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Millionaire hacker gets 9 years in death of man building nuclear bunker tunnels
- S-E-P 7y agoThis is the talk in 2016 they referenced https://youtu.be/33bouyeSh-w https://youtu.be/33bouyeSh-w It's a little cringy, but gives you an idea of who they were dealing with. The sentencing is harsh to say the least.
- threwawasy1228 7y agoHarsh is an undrestatement, this guy should have gotten a few years at most. The sentence he got is absolutely ridiculous.
- jessaustin 7y agoWould we all agree with this if his victim had been white?
- threwawasy1228 7y agoI didn't even look at what race the victim was, you are commenting in bad faith. I don't think the guy should get any time at all for doing this, probation would be more than adequate.
- jessaustin 7y agoSorry about that; I need to recalibrate my assumptions. Not everyone reads TFA before commenting. I'm normally not a throw-the-book-at-them kind of person, but I don't think any employer who locks his employee(s) into an uninspected burning deathtrap should get off without prison, regardless of his mental state at the time. There is too much history behind this. I'm also not convinced that this dude actually has any mental problems beyond "asshole with too much money". I already have half of that mental problem...
- dang 7y ago"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dx87 7y agoI'm suprised that he got 9 years in prison and was convicted of 2nd degree murder for this. What he was doing was definitely strange and ended up causing someone's death, but I haven't seen anyone from Tesla or Uber going to jail when people died because they're beta testing autonomous cars on public roads. The double standards are crazy.
- jessaustin 7y agoHe's a weird guy, which means certain jurors will be biased against him. He's also an asshole, which also means certain jurors will be biased against him. Also he killed someone, even if out of negligence rather than spite. This doesn't seem like a giant miscarriage of justice.
- mars4rp 7y agoLet's put some corporate officer in trial and see how jurors react to it! but we never do that!
- rwmj 7y agoCorporate officers of companies go on trial all the time. In the UK it even happens for manslaughter - you can be held responsible if someone working for you dies if you didn't take the right precautions.
- mlevental 7y agohe didn't testify
- jessaustin 7y agoOK, if they didn't hear him talk they might not have picked up the "asshole" vibe, although they might have made some assumptions in that vein about any BTC millionaire. Any testimony about his actions or public statements would have transmitted the "weird" vibe loud and clear.
- 7y ago
- canada_dry 7y agoA bit more background here: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/maryland/demolition-ordered-after-tunnels-discovered-under-home/65-505503433 https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/maryland/demolition... So bizarre.
- Cactus2018 7y agoMore local news coverage: https://wtop.com/search/?s=bethesda+tunnel+fire https://wtop.com/search/?s=bethesda+tunnel+fire
- bluepirate 7y agoDarknet Diaries has a great episode on this. It's called alarm lamp scooter.
- dannygarcia 7y agoDirect link to the episode which includes images: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/39/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/39/ This podcast has been around for a while but I recently discovered it and has become a personal favorite.
- jessaustin 7y agoYeah it's great. I downloaded a big chunk of it before a car trip and it made the miles fly by. Now I listen to it the day it shows up on my phone...
- malshe 7y agoThis is a great podcast. I started listening to it recently but finished around 75% of the episodes mostly in the gym! Recommended it to some of my colleagues who are hooked on it as well.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 7y agoMirror for people in the EU: http://archive.is/p073a http://archive.is/p073a
- tendencydriven 7y agoYour mirror doesn't seem to work for me, here's one that does https://outline.com/XNGEDx https://outline.com/XNGEDx
- bluefin 7y agoFor anyone using Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS, archive.is won't resolve. This has been discussed 10 months ago and still hasn't been fixed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17742457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17742457
- teraflop 7y agoIt's apparently intentional on the part of archive.is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702
- droithomme 7y agoThat title is amazing.
- yakubin 7y agoIt took me about 10 attempts to properly parse what the intended meaning was. Perhaps my English skills aren't that good.
- gurpreetsatwal 7y agoThank God, I thought that was just me. I read it like 3 or 4 times and only understood after I read the first few sentences in the article.
- theelous3 7y agoNo, it's pure titlegore.
- tapland 7y agoI can read it just fine and English isn't my first language.
- J_cst 7y agoI was unable to parse it too. I'm Italian (that says it all) my English is not stellar, but usually I find my way around with English. Not this time though. :)
- mbrubeck 7y agoBeckwitt's alias "3AlarmLampscooter" is a reference to the excellent novel "Interface" by Neal Stephenson and George Jewsbury (previously published under the pen names Stephen Bury or J. Frederick George). Coincidentally (?), the phrase occurs in the novel shortly before a politician is evacuated from the capitol building through a secret Cold-War-era civil defense tunnel.
