16 ms·

My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

323 points by Thevet 12y ago

chatmasta 12y ago
"Sure, we wanted Ross to go free. We wanted him to be innocent, to be a hero: the poster boy for privacy in the Information Age." That may be partially true, but Ross polluted much of the goodwill the Internet community had for him when he decided to "order a hitman." I doubt he was ever that serious about hiring one. If you read the chats he had, he sounds completely out of his league, and probably never would have been capable of it if the FBI did not sort-of-entrap him with a murder-for-hire plot. Unfortunately, he really screwed himself by going down that road. The best argument in defense of silk road and Ross, from a moral/philosophical standpoint, is that it represents a victimless crime. Indeed, by moving transactions into the online world, it may have actually facilitated a drop in real crime. Ross must have known that if the FBI ever caught up to him, he could defend himself with this moral reasoning, and at least stand a chance of acquittal in a jury trial. It's a shame that he had to completely ruin that chance by also trying to hire a hitman. He should have kept things simple and never strayed out of the territory of libertarian economic experiment.
- q7 12y ago
  Oh c'mon, he ordered a hitman inside a play the FBI fully staged for him. There was never any harm done to anybody. Pure entrapment. Create a fake simulated decision dilemma he never had to decide in real life, put a lot of emotional pressure on him, and then when he made a bad decision inside this simulation that harmed nobody, try to condemn him for it. He hasn't lost my goodwill yet.
  - zajd 12y ago
    Hiring a hitman to kill someone goes a little past "a bad decision"
  - mbillie1 12y ago
    > Oh c'mon, he ordered a hitman inside a play the FBI fully staged for him. There was never any harm done to anybody. I'm not sure this line of reasoning makes a lot of difference. We judge criminal intent, not simply outcome, and it's pretty clear that the intent in hiring a hitman is to have someone killed - staged or not. It's surely different from pulling the trigger yourself, but I think it's quite fair to expect a gut-check moment when one decides not to pay for murder, and to hold someone criminally accountable for ignoring that gut-check and deciding to go ahead with the hit anyway. (edited for grammatical clarity)
    - Disruptive_Dave 12y ago
      There is entrapment, though. A good true crime read that deals a bit with the dilemma police/FBI deals with: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/12/sexual-predators-200912 http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/12/sexual-predators-2009...
    - gnopgnip 12y ago
      Did he send any money to the hitman?
      - kevinnk 12y ago
        Yes. For the first murder he spent $500,000 and for the second $80,000
    - pakled_engineer 12y ago
      He hired CIs posing as hitmen a few times. His diary/movie script/fictional book on his laptop they found claimed he tried to kill an employee who had potential to snitch, and a scammer in Canada that ripped off many users. He also agreed to a higher price for the "hit" in Canada, as it was claimed by the CI the target lived with 3 other people and if they were to collect all his assets as ordered then everybody would have to die. Ross was totally cool with that and paid. I also don't think this is why his fanbase on SR dumped him, they seemed more pissed that his security practices were so terribad awful it put everybody else in jeopardy. It's almost as if he read his own forum's security base and then did the opposite of what everybody said not to do like "Never order fake ID to where you live" and "Don't sit in a cafe ordering drugs off this site" (don't sit in a cafe/library and run the site either). The money he paid to kill non existent people was way more than what they caused him to lose through scamming, he could have paid back the losses out of pocket with his huge stash of bitcoins instead of seeking vengeance. He acted exactly like a boss of a gangster dial a dope operation that orders the hit of one of their drivers they think is ripping them off.
  - paulhauggis 12y ago
    I disagree. A person that doesn't want to harm anyone wouldn't hire (or attempt to hire) a hitman. If the agent would have been a hitman, someone might be dead. "he never had to decide in real life" The reason he got in trouble was because he did decide it in real life. It's not like he put a hit out on a World of Warcraft character. "put a lot of emotional pressure on him" Emotional pressure? really? That's an elegant way of putting it. "He hasn't lost my goodwill yet." It's only because you support the legalization of drugs and you are letting this cloud your judgement. He is an asshole and deserves to do some jail time.
    - burger_moon 12y ago
      This is similar to would-be terrorists who get honey potted by the fbi. They find people wiling to put bombs in a car and blow up a city block and they sell them the fake bombs/ equipment and then arrest them after they attempt to detonate it, some times not even getting that far.
      - pakled_engineer 12y ago
        Conspiracy to traffic narcotics cases are the same. A CI tells a tale of being connected to some cartel and offers to import a bunch of invisible cocaine and if you agree to it and show up with payment you're convicted without any actual drugs existing. The overt act does not even need to be completed, any action done by the accused to further the conspiracy agreement is good enough to get life in prison.
        darkhorn 12y ago
        Whoaa!!! This is the USA? Fucked up. I don't know such things done by the police in European Union.
        pakled_engineer 12y ago
        US and UK/Commonwealth countries have similar conspiracy laws where no actual drugs are needed just action on your part to further the conspiracy agreement. A gangster here in Canada actually tried to use a defense that it was his intention to rob the informant peddling invisible drugs, thus never planned to honor the conspiracy agreement as he and his henchmen showed up to the exchange with guns and not money. It didn't work because carrying out the full conspiracy isn't needed you just need any action on your part laid out in the conspiracy agreement and he had rented a truck to carry the large dope shipment as the informant had suggested. https://www.mosesandrooth.com/drug-crimes/conspiracy-to-traffic-drugs/ https://www.mosesandrooth.com/drug-crimes/conspiracy-to-traf...
  - rqebmm 12y ago
    He made a cold, rational decision to kill someone. Just because that person wasn't real doesn't change the decision that he made. I can see the entrapment argument as a reason not to charge him for a crime here, but it's absolutely a reason to personally judge his character.
