire component even clearer.
|
| _Later_
|
| I removed ", and bets more of the case on it.", to dial
| it back a little.
| notch656a wrote:
| The indictment can shot-gun whatever sort of overt acts
| the grand jury buys into that they like. A conviction
| usually only needs one qualifying overt act, so a
| conviction is not at all evidence the accepted overt act
| was any of the murder-for-hire accusations.
|
| What you're doing here is presenting the indictment with
| the murder-for-hire as overt acts and relying on the
| sleight of hand that the reader will assume the
| conviction asserts the overt acts, when in fact the
| conviction only generally relies on at least one overt
| act (and need not be any murder-for-hire related one).
| tptacek wrote:
| That's definitely not what the sentencing memoranda and
| final sentencing order say. I'm going to tend to believe
| that the judge knows more about which facts were and
| weren't found at trial over the opinions of message
| boards, which, as you can see, are repeatedly and
| blatantly wrong about core details of the case.
| notch656a wrote:
| Jumping directly from indictment to sentencing is exactly
| the sort of judicial misconduct I'm impugning here.
|
| >I'm going to tend to believe that the judge knows more
|
| This is a fallacy known as "appeal to authority." Note
| while we're deferring to the person with more familiarity
| with the case, note the defense attorney for Ulbricht has
| far more intimacy with the case than you yet probably
| disagrees with you. However I wouldn't use your
| fallacious argument to suggest your opinion is
| invalidated just because the defense attorney who
| actually sat through the trial disagrees with you.
| pvg wrote:
| A judge presiding over a case is a pretty good authority
| on what a defendant in that case was charged with and
| convicted of.
| Phlarp wrote:
| He also never actually had anyone killed, the feds
| created the personas attempting to 'extort' or 'steal'
| from DPR. The feds detailed their transgressions to DPR
| and introduced the idea of murder + offered to commit the
| murders for a fee. Afterwards they fabricated evidence of
| the hit(s) to steal money from him. --These were the
| "above board" official and sanctioned things that the
| feds did during this investigation.
|
| Shaun Bridges of the US secret service and Carl Force of
| the US DEA were siphoning bitcoin off to their personal
| accounts throughout the investigation. Bridges even tried
| to flee the country while on bail.
|
| Think what you want about Ulbrict, but the cops that took
| him down were every bit as dirty as he was, if not more.
| closewith wrote:
| > Think what you want about Ulbrict, but the cops that
| took him down were every bit as dirty as he was, if not
| more.
|
| Obviously the agents who stole the funds were dirty, but
| the contents of your first paragraph is called a criminal
| investigation. Nothing untoward there (as described, at
| least).
| Phlarp wrote:
| That's certainly how the courts have interpreted things.
| As always the distinction between "Legal" and "Justice"
| is left as an exercise to the reader.
|
| For my 2 cents it seems entirely reasonable that an armed
| gang backed by the state would consider themselves to be
| individually above the law, since they are constantly
| told that the ends always justify the means, no matter
| how odious those means may be.
| hendersoon wrote:
| Indeed, he deserves to be in jail not for building the Silk
| Road, or running it, or potentially even for engaging in
| drug trafficking-- he deserves to be there for attempted
| murder. There's no ambiguity there, he tried to have people
| killed to protect his business.
| parkingrift wrote:
| >Should a drug kingpin who built a global network that
| facilitated the transfer of illegal substances who was
| willing to kill people to protect that enterprise only get
| 10 years?
|
| The murder for hire claims lack necessary evidence to
| convict. Outside that it becomes a question of whether
| platform owners are responsible for the content on their
| platform.
|
| I am personally in favor of content owners being
| responsible. I think Mark Zuckerberg should be in prison.
| However, Mark Zuckerberg is not in prison, and continues to
| wreak havoc on humanity. Why is Ulbricht responsible for
| what happened on his platform, but Zuckerberg is not?
|
| In my view, Ulbricht should be free so long as Zuckerberg
| is free.
| trhway wrote:
| >The murder for hire claims lack necessary evidence to
| convict.
|
| The evidence comes from those corrupt federal agents who
| robbed MtGox, and who fabricated evidence which prevented
| Ulbricht's bail. The murder for hire wasn't proven, yet
| it was used to significantly enhance the sentence,
| basically a loophole allowing to punish for alleged acts
| without "proven beyond reasonable doubt" for those acts.
|
| So, in short the trial has been tainted beyond any
| salvage.
| duped wrote:
| Facebook has and continues to police its platform for
| illegal activity and cooperates with law enforcement.
| That's not to say they don't facilitate horrible crimes,
| but they make some effort not to. Facebook also wasn't
| created for the express purpose of operating drug
| trafficking.
|
| Ulbricht created a website to sell drugs and made efforts
| not to police the platform.
|
| It's pretty clear what the difference is between someone
| who makes a platform that can be used by bad actors but
| makes efforts to stop them, versus someone who makes a
| platform for bad actors and tries to protect them.
| arcticbull wrote:
| He literally tried to murder a few separate people.
| Syonyk wrote:
| If he'd "just" run a marketplace for illegal everythings, you
| _might_ be able to make an argument.
|
| When it crosses into "casually ordering multiple murders he
| believed happened," then, no, I'm sorry, you're not just
| running a marketplace. You deserve to be behind bars for a
| long, long time. The only reason that nobody _actually_ died
| from that was because he was surrounded by scammers and
| informants, and didn 't realize this. But incompetence is no
| defense against ordering multiple murders.
|
| https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/inside-silk-road-
| staged-... has a lot of details on the absurdities
| surrounding it, but DPR genuinely did believe he'd ordered
| people killed.
| [deleted]
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Ross's story is heartbreaking honestly. Yes the guy basically
| built the Amazon of drugs, yes he should have done prison time
| for it. But FFS 2X life without possibility of parole.
|
| This guys has maybe one chance left and that's if a sympathetic
| President gets elected and pardons him.
| h3daz wrote:
| Probably not the best idea to run this kind of business from
| the US
| duped wrote:
| The US has a long history of extraditing people through legal
| or extra legal means wherever they might be.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sure, but that's not a great reason to make it easier for
| them.
|
| If I were running the Amazon of drugs, I'd brush up on
| which countries don't extradite to the USA.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Pardoning someone that was found guilty of running a massive
| drug operation doesn't seem like an optic that is popular for a
| lot of presidential candidates.
|
| Maybe if the Libertarian Party manages to win the presidency?
| voidfunc wrote:
| Eh....
| [deleted]
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| simmerup wrote:
| Does this mean the US government is about to convert $3 billion
| worth of Bitcoin into USD?
|
| If so I wonder how the crypto market will react to that
| j0hnyl wrote:
| Less than one percent of circulating BTC. I don't think it will
| even register.
| sweezyjeezy wrote:
| That is not how it works, the price will move via market
| liquidity - the people buying / selling bitcoin at a given
| time, the coins sitting in wallets (over 90%) have no effect.
| This source says it took $91M to move the price of bitcoin by
| 1% (about a year ago), bigger shifts could have a cascading
| effect. https://cointelegraph.com/news/bank-of-america-
| claims-it-cos...
| HaZeust wrote:
| It responded to Tesla's short for less.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| This happened over a year ago if I remember correctly so I
| suspect the government has already sold a lot of it.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| They auction it off so it's not like they are going to dump it
| all on an exchange or something. In the past it hasn't really
| effected much.
| asah wrote:
| liquid market: think of it as $3B worth of demand-for-BTC
| that's *not* buying bitcoin on the spot market and propping
| up the buy-side of the exchanges...
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