- Charad3 7y agoThis is a better article https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/he-was-an-infamous-college-hacker-then-a-bitcoin-millionaire-now-hes-charged-with-depraved-murder https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/he-was-an-infamous-colle...
- brokenkebab 7y agoHow's it better, really? Besides being exclusively one-sided, it tries hard to make up a very strange connection between the fact that the guy was treated mildly for hacking into his university network, and the death which essentially was caused by combination of paranoia, poor electrical engineering skills, and hoarded house (which is often a sign of mental problems too). Apparently, if you won't put a hacker into prison as early as possible s/he will cause a deadly fire!
- b_tterc_p 7y agoI have so many questions I want to ask both the victim and the guy who is going to jail. For example, was he actually good at trading or hacking? In the last few years I have become increasingly aware of a trend where we wonder if successful people with blatant signs of being an idiot are in fact geniuses. My recent favorite being the pizza bomber woman from the aptly but honestly completely inappropriately named Netflix documentary “Evil Genius”. (I would recommend maybe two episodes and then just wikipedia’ing the rest) I’m curious if this is Protestant work ethic fallacies in American culture or if it is prevalent elsewhere too.
- sct202 7y agoThis article says he was a crypto millionaire, which makes more sense to me with his age, wealth and computer background. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/he-was-an-infamous-college-hacker-then-a-bitcoin-millionaire-now-hes-charged-with-depraved-murder https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/he-was-an-infamous-colle...
- closetohome 7y agoI'm not sure buying and holding bitcoin qualifies someone as...well, anything really.
- b_tterc_p 7y agoLucky?
- wolfgke 7y ago> In the last few years I have become increasingly aware of a trend where we wonder if successful people with blatant signs of being an idiot are in fact geniuses. [...] > I’m curious if this is Protestant work ethic fallacies in American culture or if it is prevalent elsewhere too. In my opinion (as a German), the reason rather lies in the fact that very smart people (by, say, IQ), (IMHO rightfully) observe that their intelligence does not lead to success. So they try to "reverse-engineer" the "true success formula". For this, it is obvious that people who are "idiots", but very successful provide good test cases to validate/disprove the "reverse-engineered success formula".
- erobbins 7y agoElon Musk? I'm not sure which one you're describing here.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoAs far as I'm aware Musk hasn't faced a jury?
- HarryHirsch 7y agoThis may yet happen. Over the "pedophile" tweet: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48238576 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48238576 It's about time he lost his shirt over that, you can't have people throw around accusations of that sort.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoSo long as the punishment fits the crime, I agree, for what it’s worth.
- dang 7y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20219403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20219403 and marked it off-topic.
- xwdv 7y agoI wonder if this man used to post here? There’s plenty of millionaire hackers who are into doomsday prepping here on HN.
- Lowkeyloki 7y agoThere's something upsetting about that combination of traits, don't you think? "Millionaire hackers" should be using their influence and money to try to avert a doomsday scenario if they believe it's likely. Not just prepare to hole up and wait it out.
- scarejunba 7y agoOh yeah, dude, I forgot we could just use one million dollars to stop North Korea from detonating a nuclear device. Absolute genius. Don't know why we didn't think of this one. Good one, mate.
- dang 7y agoCan you please stop breaking the site guidelines so we don't have to ban you? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- solveit 7y agoYour garden variety millionaire doesn't have enough influence to manipulate a well-organized homeowner's association. Averting nuclear holocaust is well outside their capabilities. The only way they could amass enough influence would be by grouping up with like-minded people and fighting for a common cause, but that's just called politics, and there are indeed many, many millionaires in politics. I have not seen many people suggest that this is a good thing.
- wolfgke 7y ago> There's something upsetting about that combination of traits, don't you think? "Millionaire hackers" should be using their influence and money to try to avert a doomsday scenario if they believe it's likely. Not just prepare to hole up and wait it out. "Nobody" is willing to appoint such "millionaire" hackers as "benevolent dicators" in multiple countries, which would be near to a necessity to enable them to avert this scenario. So the best they can do is dig holes.
- 55555 7y agoI think this guy is partly being punished for being mentally ill or at least very atypical. What he did isn't normal behavior. And then there's the hoarding. From my armchair, it seems like some sort of obsessive condition. The sentencing seems terribly long for a genuine accident.