  - mootothemax 12y ago
    There was never any harm done to anybody. Ross Ulbricht believed harm had come to the people he'd ordered gangland executions against. There were plenty of opportunity to come forwards and say: "Hey, I've done an incredibly bad act; here's everything I know about the people I talked to." Obviously, doing so wouldn't end well for him; it would show some moral standing, however. The only person responsible for these choices is Ross Ulbricht.
  - api 12y ago
    While the possibility of entrapment certainly adds a bit of grey, I know that I would never consent even under pressure to "ordering a hitman" under anything but the most extraordinary self-defense circumstances. I would never do that just because I didn't like someone or had some kind of disagreement, or even if that person was doing something bad (but not physically threatening) to me. If I found myself in such a conversation I'd just drop it and walk. The only situation I can imagine where I might consent to this would be if someone were, say, physically threatening myself or my family and I had clear evidence that they intended to follow through -- and no normal civilized legal recourse.
    - msandford 12y ago
      Yeah, that's kind-of the point though. The government guy could have said "Hey look I think this guy is going to go to the feds and we're all going to go to jail! Give me the money and I'll take care of this problem. If you don't, I'm going to come after you because I'm not going to go to jail for this." At that point, a person might not feel that they have any choice. And the government gets to claim that "he ordered a hit"
      - Retra 12y ago
        That's a terrible argument. Imagine you just made that threat to me. I will say "No. And if you come after me, I will just turn you in to the feds." And now you're almost assuredly going to jail, which is what you were trying to avoid in the first place. This is a quick way to stick yourself in an impossible-to-win situation and violate everyone's trust. Anyway, the 'government guy' happened to keep records of what was said, so I don't see why you'd be tied up on such a hypothetical. And Ulbricht could have argued entrapment in court, if that was contested dialog.
        msandford 12y ago
        > "No. And if you come after me, I will just turn you in to the feds." Ok so you're going to turn the other guy in to the feds for what exactly? How do you know this other guy? Why would him turning you in to the feds be a problem, unless you're doing something illegal? DPR: He this guy is doing something bad, arrest him! Feds: How do you know he's doing something bad? DPR: Well I run the Silk Road and he told me that if we didn't do something about this other guy, that HE was going to turn us in to you! Feds: Oh, okay well now you're definitely going to jail. So your clever arrangement whereby you're going to use the feds to get the guy threatening you to go to jail has now fallen flat on its face, because now you're both going to jail. Which is the thing that you were both trying to avoid in the first place. Why is the drug trade so violent? Because it exists outside the law and thus there's no one to arbitrate disputes (legally) and so people have to find their own resolution. Hence killing.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    Pure entrapment. Create a fake simulated decision dilemma he never had to decide in real life, put a lot of emotional pressure on him, and then when he made a bad decision inside this simulation that harmed nobody, try to condemn him for it. I haven't followed this trial closely enough to know exactly what happened here, but despite the sanctimonious, performative "I'm-a-good-person" denials you're getting in response, entrapment is a real thing. If one's opponent is a pro (this is a lucrative sub-profession of "private investigators") one won't see it coming and will be lucky to avoid it. I'm sure the FBI is also skilled at this technique, which may explain why many PIs are former agents. A family friend had disappointed some wealthy people by lawfully overcoming a do-not-compete. It didn't happen for years, but eventually she was manipulated into making statements about another person, and of course those statements were taped by the "friendly" person who was "helping" her with a family issue. The swiftness of the DOJ's response could only have been motivated by campaign contributions. And now this person is a felon. This is a good person, certainly much more "Christian" than I've ever been. Some might say that sort of person is actually easier to entrap, since her emotional levers are more obvious, but I think everyone has levers, often closely related to their own moral codes. Ulbricht's levers were his project and potential threats to that. Of course it would have been wiser for Ulbricht to take a broader view and reject violent suggestions. It isn't the case that mere morality suffices to avoid this trap.
    - emodendroket 12y ago
      Entrapment is real, sure, but, come on. It's not as though the FBI kidnapped his family and said they'd kill them unless he ordered a hitman.
      - jessaustin 12y ago
        Sure, we could draw the line at allowing law enforcement to kidnap a suspect's family, but should we? To the contrary, I think we've given our employees in law enforcement entirely too much leeway already.
        emodendroket 12y ago
  - Retra 12y ago
    "Roberts was upset that one of his employees—records show these employees were paid between $1,000 and $2,000 a week—had stolen from Roberts and eventually managed to get himself arrested by dealing with an undercover agent. Roberts wanted the employee tortured so that he would return the missing Bitcoins. Not knowing much about hitmen, Roberts ended up talking to the very undercover agent who had helped bust his employee. On January 26, 2013, Roberts asked that the former employee get "beat up, then forced to send the bitcoins he stole back." A day later, afraid that his former employee would squeal to the police, Roberts asked if it was possible to "change the order to execute rather than torture?" Roberts said he had "never killed a man or had one killed before, but it is the right move in this case." The agent offered to do the job for $80,000." http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-the-feds-took-down-the-dread-pirate-roberts/2/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-the-feds-took... I'm not seeing the entrapment here...
    - s73v3r 12y ago
      Some people, blinded by their desire to see drugs legalized, will see any action taken in the presence of an undercover officer as entrapment.
- mootothemax 12y ago
  when he decided to "order a hitman." I doubt he was ever that serious about hiring one. I'm not sure what's more horrific: - Someone who orders murders. - Someone who orders murders and doesn't think that seriously about it.
