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Ross Ulbricht Convicted of Running Silk Road as Dread Pirate Roberts
- brotoss 12y agoSo is life in prison a possibility?
- rl3 12y ago"(Bloomberg) -- The founder of the Silk Road website faces life in prison ... " Yes.
- venomsnake 12y agoI find it absurd that a person that has not committed any violence could face a life in prison. And probably the silk road decreased by some degree gang violence.
- sp332 12y agoDealing meth and other hard drugs can seriously damage people, physically. Edit: Methamphetamine is a neurotoxin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Neurotoxicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Neurotoxicity
- tedks 12y agoDealing McDonald's food is more addictive (look at all the people it hooks compared to meth) and far more physically damaging.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- sp332 12y agoWho's hooked on McDonald's food? And I'm pretty sure McD's isn't that bad.
- kibibu 12y agoI'm old enough to remember when arcade cabinets used to start with "Winners Don't Use McDonalds" before the intro screen.
- ulisesrmzroche 12y agomcdonalds is far more physically damaging than meth? Why do I get the feeling you've never been around either?
- tedks 12y agoI guess the total cost of meth would be hard to calculate, but I'm totally confident that the health costs tied to obesity are far more damaging than meth. Meth just isn't as common as obesity.
- ulisesrmzroche 12y agoPeople do crazy shit on meth though, add that to your calculations. Don't think anyone's really killed anyone for a cheeseburger.
- tedks 12y agoYes, this is precisely the indirect cost I alluded to in my immediately previous comment. That said, far more (several orders of magnitude more) people die from cheeseburgers than (directly or indirectly) from meth. In human lives, McDonald's is by far the greater risk. We need a War on Food.
- DanBC 12y agoPeople are not "addicted" in any meaningful sense of that word to McDonalds. Misuse of language harms the works that people do to tackle obesogenic companies like McDonalds.
- venomsnake 12y agoHe was not dealing IIRC. Also the people bought the stuff on their own free will. So he made a website. I would have preferred to see him convicted on the stuff he was not charged with - trying to organize hits.
- sp332 12y agoPeople who are addicted have limited free will.
- icebraining 12y agoJust like everyone else.
- spacemanmatt 12y agoUsing is a self-harm. Why is this legislated?
- FireBeyond 12y agoUsing may be a self-harm. Acquisition is often not. And once use makes acquisition a problem, violence ensues. And even when it doesn't, the ability to defend oneself from the medical ravages against the body diminishes and the cost is places upon society. The society that chose, one way or another, to cut that off at the source. Or attempt to. Personally? I don't have much issue with the use of many (though not all) drugs, in and of themselves. But they aren't used in an isolated vacuum.
- icebraining 12y agothe ability to defend oneself from the medical ravages against the body diminishes and the cost is places upon society The problem with that argument is that, not only is limiting it to drugs is arbitrary (why not convict the guy who becomes morbidly obese or extremely anorexic?), but I think it often is simply wrong, because it ignores the real alternative. The medical bills of an heroin addict may be expensive, but a guy who dies in his 60s from drug use is probably much cheaper if he had died in his 90s, possibly with some chronic condition. Besides, imprisoning him is probably more expensive still, so it's cutting your nose to spite the face anyway.
- digler990 12y ago> convict the guy who becomes morbidly obese or extremely anorexic Show me a "moridly obese"/anorexic who committed violent crime for his/her habit.
- JohnBooty 12y agoTry taking my dessert away from me sometime!
- icebraining 12y ago
- FireBeyond 12y agoYeah, I'm inclined to be skeptical about that claim. I'm more inclined to believe that the union of "drug dealers regularly involved in violence" and "drug dealers who reign in their violent ways to instead spend time on the computer filling SR orders" is near zero.
- venomsnake 12y agoOf course it is near zero. But when demand dries up, so do the margins. And with profitability down violence just does not make sense from cost/benefit analysis.
- _pius 12y agoAnd probably the silk road decreased by some degree gang violence. Sure, so did Walter White.
- ars 12y agoIt certainly happens. The high profile case of Sholom Rubashkin for example: Various forms of financial fraud and an effective (due to age) life sentence.
- res0nat0r 12y agoShould Bernie Madoff be let free? He's ruined more lives than many drug dealers, but never killed anyone.
- nacs 12y agoAlthough Madoff may not have directly killed anyone, his defrauding people did lead to a number of suicides, including his son: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5503929/Bernard-Madoff-fraud-victim-committed-suicide-to-avoid-bankruptcy-shame.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5503929/Bernard-Madof...
