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Interesting. Were those 2 other agreements before or after the one suggested and pressured by the law enforcement asset? If those other agreements came later,
by KMag 6y ago
Interesting. Were those 2 other agreements before or after the one suggested and pressured by the law enforcement asset? If those other agreements came later, there's an argument to be made that they were also an indirect result of the actions of the pressure by the law enforcement asset. I would guess there's no precedent for an indirect entrapment defense, but I'd consider it a mitigating circumstance for sentencing purposes.
In any case, I agree it seems fundamentally against the rule of law to punish people for crimes they haven't been convicted of.
- betwixthewires 6y agoYes, they occurred after the contract with the federal agent. However, the reason charges were dropped on those was because nobody was actually killed, the people he paid to have killed didn't actually exist, and the prosecutors determined that prosecuting him for crimes where no victims ever even existed would hurt their chances with a jury on the other charges.
- CyberRabbi 6y agoWhy did he arrange to get people that didn’t exist killed?
- betwixthewires 6y agoIt's a long story, but basically there was a guy who would pump up vendor accounts and exit scam them, then he attempted to extort the site admin (DPR) with customer data using some story that he owed some real bad dudes a a lot of money, and when the admin tried to contact these real bad dudes about resolving it, he also asked them about selling on site and also taking care of this mutual problem. The real bad dudes agreed to handle the mutual problem for a fee, and DPR paid. Of course, the scammer and the real bad dudes were the same guy, and he managed to turn an extortion into a murder for hire of himself and some fictional associates, and made off with just under a million dollars at the time, not counting what he made scamming customers and also not counting future price increase. DPR, the criminal mastermind that he was, fell for it, never put it together, and paid. He legitimately thought all these names were different people and actually existed. I don't believe he even found out he got scammed until he was in jail facing charges and the scammer was caught for some other unrelated crimes.
- saberdancer 6y agoIs there an article we could read? Sounds fascinating.
- eddyg 6y agoRead (or listen to) American Kingpin by Nick Bilton. It is a great story. https://www.audible.com/pd/American-Kingpin-Audiobook/B06Y1RH224 https://www.audible.com/pd/American-Kingpin-Audiobook/B06Y1R...
- saberdancer 6y agoI read a bit on various articles after commenting first time. I was very amused seeing he transferred thousands of BTC for one hit. For one hit it was roughly 1600 BTC at 60 USD. Bitcoin now stands over 20 000 USD so in todays BTC dollars that was a 32 million fake hit.
- meowface 6y agoThe person blackmailing him and Curtis Green did exist, though. He also received a staged photo of the real Curtis Green, who appeared to be dead and covered in real blood. He definitely thought he killed at least some real people, even if no one died.
- betwixthewires 6y agoYes, the contract that was arranged by a federal agent did have a real person involved. The person blackmailing him was the person who he contracted to do the deed, and the name he had for the blackmailer was not a real person, 3 of the people never even were named in any way and did not exist either. He did think he had killed a total (that we know of) of 6 people, which to me would be enough for soliciting murder if I were on a jury. But a defense would be very strong in a case like that, and a prosecutor unlikely to convince 12 jurors.