  - erhardm 12y ago
    Doesn't matter. The condition will short-circuit at murder:)
    - Retra 12y ago
      But... AND is a commutative relation.. :(
    - logfromblammo 12y ago
      My ethical system considers intent, consequences in specific, consequences in general, economic impact, psychological factors, and next-best alternatives for each actor. Thoughtlessly ordering someone else to commit a murder is definitively worse than ordering someone else to commit a murder after careful and deliberate consideration, presuming all other factors remain equal. In my view, killing someone just because it benefits you in some way is worse than killing someone because you truly believe that they deserve it--even if the thought process that led to the latter conclusion is provably flawed. Not all murders are equally bad. The condition only short circuits at murder if your ethical framework has discrete values rather than defined intervals on a continuous spectrum. Of course, ordering a murder in a stage production where no one actually gets killed is hardly even bad at all. It's almost like doing a mission in Grand Theft Auto, or doing a shot-for-shot remake of the baptism scene from Godfather II. Or perhaps it's the inversion of Ender's Game, where rather than the ethical burden being lighter because you didn't realize it was for-realsies, it is heavier because you didn't know it was fake. RU may be an ass for trying, but the facts remain that no one died because of him, nor was anyone at any risk of dying from his actions. The cops put him inside a fake situation, and he acted according to his assumed role as though it were real. If I were judge or prosecutor, I wouldn't want to untie that knot either.
- Lawtonfogle 12y ago
  Is it really victimless? I'll admit that for something like pot, that is responsibly grown and used, there is no victims (well maybe with second hand smoke, but you get that just as much from cigarettes). But many drugs being sold do not come responsible producers. Instead, they come from groups that cause a lot of harm in order to acquire the money from selling those drugs. Yes, legalizing responsible production would largely fix this problem, but a current purchase still funds a horrible group. Even though the seller and buyer never hurt anyone themselves, they are directly funding those who do. Now, maybe he actually did more good than bad. Maybe for every sale funding a bad organization, he helped switch 10 from a bad organization to a responsible producer. And maybe that would still have been enough to get a jury to acquit him.
  - ocb 12y ago
    I have no evidence for this, but I think that your chances of funding a violent group with your purchase would be significantly lower on a dark net market than if you made the purchase on the street.
    - krapp 12y ago
      If darknets are profitable, what's to stop existing drug cartels from becoming involved with them?
      - aianus 12y ago
        Existing drug cartels have a great competitive advantage in violence, intimidation, and smuggling. None of those skills are particularly useful in competing with anonymous rivals on Silk Road.
        krapp 12y ago
        There is still the violence involved in production and distribution, though.
        12y ago
- mindslight 12y ago
  To be fair, contract killing is straight out of The Cyphernomicon. When the incumbent justice system shuns you, the remaining avenue of settling things is the old fashioned way. I primarily see him as yet another casualty of the drug war - if the law were congruent with morality, he would have respected the institution more to begin with instead of doubling down on a conspiracy.
  - msane 12y ago
    So you're saying the justice system has some flaw(s) which make it not "congruent with morality", not being specific, so it's ok to put hits out on people?
    - mindslight 12y ago
      Nope, try a different straw man. It's pretty obvious that the specific incongruence I'm talking about is persecution of drugs. Incongruence undermines respect for the rule of law in general (cf. "stop snitching"). It changes the calculus from "should I transgress against what society deems sacred" to "I'm already in trouble with the biggest gang around, might as well keep going".
      - msane 12y ago
        So you're saying that drug laws are responsible for making him put a hit on someone?
  - s73v3r 12y ago
    "I primarily see him as yet another casualty of the drug war" He chose, of his own free will, to start an illegal marketplace, knowing full well what he was doing. He chose, of his own free will, to hire someone else to kill someone.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  > That may be partially true, but Ross polluted much of the goodwill the Internet community had for him when he decided to "order a hitman." Never tried for murder. Never charged. Why not? That's a slam dunk if it were true. But it carries with it greater scrutiny by appellate courts, greater scrutiny by the press. Perhaps those accusations were bullshit. Perhaps our prosecutors should be prohibited by law from making any accusations unless they're actually leveling charges. Just a thought.
  - pakled_engineer 12y ago
    The conspiracy to murder a federal witness indictment is still floating around Maryland. They used it to deny him bail but now that it's proven he is DPR they could if they wanted drive nails into his coffin and pursue that indictment. In that phony hit, the FBI was on the other end and can testify they received payment and instructions from Ulbricht to kill a witness so it isn't just a textfile diary as the only evidence like in the other murder charges (which were quietly dropped after he was denied bail).
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
      The feebs are doing parallel construction of evidence. Nothing they say, claim, or testify to is credible or trustworthy. And the only reason it's trusted at all is that the judges get their paycheck from the same place. In 40 or 50 years (assuming the country doesn't become some Hollywood-movie-esque dystopia), we'll find out how they cheated to find him and lied about his crimes.
- atmosx 12y ago
  My personal belief on the matter is that Ross would at some point in time need to hire someone. When you're in the drug business, internet or not, at some point in time you will have to deal with this kind of people. At that point you either become an ferocious animal - more ferocious than your opponents - or you do as the say OR you go home. Strangely no one chooses to go home (a bit a la Walter White). Of course I can't be sure if he was serious about the 'hitman' or not. Probably he wasn't all that serious about it BUT at some point in time he would have to become either digitally or physically violent one way or another to protect what is his. Now, considering a guy who made loads of money bulding an illegal marketplace online the "poster boy for privacy in the information age" while having characters like Assange and Snowden around is a shame IMHO. Since ancient Greece (e.g. Antigone by Sophocles) there is a strugle between Human law and God's law (e.g. Ethics, True, etc.). Snowden falls in that category IMHO. What Ross did was both illegal and unethical.
  - meric 12y ago
    >> Strangely no one chooses to go home The ones that go home, don't get caught, and so you don't hear about it.