- threwawasy1228 7y agoAbsolutely agree, he is being convicted for having an accident in weird circumstances. If this sort of accident happened in a normal-circumstance with a person who has no mental illness, it would be 2 years at most.
- uiuc_throwaway 7y agoI went to school with Daniel at Illinois. He is quite simply a dangerous and manipulative person. Having known him I would have preferred he spend significantly more time in jail or otherwise separated from society. It should be telling that I created a throwaway account to post this for fear of my safety _even if he won't get out for another decade_.
- hdfbdtbcdg 7y agoWhen you don't follow the law regarding safety and your employee dies you should go to prison.
- perryh2 7y agoThis person got in trouble at UIUC in 2013 for getting an exam canceled, among other things, and was expelled. http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2013-01-22/former-ui-student-arrested-computer-incidents-building-damage.html http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2013-01-22/former-ui-...
- uiuc_throwaway 7y agoI went to school with Daniel at Illinois, we were in the ECE program at the same time and took classes together (with other HN readers, surely). I dispute all posts saying "the sentence is too harsh" and that this was "a genuine accident." This person is dangerous and willfully endangered others in his pursuits. This type of "accident" would not happen "in normal circumstances" because there is no normal circumstance in which your employer intentionally masks your location and forces you to defecate into a bucket in the basement of their own home. Personally I believe Daniel used the investment he made in the victim's company to manipulate him into this situation. From my POV it was only a matter of time that he did something that resulted in serious harm. It is terribly unfortunate that someone had to lose their life before he was able to get help for his mental illness. I do not have an axe to grind against him personally, nor do I lack empathy for the mentally ill. But for those quick to jump to the other side, you should know what the experience is like living near someone in this circumstance. It is quite viscerally terrifying, to the extent that I have made no public comments about this for fear of retribution on his part despite the fact he'll be separated from society for quite some time.
- oh_sigh 7y agoWhat was it about this guy that freaked you out? Was it his observed behavior, rumors, just a bad feeling,...?
- _ah 7y agoI believe that one of the scariest aspects of living in proximity to a person with severe mental illness is that their actions and responses are not necessarily rational, or predictably irrational, or even consistent day-to-day. Any random action (or lack thereof) is capable of triggering a disproportionate response, and there can be no warning signs ahead of time. This is mentally exhausting, since the healthy person must devote a large portion of their emotional energy decoding and understanding the current mental state of the ill person, proverbially "walking on eggshells" to avoid a negative situation.
- dfeojm-zlib 7y ago
- razzmataz 7y agoDarknet Diaries episode 39 covers quite a bit about Daniel. He also used to call in to the PLA Phone Show under the pseudonym “Skunkworks”, and talk about dissolving bodies and vocal cords.
- YeahSureWhyNot 7y agowhy are people inclined to believe in conspiracies also happen to be hoarders?
- wolfgke 7y ago> why are people inclined to believe in conspiracies also happen to be hoarders? Because they are prepare themselves for the scenarios that they believe might happen and will be uncomfortable for them. You cannot mitigate against all conspiracies, but for some, prepping is a form of mitigation against the possible consequences.
- sex-dungeons 7y ago> "Daniel Beckwitt, 28, and a 'wealthy (millionaire) stock trader' enlisted 21-year-old Askia Khafra to help him secretly dig tunnels beneath a Maryland home." Okay, I'm with you... > "A hole in the concrete basement floor led to a shaft that dropped down 20 feet into tunnels that branched out roughly 200 feet in length." Right, right... > "Khafra met Beckwitt online." Spider sense is tingling... > "Beckwitt had invested money in a company Khafra was trying to launch as he helped Beckwitt dig the tunnels." Interesting... Money changed hands, but not in exchange for the "help" of digging (SECRET) basement tunnels... > "Beckwitt tried to trick Khafra into thinking they were digging the tunnels in Virginia instead of Maryland by having him don 'blackout glasses' before taking him on a long drive." Okay, so there's your problem. And then... > "Beckwitt is described as a skilled computer hacker who had a paranoid fixation on a possible nuclear attack by North Korea." > "Beckwitt ignored obvious signs of danger and sacrificed safety for secrecy while they dug a network of tunnels for a nuclear bunker in the basement of Beckwitt's trash-filled house. Extreme hoarding conditions in the home prevented Khafra from escaping." No one deserved to die like this, for goofing off in what was likely to become a basement sex dungeon. But for sure, this guy needs to be off the streets, whether the death was accidental or not. He was blindfolding morons, and swindling them into climbing over trash to build secret sex slave dungeons, because like that even matters whether it's happening in Virginia or Maryland.