5 ms·

...because his appeal to the Supreme Court was denied, and he’ll be unable to avoid serving the rest of his life in prison, so a conviction would serve no purpo

by gok 8y ago

...because his appeal to the Supreme Court was denied, and he’ll be unable to avoid serving the rest of his life in prison, so a conviction would serve no purpose.

ddtaylor 8y ago
It's also possible the case had no merit to begin with.
- baseballdork 8y ago
  I mean, didn't he end up paying a DEA agent to murder someone?
  - morogop 8y ago
    Yes, but HN likes to pretend that he's a hero, because he's a white guy who got rich while doing a mix of harmless things that should be legal, and attempting to have people murdered.
  - beaner 8y ago
    Can't tell if this is some kind of recursive sarcasm, but this is literally the point being debated. Are you even paying attention??
    - vkou 8y ago
      There there was a lot of police impropriety surrounding it does not mean the case has no merit. It is quite possible for: 1. Billy to commit a crime. 2. The police to completely bungle their investigation. 3. Billy to be found not guilty, because of #2. As a result: The case against Billy has merit, because he actually did it (See #1). Also, he did it (See #1). But he should be found not guilty (See #2). I mean, does anyone seriously dispute that Ross paid an undercover agent to murder someone? What's under dispute is whether or not the police behaved properly in this case (Which can sometimes be enough to throw out a conviction).
      - CPLX 8y ago
        > does anyone seriously dispute that Ross paid an undercover agent to murder someone Yes at least one person does, the defendant. And given that the investigating officers were -- literally -- criminals, it's not a stretch to say there's the possibility of reasonable doubt here. Someone willing to fabricate stories about stolen bitcoins could be considered likely to have fabricated other things too.
        vkou 8y ago
        Ross doesn't deny sending the messages where he ordered the hit. He has a marvelous, fantastic story for why he sent them, where he claims that he knew for a certainty that he was not actually ordering a 'real' hit, yet still wired hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin to the assassin. It's about as plausible as 'This pound of cocaine, along with a stolen 9mm handgun fell from the sky, right into my person, your honor, I swear they aren't mine.' There's possibility, with all the police misconduct, for him to claim something similar to the 'fruit of the poisoned tree', which might hypothetically. get the conviction thrown out. But its pretty much a certainty that he ran a drug marketplace, and tried to assassinate someone.
    - baseballdork 8y ago
      No sarcasm, just wondering how you get to "no merit" from "paying someone to kill someone else" for a murder-for-hire charge...
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Yes, he did.
    - ddtaylor 8y ago
      That's what he was accused of, but since he never got a trial on that matter why do you assume it happened?
      - tptacek 8y ago
        No, he was tried on that matter: the murder-for-hire scheme was a predicate for the conspiracy charge he was eventually convicted for.
        ddtaylor 8y ago
        Where does it say he was convicted of murder for hire? Isn't this story about the charges which were dropped?
        tptacek 8y ago
        I think you're commenting about Ulbricht's case without having read the actual indictment. It's easy to find and read; you should go do that.
gwern 8y ago
It probably also has a lot to do with the corruption scandal with Bridges, Force, and possibly even more dirty cops - which is why the other set of murder-for-hire charges in NY were dropped in 2014 before the trial... It would be a prosecutor's nightmare to try a case where you have several of the principal investigators stealing funds, money-laundering, tampering with witnesses, selling internal info to the suspect, and who knows what else (we still don't know who scammed Ulbricht for the other hits, and Variety Jones has claimed that at least one more dirty cop is still on the loose). And let's not forget that FBI agent Tarbell, who 'found' the SR1 server in Iceland, beat a very hasty retreat to the private sector after what should've been a career-defining triumph, and no one wants to discuss exactly what bug supposedly spat out the IP address... I once asked a pair of FBI agents what was up with Tarbell leaving so fast, and they looked uncomfortable and didn't reply. (This is part of why Ulbricht's defense team's decision to not claim the Iceland server is widely regarded as a trial-losing mistake.) Not only would there be little point, but any trial would likely be hugely embarrassing and discovery reveal things that the FBI and IRS and DEA would very much prefer be forgotten.
- defen 8y ago
  > no one wants to discuss exactly what bug supposedly spat out the IP address I haven't really followed this case too closely, so what exactly are you hinting at here? That the government possibly used NSA / national-security-level exploits to figure out who DPR was? That there was some level of parallel construction / evidence laundering?
  - gwern 8y ago
    The DEA does use parallel-construction, and the FBI does recruit computer security researchers for attacks (the CMU CERT attack on SR2) and hand-me-down NSA exploits (and against Tor specifically), so neither of those is remotely far-fetched. And SR1 was a priority target. We may never know what really happened; the whole Bridges/Force corruption thing, for example, is so wild no one could have dreamed it up. However, from the descriptions like Nick Bilton's article/book puffpiece, I think it's somewhat likely (and more probable than NSA tech) that Tarbell did some unauthorized (and likely illegal) personal hacking and that's the kernel of truth behind his BS 'I was just typing in some random stuff and the server spat out an IP address at me!' story - SR1 was not very securely coded. Had this come out, it would've led to some serious evidence-tainting problems for the prosecutors because it affects everything downstream: the Iceland server, the SF IP address, the Pennsylvania backups, and finally Ross's unencrypted laptop in SF.