    - atmosx 12y ago
      Excellent point.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    He only needed to kill people because he fucked up his opsec. Imagine if the person that was blackmailing him was an agent. If so, game over. Hence, he should never have allowed anyone to get into such a position. That said, as far as damage control, he had no choice it seems. If the blackmailer really was going to turn over many innocent people to be prosecuted, well, it was probably the morally correct thing to do. (Assuming negotiations for a payment or other settlement didn't seem feasible.) It's not like he was out trying to murder random people or competitors. He was protecting many innocent users from potentially having their lives destroyed. I dunno about everyone else here, but that feels like it'd be a heavy burden to have to choose. Sorta like shooting an informant that's gonna leak info on a bunch of refugees. You know the informant might just be trying to get out of his own mess, or getting a safety package setup for his family or whatnot. But if you let him have his way, many people will be tortured. As sad as it is, what else can you do in such a case, even if it was your fault in the first place?
amyjess 12y ago
So, I went to college with Ross. He was a year ahead of me. I didn't know him personally, but several of my friends did. I had a few friends in college (some of whom I still talk to) who were good friends with him. When he got arrested, I looked up his Facebook page, and I found we have 5 mutual friends listed (and I know a couple of others who knew him but didn't have him on FB). Also, when he was arrested, my then-officemate looked him up, and it turns out he met Ross at a party once and had a conversation with him (though they didn't know each other beyond that). Small world. That stunned me, but what stunned me more was when I found out Richard Bates did most of the technical work. I knew Richard. We were in a few of the same clubs, we had a class or two, we hung out in the same friend groups, and we were almost friends for a while. Richard was a... peculiar person. He had no people skills whatsoever, and he managed to be both shy and condescending at the same time. He treated people horribly. I ended up having a falling out with him in my senior year after he cut me out of his life for trying to patch things up between him and one of my best friends, who he suddenly cut out of his life with no explanation whatsoever (that is, Richard cut my friend out of his life). IMO, he wasn't a good person. Certain... nicknames for him based on his name began floating around as people got fed up with how he treated them. I'm still absolutely gobsmacked that this guy I personally knew and disliked built the Silk Road of all things. It's still hard for me to believe (and, yes, I know for a fact that this is the same Richard Bates because his email address was published in the trial, and I recognize it as his). UTD was a special place. (For the record, I changed my name last year, and I seriously doubt Richard knows my new name. I have to wonder if he'll read this and think "who the hell is this person?", because there's nothing about my username here, which is based off my new name IRL, that he'll recognize.)
- gwern 12y ago
  > That stunned me, but what stunned me more was when I found out Richard Bates did most of the technical work. 'Most' is a gross exaggeration. Bates helped troubleshoot a few problems by fielding some questions. The trial transcripts and exhibits don't show he wrote any, much less 'most', of the SR1-related code; he had so little contribution that he had to be told what the project was by Ross. Other people like 'Variety Jones' or especially the hired coder 'Smedley' contributed way more. (They just managed to avoid their real names coming up, as far as we know, and avoided lying to federal agents.)
robbyking 12y ago
This is a bit of an aside, but this line really stung: >> Ross was a techie, but he didn't act like one. He seemed eloquent, optimistic, down-to-earth. One of the main reasons I got into software development in the 90's was the fact that software engineers were (largely) eloquent, optimistic, and down-to-earth. It's sad that a vocal minority has sullied the image of an entire industry.
- eli 12y ago
  To be fair, that's been the stereotype for quite a while. Remember Revenge of the Nerds movies?
- runjake 12y ago
  Virtually every niche of society considers others of their kind as eloquent, optimistic, and down-to-earth. This is a common perception in a group of people with shared passions. From artists, techies, to politicians and even Nazi Germany.
  - karl_gluck 12y ago
    Wow, Godwin's law struck hard and fast. Was that reference really necessary?
    - Zikes 12y ago
      Can't a person make a point that just happens to involve Nazis without someone invoking "Godwin's Law"? It's like just because someone slapped a label on a thing we're not allowed to do the thing anymore. We need an "Anti-Godwin's Law" that states no mention of Nazis or Hitler can be made on the internet without someone inevitably invoking Godwin's Law.
      - bduerst 12y ago
        Zike's Law: Whenever Nazi's are mentioned on the internet, someone inevitably mentions Godwin's Law.
api 12y ago
"I felt relieved: gone was the posturing so obvious in the previous candidates. They worked in advertising, at startups—Twitter employees who talked about how much money they made and the exotic locales where they took their vacations. Ross was a techie, but he didn't act like one. He seemed eloquent, optimistic, down-to-earth. He seemed trustworthy." As an aside, that's a sad little bit of commentary on the tech scene these days.
- bsbechtel 12y ago
  Sounds like what I've heard about 1999. Sign of a bubble?
  - akashya 12y ago
    Definitely a sign of a bubble. Especially when reality is extremely close to the feelings expressed in that statement.
    - marktangotango 12y ago
      Nice observation guys, one I've wondered about myself. And totally off topic to the thread. Question is: how to prepare for the burst? I tend to think the current bubble is related to Fed policy, so when the money supply tights up, so will salaries. Just my two cents here. Edit: Yay! down votes!
      - pc86 12y ago
        My guess is they are because your comment has nothing to do with anything being discussed.
        marktangotango 12y ago
        I was referring to the collapse in software development jobs after the 'first internet bubble' burst in 01-02 and extrapolating another jobs collapse after this bubble bursts. Guess people here don't have that perspective.
titanomachy 12y ago
On the last line of the FBI seizure form [1], does it say "Filastine currency"? What do you think they meant by that? AFAIK the Palestinian territories use Israeli currency, so that's probably not it... [1]: http://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/19835/1426102571747985.png http://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-images/contentima...
- eli 12y ago
  First hit on google http://filastine.com/log/l00t/ http://filastine.com/log/l00t/
arca_vorago 12y ago
The main thing I would like to know is why did he hire the lawyer he did? His defense basically sold him up the river, as can be seen from the scathing comments from the judge. Is it still a fair trial if your lawyer is incompetent?
- dublinben 12y ago
  They were probably angling for the conviction to be overturned on appeal. There was almost no chance of getting a "not guilty" verdict in this situation.
  - andrewpi 12y ago
    Ineffective assistance of counsel is a very difficult appeal to win.