- gojock 12y agoMadoff had victims. Ulbricht did not.
- res0nat0r 12y agoDebatable. Also if he wasn't talking to an undercover FBI hit man there would have been, so there's that....
- serve_yay 12y agoHe tried to put a hit out on somebody. (I realize that that wasn't part of the charges he was convicted on here.)
- brotoss 12y agoYea, I got that buddy. The point of my question was whether life is in the realm of possibility when news outlets often report the absolute statutory max that the offender could theoretically receive yet they end being sentenced for less.
- Touche 12y agoDefinitely possible.
- shebson 12y agoYes, several of those convictions carry the potential for a life sentence. Additionally, the New York Times reports that the two most serious convictions carry minimum sentences of 20 years and 10 years (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/nyregion/man-behind-silk-road-website-is-convicted-on-all-counts.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/nyregion/man-behind-silk-r...).
- viewer5 12y agoI have trouble wrapping my mind around the concept of being imprisoned for the remainder of your life. Why do they even do it, instead of just execution? Might as well, right? Especially for something like this. I haven't been following it closely at all, but presumably he hasn't stabbed/shot anyone, right? So why isn't it "prison for N years then we keep an eye on you for the rest of your life"? That'd be a whoooole lot cheaper than locking him up until he dies, and a much more reasonable punishment, IMO, for anyone who hasn't proved themselves some kind of psycho-killer.
- jMyles 12y agoIt's cases like these that make it difficult to believe that our system is about justice rather than political repression.
- eric_h 12y agoAgreed, if Ulbricht hadn't tried to call a hit out on someone, life in prison would seem unreasonable. Based on the information we have, though, it seems pretty certain that he did. Whether or not the hit went through, he tried to do it, which definitely puts him on the sociopathic spectrum. If I had a button on some website that would cause someone to be killed, I wouldn't click it. A button on some website that enabled people to get the drugs they want, though? I wouldn't have quite the same moral quandaries. Don't get me wrong, the hard drugs are bad and in essence the people who use them pathologically are victims of their own brain chemistry; I'm just not so certain that life in prison for someone who enables that is actually a solution to that problem (but the effectiveness of prohibition by force is a whole 'nother story). It seems clear to me that the motivation for the prosecutors and LEOs involved is to crush the concept of an unregulated, international, black market. I'm definitely not convinced that this prosecution will actually produce the desired goal. Silk road was just the first of many darknet black markets that emerged to fulfill a need. Others are still thriving and as they get shut down, more will spring up in their place, gradually improving their ability to evade detection/termination.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago'keeping an eye on' turns out to not work very well. Too easy to just disappear and become another person. So, for someone who will misbehave again its either life in prison or death.
- trcollinson 12y agoAbsolutely it is, on a few grounds. First off just looking at the various conspiracy charges (Money Laundering conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy, drug trafficking conspiracy, and criminal empire conspiracy) can lead to numerous decades each in jail time. Functionally speaking this would lead to a life sentence but it could be something like 200 years in prison without possibility of parol. On the count of conspiracy to commit murder, 6 times over, if those are ever brought to trial, can come with an actual life sentence, or life sentences. It is very likely he could face numerous sentences of life in prison plus a number of years of prison on top of that. All of this depends on the judge and how s/he would like to handling the sentencing portion of this trial, which probably will not happen for weeks or months. As there was no plea agreement accepted by the defendant, it is quite likely that the prosecution has always believes that he would be found guilty and pay a very high price for his crimes. Because of this they either a) never gave him a plea deal to consider or b) gave a very costly plea deal which wouldn't have been much better than just going through the trial and going to jail for life.
- Zikes 12y agoI thought a conviction was sentenced based on the most severe available for a set of charges, not all charges cumulatively. There were a lot of articles recently about how the media often used some common misunderstanding to say someone faced "centuries" behind bars for something that probably would've maxed out around 20 years.
- mikeyouse 12y agoRunning a "Continuing Criminal Enterprise" (one of the charges he was just convicted of) comes with a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence. http://www.ussc.gov/guidelines-manual/2014/2014-chapter-2-d#2d15 http://www.ussc.gov/guidelines-manual/2014/2014-chapter-2-d#... Depending on how everything else stacks up, he could certainly see 25+ years, but most of the sentences will run concurrently.