by gok 8y ago

...because his appeal to the Supreme Court was denied, and he’ll be unable to avoid serving the rest of his life in prison, so a conviction would serve no purpose.

ddtaylor 8y ago

It's also possible the case had no merit to begin with.

baseballdork 8y ago
I mean, didn't he end up paying a DEA agent to murder someone?
- morogop 8y ago
  Yes, but HN likes to pretend that he's a hero, because he's a white guy who got rich while doing a mix of harmless things that should be legal, and attempting to have people murdered.
- beaner 8y ago
  Can't tell if this is some kind of recursive sarcasm, but this is literally the point being debated. Are you even paying attention??
  - vkou 8y ago
    There there was a lot of police impropriety surrounding it does not mean the case has no merit. It is quite possible for: 1. Billy to commit a crime. 2. The police to completely bungle their investigation. 3. Billy to be found not guilty, because of #2. As a result: The case against Billy has merit, because he actually did it (See #1). Also, he did it (See #1). But he should be found not guilty (See #2). I mean, does anyone seriously dispute that Ross paid an undercover agent to murder someone? What's under dispute is whether or not the police behaved properly in this case (Which can sometimes be enough to throw out a conviction).
    - CPLX 8y ago
      > does anyone seriously dispute that Ross paid an undercover agent to murder someone Yes at least one person does, the defendant. And given that the investigating officers were -- literally -- criminals, it's not a stretch to say there's the possibility of reasonable doubt here. Someone willing to fabricate stories about stolen bitcoins could be considered likely to have fabricated other things too.
      - vkou 8y ago
        Ross doesn't deny sending the messages where he ordered the hit. He has a marvelous, fantastic story for why he sent them, where he claims that he knew for a certainty that he was not actually ordering a 'real' hit, yet still wired hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin to the assassin. It's about as plausible as 'This pound of cocaine, along with a stolen 9mm handgun fell from the sky, right into my person, your honor, I swear they aren't mine.' There's possibility, with all the police misconduct, for him to claim something similar to the 'fruit of the poisoned tree', which might hypothetically. get the conviction thrown out. But its pretty much a certainty that he ran a drug marketplace, and tried to assassinate someone.
  - baseballdork 8y ago
    No sarcasm, just wondering how you get to "no merit" from "paying someone to kill someone else" for a murder-for-hire charge...
- tptacek 8y ago
  Yes, he did.
  - ddtaylor 8y ago
    That's what he was accused of, but since he never got a trial on that matter why do you assume it happened?
    - tptacek 8y ago
      No, he was tried on that matter: the murder-for-hire scheme was a predicate for the conspiracy charge he was eventually convicted for.
      - ddtaylor 8y ago
        Where does it say he was convicted of murder for hire? Isn't this story about the charges which were dropped?
        tptacek 8y ago
        I think you're commenting about Ulbricht's case without having read the actual indictment. It's easy to find and read; you should go do that.

gwern 8y ago

It probably also has a lot to do with the corruption scandal with Bridges, Force, and possibly even more dirty cops - which is why the other set of murder-for-hire charges in NY were dropped in 2014 before the trial... It would be a prosecutor's nightmare to try a case where you have several of the principal investigators stealing funds, money-laundering, tampering with witnesses, selling internal info to the suspect, and who knows what else (we still don't know who scammed Ulbricht for the other hits, and Variety Jones has claimed that at least one more dirty cop is still on the loose). And let's not forget that FBI agent Tarbell, who 'found' the SR1 server in Iceland, beat a very hasty retreat to the private sector after what should've been a career-defining triumph, and no one wants to discuss exactly what bug supposedly spat out the IP address... I once asked a pair of FBI agents what was up with Tarbell leaving so fast, and they looked uncomfortable and didn't reply. (This is part of why Ulbricht's defense team's decision to not claim the Iceland server is widely regarded as a trial-losing mistake.) Not only would there be little point, but any trial would likely be hugely embarrassing and discovery reveal things that the FBI and IRS and DEA would very much prefer be forgotten.

defen 8y ago
> no one wants to discuss exactly what bug supposedly spat out the IP address I haven't really followed this case too closely, so what exactly are you hinting at here? That the government possibly used NSA / national-security-level exploits to figure out who DPR was? That there was some level of parallel construction / evidence laundering?
- gwern 8y ago
  The DEA does use parallel-construction, and the FBI does recruit computer security researchers for attacks (the CMU CERT attack on SR2) and hand-me-down NSA exploits (and against Tor specifically), so neither of those is remotely far-fetched. And SR1 was a priority target. We may never know what really happened; the whole Bridges/Force corruption thing, for example, is so wild no one could have dreamed it up. However, from the descriptions like Nick Bilton's article/book puffpiece, I think it's somewhat likely (and more probable than NSA tech) that Tarbell did some unauthorized (and likely illegal) personal hacking and that's the kernel of truth behind his BS 'I was just typing in some random stuff and the server spat out an IP address at me!' story - SR1 was not very securely coded. Had this come out, it would've led to some serious evidence-tainting problems for the prosecutors because it affects everything downstream: the Iceland server, the SF IP address, the Pennsylvania backups, and finally Ross's unencrypted laptop in SF.