    - dublinben 12y ago
      I doubt that would be the question of law the appeal hinged on, but some of the procedural issues with the case. The government never fully explained how the evidence abroad was legally located or acquired, which could unravel the entire case.
      - simplicio 12y ago
        Most of the case was based on evidence found on the laptop seized when Ulrich was arrested. Even if the Server evidence was thrown out (which itself doesn't seem likely, IMHO) Ulrich still would've faced substantially the same case. The chat-logs that were evidence for all but one of the attempted murders he was indicted for were found on the server, which might be part of the reason he wasn't charged with those. Though those probably would've been difficult to get a conviction on in anycase, since no one knows who the "hitman" really was.
- simplicio 12y ago
  It's possible to get a re-trial on the grounds of incompetent defence, but the bar is really high. And since Ulbricht is still using the same lawyer for his appeals, it doesn't look like he's trying that route. His defense did seem pretty poor, but given the amount of evidence against him, its not really clear what a "good defense" would've looked like.
belowsanity 12y ago
Definitely checking this out later. I've been in a VICE documentary binge lately and this will add to my collection!
d23 12y ago
> How could someone intelligent enough to graduate with a master’s from Penn State be dumb enough to use his own personal email to advertise an illegal bazaar on a message board as basic as Shroomery.org? Does anyone honestly believe this is how he was caught? Or is it just parallel construction[1]? I wouldn't be surprised if Tor is completely compromised by the United States Government, and this fact is just being hidden. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
- xorcist 12y ago
  Does it matter? The fact of the matter he did make that post, and several others, with his personal email clearly visible on Archive.org. Even if they caught on to him some other way, not much work is required to follow those traces right to him.
  - d23 12y ago
    So what? My personal email is probably in a lot of random places on the internet. If I commit the crime of public urination and the authorities are able to catch me because they have video cameras in my bathroom, is it a good thing that they can then google around for my email and say "Hey look, we found this guy because his email was registered on this public urination forum! That's how we caught him!"
driverdan 12y ago
Back in my days of credit card fraud and identity theft no one knew what I was doing. I simply refused to talk about what I did to earn money with friends. It was kind of fun to make it like a game. It was a little sketchy but I never seemed like a sketchy guy so maybe they suspected porn or something like that. It's not hard to have an online life that's different from the real world, that you hide from everyone.
usaphp 12y ago
How come he says "he did not own a cellphone" but in a fbi report it clearly says "Samsung smartphone"?

323 points by Thevet 12y ago

"Sure, we wanted Ross to go free. We wanted him to be innocent, to be a hero: the poster boy for privacy in the Information Age." That may be partially true, but Ross polluted much of the goodwill the Internet community had for him when he decided to "order a hitman." I doubt he was ever that serious about hiring one. If you read the chats he had, he sounds completely out of his league, and probably never would have been capable of it if the FBI did not sort-of-entrap him with a murder-for-hire plot. Unfortunately, he really screwed himself by going down that road. The best argument in defense of silk road and Ross, from a moral/philosophical standpoint, is that it represents a victimless crime. Indeed, by moving transactions into the online world, it may have actually facilitated a drop in real crime. Ross must have known that if the FBI ever caught up to him, he could defend himself with this moral reasoning, and at least stand a chance of acquittal in a jury trial. It's a shame that he had to completely ruin that chance by also trying to hire a hitman. He should have kept things simple and never strayed out of the territory of libertarian economic experiment.

q7 12y ago
Oh c'mon, he ordered a hitman inside a play the FBI fully staged for him. There was never any harm done to anybody. Pure entrapment. Create a fake simulated decision dilemma he never had to decide in real life, put a lot of emotional pressure on him, and then when he made a bad decision inside this simulation that harmed nobody, try to condemn him for it. He hasn't lost my goodwill yet.
- zajd 12y ago
  Hiring a hitman to kill someone goes a little past "a bad decision"
- mbillie1 12y ago
  > Oh c'mon, he ordered a hitman inside a play the FBI fully staged for him. There was never any harm done to anybody. I'm not sure this line of reasoning makes a lot of difference. We judge criminal intent, not simply outcome, and it's pretty clear that the intent in hiring a hitman is to have someone killed - staged or not. It's surely different from pulling the trigger yourself, but I think it's quite fair to expect a gut-check moment when one decides not to pay for murder, and to hold someone criminally accountable for ignoring that gut-check and deciding to go ahead with the hit anyway. (edited for grammatical clarity)
  - Disruptive_Dave 12y ago
    There is entrapment, though. A good true crime read that deals a bit with the dilemma police/FBI deals with: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/12/sexual-predators-200912 http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/12/sexual-predators-2009...
  - gnopgnip 12y ago
    Did he send any money to the hitman?
    - kevinnk 12y ago
      Yes. For the first murder he spent $500,000 and for the second $80,000
  - pakled_engineer 12y ago
    He hired CIs posing as hitmen a few times. His diary/movie script/fictional book on his laptop they found claimed he tried to kill an employee who had potential to snitch, and a scammer in Canada that ripped off many users. He also agreed to a higher price for the "hit" in Canada, as it was claimed by the CI the target lived with 3 other people and if they were to collect all his assets as ordered then everybody would have to die. Ross was totally cool with that and paid. I also don't think this is why his fanbase on SR dumped him, they seemed more pissed that his security practices were so terribad awful it put everybody else in jeopardy. It's almost as if he read his own forum's security base and then did the opposite of what everybody said not to do like "Never order fake ID to where you live" and "Don't sit in a cafe ordering drugs off this site" (don't sit in a cafe/library and run the site either). The money he paid to kill non existent people was way more than what they caused him to lose through scamming, he could have paid back the losses out of pocket with his huge stash of bitcoins instead of seeking vengeance. He acted exactly like a boss of a gangster dial a dope operation that orders the hit of one of their drivers they think is ripping them off.