- stonemetal 12y agoConsecutive is the default if the judge doesn't specify. Some laws require consecutive. Other than that it is up to the judge to specify. http://criminal.lawyers.com/criminal-law-basics/how-do-multiple-convictions-affect-my-sentence.html http://criminal.lawyers.com/criminal-law-basics/how-do-multi... >If a judge wants to order the sentences to run consecutively or concurrently, she must state so specifically in the sentencing order, which is the court document that sets a defendant's sentences. If she doesn't do so, the sentences will run consecutively automatically.
- ffn 12y agoRIP in pieces, Dread Pirate Roberts, the Blackbeard of our era. May we meet again in 5 or so years on the silver screen.
- freakyterrorist 12y agoHardly surprising, his defense was in tatters after having his experts denied and his line of inquiry into mark karples blocked. The prosecution tracing bitcoins directly from silk rd to his personal wallet was just icing on their cake. This is a warning to everyone involved in these enterprises, OPSEC OPSEC OPSEC!!!
- happyscrappy 12y agoThree hours to convict on seven counts, this was a backboard shattering slam dunk.
- notatoad 12y ago"don't try and have people killed" is probably also a fairly good warning to people involved in these enterprises.
- jMyles 12y agoHe didn't. These were lies - straight up lies - designed to impugn his credibility during jury selection and the bail proceeding. Ask yourself: Why wasn't he charged with these crimes?
- BigChiefSmokem 12y agoBecause no one was murdered. He tried to hire a hitman but the hitman ended up being an undercover FBI agent. Don't defend this man, he is manipulative human garbage.
- WillNotDownvote 12y agoWhich would still be a crime, if he committed it. But he wasn't tried for it.
- FireBeyond 12y agoPut him away for the things that are an easy conviction, rather than the more nebulous details of that attempt. Why cloud things?
- jMyles 12y agoIt's hard for me to have anything but contempt for this entire proceeding. None of these actions are a crime in a free society. And if they were, there'd be no need to dictate what can and can't be introduced as a defense. No "politics?" What garbage. Every line of code that DPR wrote was political. Free Ross.
- moyix 12y agoAre you ignoring the attempt to have several people killed? Even if it seems he was actually getting scammed, it sure looks like he tried to arrange murder for hire.
- mburns 12y agoHe wasn't on trial for soliciting murder.
- npizzolato 12y agoWell, he is charged with soliciting murder. It just wasn't this trial. > "Ulbricht is charged with a murder-for-hire scheme in a separate case in federal court in Baltimore." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-09/us-says-silk-roads-ulbricht-solicited-six-murders-for-hire https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-09/us-says-s...
- forgotpasswd3x 12y agoI'm assuming he was talking about what they charged him with, in the article it states: "Ulbricht didn’t face murder solicitation charges in the trial and prosecutors said they don’t believe any murders were carried out."
- Alupis 12y agoHave you read the transcripts of his supposed "murder for hire" discussions? They are with a supposed Hell's Angel, who, right on the first email, opens up about his business dealings, what he does, how he does it, etc. It's waaaaaaaay to open and forthcoming for a hardened and experienced criminal to just flat out say things like: > Also, we have kidnapped friendlychemists partner Xin already and are on the hunt for friendlychemist. > We are all familiar with PGP as we have been using it for years via email linked to our smartphones. It’s the only way we communicate with each other aside from in person, since phone calls are not secure. > After some “questioning” he admitted he was intending on moving to a different country and setting up a new seller account on this site. We don’t take too kindly to thieves. He’s gone. > If you have your mind set on just finding his location, I can talk to them and get them to get it for you for a fee (not sure what amount as usually when we hunt someone, there is more involved after we find them). > I can almost guarantee it, but I stop short of guaranteeing anything unless I am 100% certain I can get the job done. I do that so I don’t look like an idiot if I can’t accomplish something I have said I can. It reads like a novel (or more likely a LE agent baiting him). Would also explain why none of the "victims" were ever really identified, nor any missing persons reports filed. Doesn't excuse what DPR did, just saying this part of the prosecution's story doesn't sit well with me. ~~ Edit: Here's the supposed conversation about the "hits" for reference http://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-boss-ordering-5-assassinations/ http://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-boss...
- pcrh 12y agoLooks like he's going to have to learn how to break out of jail...
- Scruff_Face 12y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Plan_%28film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Plan_%28film%29
- comex 12y agoThis is a good explanation of how the defense totally screwed up: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/op-ed-ross-ulbricht-got-a-fair-trial-but-not-a-fair-investigation/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/op-ed-ross-ulbric... Basically, the evidence was massively damning, so their only serious hope of winning was by challenging the curiously nonspecific way the FBI found the Silk Road server; but they gave up their ability to do so for some dubious benefits.
- kasamm 12y agoArs Technica has consistently had the best coverage throughout the trial. Every other news source seems to be glossing over small details. (For example, this Bloomberg article still uses the FBI estimate of $1.2 billion in transactions even though the analysis by the prosecution's witness found $213.8 million after examining Silk Road records.)
- apaprocki 12y agoKeep in mind that isn't necessarily how news works. If the FBI estimated $1.2 billion, that is a news-worthy fact in of itself. If an expert witness tallied a lower number it would never "replace" the FBI number unless the FBI amended their estimate publicly.
- hurin 12y agoFBI's way of estimating "1.2 billion" involved pricing the net turn-over in Bitcoin (over the course of silk roads existence) at it's highest values in order to give the news a sensational effect. Silkroad is a joke compared for example to some 300% increase in heroin production that Afghanistan saw after America invaded - it's just the later isn't favorable to publicize. Notice - Even wikipedia blatantly quotes the misinformation published in the document in it's article: It noted that, "From February 6, 2011 to July 23, 2013... The total revenue generated from these sales was 9,519,664 Bitcoins, and the total commissions collected by Silk Road from the sales amounted to 614,305 Bitcoins. These figures are equivalent to roughly $1.2 billion in revenue and $79.8 million in commissions. But - for the bitcoins to amount to 1.2 billion dollars they would have to be priced at a relatively high 2013 mark at least 100 magnitudes above 2011 prices (from which their estimate begins). For the record the world-drug market is estimated at around $400 billion, so if silkroad over the course of 2.5 years had a turn over of 213 million, that would place it as accounting for .02% of the drug trade. Not the staggering blackmarket the FBI and US media have made it out to be.
- jqm 12y agoHe seems like a smart guy and a good guy overall...(yes, I know he allegedly attempted to hire a hit-man and we can't tolerate crime etc. etc.). It's a shame to see his entire life wasted for an (admittedly rather large) youthful indiscretion. I keep thinking there has to be a more efficient, a more just way of discouraging criminal activity. As an aside... Sometimes it apparently doesn't pay to be overly smart. Or rather, smart enough to get into trouble, but not smart enough to avoid the dangers.
- eastbayjake 12y agoIsn't this trial the sort of thing that "discourages criminal activity"? There were a lot of people who thought they could violate federal law under the anonymity of Tor, and now a lot of would-be perpetrators are aware that federal investigators do have the resources to find you. They're definitely making an example of DPR, and I don't have a problem with that. Money laundering? Drug trafficking? Hiring hit men? If a New Jersey mobster had faced these charges for meatspace crimes, he'd certainly be spending the rest of his life in jail. (We can have a conversation about whether consenting adults should be able to purchase and use drugs, but there's no doubt he intentionally and repeatedly violated many existing federal laws.)
- jMyles 12y ago> Money laundering? Drug trafficking? Hiring hit men? One of these things is not like the others.
- jqm 12y agoNa, the Jersey tough guy would probably just rat out some accomplices and soon be living under an assumed identity in Arizona. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Gravano http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Gravano Unlike DPR, this guy had a lifetime of criminal history dating back to childhood and actually did personally commit a number of murders.
- genericuser 12y agoYes, and if there were a person above DPR he was willing to rat out I am confident they would let him do the same.
- lectrick 12y ago> and even tried to arrange the murder of five people who threatened the anonymity of buyers and sellers. 1) No one was murdered 2) If drug trade was somehow regulated legally and decriminalized like in Portugal instead of being outright illegal, there would be no perverse incentive to murder to begin with... and there would probably also be no incentive for a Silk Road When is US law going to realize that overly strict punishments (come on, does this guy really deserve life in prison?) simply create a perverse incentive to harm in order to ensure people stay quiet, and that creating black markets results in negative externalities? If the punishments were less severe (or even simply allowed but highly taxed/regulated) then there would be less murder of witnesses, period. I can't find a tremendous amount of evidence around this, except for this: https://www.econ.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/yablon_daniel.pdf https://www.econ.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/yablon_dan... (I think I'm becoming libertarian?)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- imaginenore 12y agoJust FYI, Amsterdam is a city.