- paulhauggis 12y ago
  I disagree. A person that doesn't want to harm anyone wouldn't hire (or attempt to hire) a hitman. If the agent would have been a hitman, someone might be dead. "he never had to decide in real life" The reason he got in trouble was because he did decide it in real life. It's not like he put a hit out on a World of Warcraft character. "put a lot of emotional pressure on him" Emotional pressure? really? That's an elegant way of putting it. "He hasn't lost my goodwill yet." It's only because you support the legalization of drugs and you are letting this cloud your judgement. He is an asshole and deserves to do some jail time.
  - burger_moon 12y ago
    This is similar to would-be terrorists who get honey potted by the fbi. They find people wiling to put bombs in a car and blow up a city block and they sell them the fake bombs/ equipment and then arrest them after they attempt to detonate it, some times not even getting that far.
    - pakled_engineer 12y ago
      Conspiracy to traffic narcotics cases are the same. A CI tells a tale of being connected to some cartel and offers to import a bunch of invisible cocaine and if you agree to it and show up with payment you're convicted without any actual drugs existing. The overt act does not even need to be completed, any action done by the accused to further the conspiracy agreement is good enough to get life in prison.
      - darkhorn 12y ago
        Whoaa!!! This is the USA? Fucked up. I don't know such things done by the police in European Union.
        pakled_engineer 12y ago
        US and UK/Commonwealth countries have similar conspiracy laws where no actual drugs are needed just action on your part to further the conspiracy agreement. A gangster here in Canada actually tried to use a defense that it was his intention to rob the informant peddling invisible drugs, thus never planned to honor the conspiracy agreement as he and his henchmen showed up to the exchange with guns and not money. It didn't work because carrying out the full conspiracy isn't needed you just need any action on your part laid out in the conspiracy agreement and he had rented a truck to carry the large dope shipment as the informant had suggested. https://www.mosesandrooth.com/drug-crimes/conspiracy-to-traffic-drugs/ https://www.mosesandrooth.com/drug-crimes/conspiracy-to-traf...
- rqebmm 12y ago
  He made a cold, rational decision to kill someone. Just because that person wasn't real doesn't change the decision that he made. I can see the entrapment argument as a reason not to charge him for a crime here, but it's absolutely a reason to personally judge his character.
- mootothemax 12y ago
  There was never any harm done to anybody. Ross Ulbricht believed harm had come to the people he'd ordered gangland executions against. There were plenty of opportunity to come forwards and say: "Hey, I've done an incredibly bad act; here's everything I know about the people I talked to." Obviously, doing so wouldn't end well for him; it would show some moral standing, however. The only person responsible for these choices is Ross Ulbricht.
- api 12y ago
  While the possibility of entrapment certainly adds a bit of grey, I know that I would never consent even under pressure to "ordering a hitman" under anything but the most extraordinary self-defense circumstances. I would never do that just because I didn't like someone or had some kind of disagreement, or even if that person was doing something bad (but not physically threatening) to me. If I found myself in such a conversation I'd just drop it and walk. The only situation I can imagine where I might consent to this would be if someone were, say, physically threatening myself or my family and I had clear evidence that they intended to follow through -- and no normal civilized legal recourse.
  - msandford 12y ago
    Yeah, that's kind-of the point though. The government guy could have said "Hey look I think this guy is going to go to the feds and we're all going to go to jail! Give me the money and I'll take care of this problem. If you don't, I'm going to come after you because I'm not going to go to jail for this." At that point, a person might not feel that they have any choice. And the government gets to claim that "he ordered a hit"
    - Retra 12y ago
      That's a terrible argument. Imagine you just made that threat to me. I will say "No. And if you come after me, I will just turn you in to the feds." And now you're almost assuredly going to jail, which is what you were trying to avoid in the first place. This is a quick way to stick yourself in an impossible-to-win situation and violate everyone's trust. Anyway, the 'government guy' happened to keep records of what was said, so I don't see why you'd be tied up on such a hypothetical. And Ulbricht could have argued entrapment in court, if that was contested dialog.
      - msandford 12y ago
        > "No. And if you come after me, I will just turn you in to the feds." Ok so you're going to turn the other guy in to the feds for what exactly? How do you know this other guy? Why would him turning you in to the feds be a problem, unless you're doing something illegal? DPR: He this guy is doing something bad, arrest him! Feds: How do you know he's doing something bad? DPR: Well I run the Silk Road and he told me that if we didn't do something about this other guy, that HE was going to turn us in to you! Feds: Oh, okay well now you're definitely going to jail. So your clever arrangement whereby you're going to use the feds to get the guy threatening you to go to jail has now fallen flat on its face, because now you're both going to jail. Which is the thing that you were both trying to avoid in the first place. Why is the drug trade so violent? Because it exists outside the law and thus there's no one to arbitrate disputes (legally) and so people have to find their own resolution. Hence killing.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  Pure entrapment. Create a fake simulated decision dilemma he never had to decide in real life, put a lot of emotional pressure on him, and then when he made a bad decision inside this simulation that harmed nobody, try to condemn him for it. I haven't followed this trial closely enough to know exactly what happened here, but despite the sanctimonious, performative "I'm-a-good-person" denials you're getting in response, entrapment is a real thing. If one's opponent is a pro (this is a lucrative sub-profession of "private investigators") one won't see it coming and will be lucky to avoid it. I'm sure the FBI is also skilled at this technique, which may explain why many PIs are former agents. A family friend had disappointed some wealthy people by lawfully overcoming a do-not-compete. It didn't happen for years, but eventually she was manipulated into making statements about another person, and of course those statements were taped by the "friendly" person who was "helping" her with a family issue. The swiftness of the DOJ's response could only have been motivated by campaign contributions. And now this person is a felon. This is a good person, certainly much more "Christian" than I've ever been. Some might say that sort of person is actually easier to entrap, since her emotional levers are more obvious, but I think everyone has levers, often closely related to their own moral codes. Ulbricht's levers were his project and potential threats to that. Of course it would have been wiser for Ulbricht to take a broader view and reject violent suggestions. It isn't the case that mere morality suffices to avoid this trap.
  - emodendroket 12y ago
    Entrapment is real, sure, but, come on. It's not as though the FBI kidnapped his family and said they'd kill them unless he ordered a hitman.
    - jessaustin 12y ago
      Sure, we could draw the line at allowing law enforcement to kidnap a suspect's family, but should we? To the contrary, I think we've given our employees in law enforcement entirely too much leeway already.
      - emodendroket 12y ago
- Retra 12y ago
  "Roberts was upset that one of his employees—records show these employees were paid between $1,000 and $2,000 a week—had stolen from Roberts and eventually managed to get himself arrested by dealing with an undercover agent. Roberts wanted the employee tortured so that he would return the missing Bitcoins. Not knowing much about hitmen, Roberts ended up talking to the very undercover agent who had helped bust his employee. On January 26, 2013, Roberts asked that the former employee get "beat up, then forced to send the bitcoins he stole back." A day later, afraid that his former employee would squeal to the police, Roberts asked if it was possible to "change the order to execute rather than torture?" Roberts said he had "never killed a man or had one killed before, but it is the right move in this case." The agent offered to do the job for $80,000." http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-the-feds-took-down-the-dread-pirate-roberts/2/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-the-feds-took... I'm not seeing the entrapment here...
  - s73v3r 12y ago
    Some people, blinded by their desire to see drugs legalized, will see any action taken in the presence of an undercover officer as entrapment.
mootothemax 12y ago
when he decided to "order a hitman." I doubt he was ever that serious about hiring one. I'm not sure what's more horrific: - Someone who orders murders. - Someone who orders murders and doesn't think that seriously about it.
- erhardm 12y ago
  Doesn't matter. The condition will short-circuit at murder:)
  - Retra 12y ago
    But... AND is a commutative relation.. :(
  - logfromblammo 12y ago
    My ethical system considers intent, consequences in specific, consequences in general, economic impact, psychological factors, and next-best alternatives for each actor. Thoughtlessly ordering someone else to commit a murder is definitively worse than ordering someone else to commit a murder after careful and deliberate consideration, presuming all other factors remain equal. In my view, killing someone just because it benefits you in some way is worse than killing someone because you truly believe that they deserve it--even if the thought process that led to the latter conclusion is provably flawed. Not all murders are equally bad. The condition only short circuits at murder if your ethical framework has discrete values rather than defined intervals on a continuous spectrum. Of course, ordering a murder in a stage production where no one actually gets killed is hardly even bad at all. It's almost like doing a mission in Grand Theft Auto, or doing a shot-for-shot remake of the baptism scene from Godfather II. Or perhaps it's the inversion of Ender's Game, where rather than the ethical burden being lighter because you didn't realize it was for-realsies, it is heavier because you didn't know it was fake. RU may be an ass for trying, but the facts remain that no one died because of him, nor was anyone at any risk of dying from his actions. The cops put him inside a fake situation, and he acted according to his assumed role as though it were real. If I were judge or prosecutor, I wouldn't want to untie that knot either.
Lawtonfogle 12y ago
Is it really victimless? I'll admit that for something like pot, that is responsibly grown and used, there is no victims (well maybe with second hand smoke, but you get that just as much from cigarettes). But many drugs being sold do not come responsible producers. Instead, they come from groups that cause a lot of harm in order to acquire the money from selling those drugs. Yes, legalizing responsible production would largely fix this problem, but a current purchase still funds a horrible group. Even though the seller and buyer never hurt anyone themselves, they are directly funding those who do. Now, maybe he actually did more good than bad. Maybe for every sale funding a bad organization, he helped switch 10 from a bad organization to a responsible producer. And maybe that would still have been enough to get a jury to acquit him.
- ocb 12y ago
  I have no evidence for this, but I think that your chances of funding a violent group with your purchase would be significantly lower on a dark net market than if you made the purchase on the street.
  - krapp 12y ago
    If darknets are profitable, what's to stop existing drug cartels from becoming involved with them?
    - aianus 12y ago
      Existing drug cartels have a great competitive advantage in violence, intimidation, and smuggling. None of those skills are particularly useful in competing with anonymous rivals on Silk Road.
      - krapp 12y ago
        There is still the violence involved in production and distribution, though.
        12y ago
mindslight 12y ago
To be fair, contract killing is straight out of The Cyphernomicon. When the incumbent justice system shuns you, the remaining avenue of settling things is the old fashioned way. I primarily see him as yet another casualty of the drug war - if the law were congruent with morality, he would have respected the institution more to begin with instead of doubling down on a conspiracy.
- msane 12y ago
  So you're saying the justice system has some flaw(s) which make it not "congruent with morality", not being specific, so it's ok to put hits out on people?
  - mindslight 12y ago
    Nope, try a different straw man. It's pretty obvious that the specific incongruence I'm talking about is persecution of drugs. Incongruence undermines respect for the rule of law in general (cf. "stop snitching"). It changes the calculus from "should I transgress against what society deems sacred" to "I'm already in trouble with the biggest gang around, might as well keep going".
    - msane 12y ago
      So you're saying that drug laws are responsible for making him put a hit on someone?
- s73v3r 12y ago
  "I primarily see him as yet another casualty of the drug war" He chose, of his own free will, to start an illegal marketplace, knowing full well what he was doing. He chose, of his own free will, to hire someone else to kill someone.
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
> That may be partially true, but Ross polluted much of the goodwill the Internet community had for him when he decided to "order a hitman." Never tried for murder. Never charged. Why not? That's a slam dunk if it were true. But it carries with it greater scrutiny by appellate courts, greater scrutiny by the press. Perhaps those accusations were bullshit. Perhaps our prosecutors should be prohibited by law from making any accusations unless they're actually leveling charges. Just a thought.