- X-Istence 12y agoYes, he would still have been breaking laws.
- mark-r 12y agoExtradition is a thing too. You don't have to live in the US to break laws in the US, and you can bet that the government would have stopped at nothing to shut him down.
- panzagl 12y agoI would think he would be breaking taxes laws, if nothing else- how much VAT did the EU collect from Silk Road?
- notadocta 12y agoI want to feel bad for the guy, almost, but I don't. I just wish he got away with it, I wish he were smarter about it.
- andrewfelix 12y agoIt's interesting that a lot of people sort of sympathise with him seemingly because of the context in which he carried out the crimes. ie. If he'd been using a landline and peso's instead of BTC and the internet we'd probably attach a completely different emotional response.
- dsuth 12y agoI think a lot of people here sympathise with him because geeks have a libertarian bent. We believe that we know what's best for ourselves, and assume that other people do as well.
- bunkydoo 12y agoCould have seen that coming long long ago.
- eyeareque 12y agoThe story of Silk Road and Ross Ulbricht will make for a great movie.
- eric_h 12y agoI see a story about a protagonist who was not only supremely arrogant, he was supremely incompetent at opsec (pretty boring and tough to make a sympathetic protagonist out of that). A movie framing the cops as the protagonists would be just as boring, as it would include a scene with someone googling something and finding the crumb they need to nail Ulbricht, followed by a scene of the arrest where they don't even need to crack the encryption on his laptop to get every single thing they needed to convict him. A video of his arrest at the public library might have made an entertaining/viral youtube video, though.
- kevinnk 12y ago"I see a story about a protagonist who was not only supremely arrogant, he was supremely incompetent at opsec" Ever seen Catch Me If You Can? Also, I agree a true to life story would be pretty boring. Thankfully, truth isn't exactly a requirement in hollywood storytelling.
- eric_h 12y agoHaha, fair enough. A creative retelling of this story could be pretty entertaining. If you sweep all of Ulbrichts terrible opsec under the rug (and retell it as excellent opsec), you could make a pretty compelling man vs The Man story. Consider my criticism withdrawn - fiction, "based on a true story" does usually manage to be pretty entertaining. [Edit: I do still think that a youtube video of him getting arrested would really have taken off.]
- rdl 12y agoAnti-forensics seem like a good idea if you're running a transnational drug empire. A simple electronic leash would have gone a long way; some level of compartmented logins, such that when you're sitting in a cafe you're not always logged in with all of your credentials (probably separated by VMs), would be the next step after that. Using online tools correctly to becoming a subject of in-person investigation would have been of course great, too, but there should be strong backstops before "convicted" as well. (Or you could just not do the crime.)
- bhayden 12y agoWhat's an electronic leash? Like running TailsOS on a flash drive that's tethered to a bracelet?
- harshreality 12y agoA process that logs out active users, kills all their processes, and wipes decrypted storage keys from memory when the computer is separated from its owner (probably detected via bluetooth phone/wristband)?
- jaryd 12y agoA low tech solution is to use a laptop that doesn't have a battery and keep it plugged in all the time. When they grab the laptop the cord invariably comes unplugged and the thing turns off. Bonus points if you have a fake battery so the weight doesn't give the game away.
- bumbledraven 12y agoWhat are some companies making electronic leashes? Sounds useful, but a google search for this turns up only dog-related products.
- damon_c 12y agoObviously he broke the law and was not the most morally pure individual. But, what about 100 years from now? Do you think the people of the future will think we are being silly to put him in prison for 25+ years for running an unregulated online marketplace?
- code_duck 12y agoThis is just a technologically advanced incident in the "drug war". Aside from the tech aspect, the business could be compared to a formal crack house where dealers meet customers and the owner takes a cut. That is to say, there's a vast unregulated market for drugs and the SR is a drop in the bucket. While notable, I imagine people 100 years ago will pay more attention to the 30+ years we have of imprisoning, killing, fining and assaulting people and their families for selling and using highly common and sought after substances than the unregulated marketplace aspect of this case.
- code_duck 12y agoUh, hundred years from now, I mean.
- recibe 12y agoRoss made the decision, now Ross pays the price. Lots of people could have done this, and lots of people were smart enough not to.
- tindrlabs 12y agoRoss actually lived above me in college. Very surreal to see this all going down.
- rasputhin 12y agoI Dont this Mr Ulbricht stood a chance. That case was decided before it began.