- pakled_engineer 12y ago
  The conspiracy to murder a federal witness indictment is still floating around Maryland. They used it to deny him bail but now that it's proven he is DPR they could if they wanted drive nails into his coffin and pursue that indictment. In that phony hit, the FBI was on the other end and can testify they received payment and instructions from Ulbricht to kill a witness so it isn't just a textfile diary as the only evidence like in the other murder charges (which were quietly dropped after he was denied bail).
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
    The feebs are doing parallel construction of evidence. Nothing they say, claim, or testify to is credible or trustworthy. And the only reason it's trusted at all is that the judges get their paycheck from the same place. In 40 or 50 years (assuming the country doesn't become some Hollywood-movie-esque dystopia), we'll find out how they cheated to find him and lied about his crimes.
atmosx 12y ago
My personal belief on the matter is that Ross would at some point in time need to hire someone. When you're in the drug business, internet or not, at some point in time you will have to deal with this kind of people. At that point you either become an ferocious animal - more ferocious than your opponents - or you do as the say OR you go home. Strangely no one chooses to go home (a bit a la Walter White). Of course I can't be sure if he was serious about the 'hitman' or not. Probably he wasn't all that serious about it BUT at some point in time he would have to become either digitally or physically violent one way or another to protect what is his. Now, considering a guy who made loads of money bulding an illegal marketplace online the "poster boy for privacy in the information age" while having characters like Assange and Snowden around is a shame IMHO. Since ancient Greece (e.g. Antigone by Sophocles) there is a strugle between Human law and God's law (e.g. Ethics, True, etc.). Snowden falls in that category IMHO. What Ross did was both illegal and unethical.
- meric 12y ago
  >> Strangely no one chooses to go home The ones that go home, don't get caught, and so you don't hear about it.
  - atmosx 12y ago
    Excellent point.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  He only needed to kill people because he fucked up his opsec. Imagine if the person that was blackmailing him was an agent. If so, game over. Hence, he should never have allowed anyone to get into such a position. That said, as far as damage control, he had no choice it seems. If the blackmailer really was going to turn over many innocent people to be prosecuted, well, it was probably the morally correct thing to do. (Assuming negotiations for a payment or other settlement didn't seem feasible.) It's not like he was out trying to murder random people or competitors. He was protecting many innocent users from potentially having their lives destroyed. I dunno about everyone else here, but that feels like it'd be a heavy burden to have to choose. Sorta like shooting an informant that's gonna leak info on a bunch of refugees. You know the informant might just be trying to get out of his own mess, or getting a safety package setup for his family or whatnot. But if you let him have his way, many people will be tortured. As sad as it is, what else can you do in such a case, even if it was your fault in the first place?

amyjess 12y ago

So, I went to college with Ross. He was a year ahead of me. I didn't know him personally, but several of my friends did. I had a few friends in college (some of whom I still talk to) who were good friends with him. When he got arrested, I looked up his Facebook page, and I found we have 5 mutual friends listed (and I know a couple of others who knew him but didn't have him on FB). Also, when he was arrested, my then-officemate looked him up, and it turns out he met Ross at a party once and had a conversation with him (though they didn't know each other beyond that). Small world. That stunned me, but what stunned me more was when I found out Richard Bates did most of the technical work. I knew Richard. We were in a few of the same clubs, we had a class or two, we hung out in the same friend groups, and we were almost friends for a while. Richard was a... peculiar person. He had no people skills whatsoever, and he managed to be both shy and condescending at the same time. He treated people horribly. I ended up having a falling out with him in my senior year after he cut me out of his life for trying to patch things up between him and one of my best friends, who he suddenly cut out of his life with no explanation whatsoever (that is, Richard cut my friend out of his life). IMO, he wasn't a good person. Certain... nicknames for him based on his name began floating around as people got fed up with how he treated them. I'm still absolutely gobsmacked that this guy I personally knew and disliked built the Silk Road of all things. It's still hard for me to believe (and, yes, I know for a fact that this is the same Richard Bates because his email address was published in the trial, and I recognize it as his). UTD was a special place. (For the record, I changed my name last year, and I seriously doubt Richard knows my new name. I have to wonder if he'll read this and think "who the hell is this person?", because there's nothing about my username here, which is based off my new name IRL, that he'll recognize.)

gwern 12y ago
> That stunned me, but what stunned me more was when I found out Richard Bates did most of the technical work. 'Most' is a gross exaggeration. Bates helped troubleshoot a few problems by fielding some questions. The trial transcripts and exhibits don't show he wrote any, much less 'most', of the SR1-related code; he had so little contribution that he had to be told what the project was by Ross. Other people like 'Variety Jones' or especially the hired coder 'Smedley' contributed way more. (They just managed to avoid their real names coming up, as far as we know, and avoided lying to federal agents.)

robbyking 12y ago

This is a bit of an aside, but this line really stung: >> Ross was a techie, but he didn't act like one. He seemed eloquent, optimistic, down-to-earth. One of the main reasons I got into software development in the 90's was the fact that software engineers were (largely) eloquent, optimistic, and down-to-earth. It's sad that a vocal minority has sullied the image of an entire industry.

eli 12y ago
To be fair, that's been the stereotype for quite a while. Remember Revenge of the Nerds movies?
runjake 12y ago
Virtually every niche of society considers others of their kind as eloquent, optimistic, and down-to-earth. This is a common perception in a group of people with shared passions. From artists, techies, to politicians and even Nazi Germany.
- karl_gluck 12y ago
  Wow, Godwin's law struck hard and fast. Was that reference really necessary?
  - Zikes 12y ago
    Can't a person make a point that just happens to involve Nazis without someone invoking "Godwin's Law"? It's like just because someone slapped a label on a thing we're not allowed to do the thing anymore. We need an "Anti-Godwin's Law" that states no mention of Nazis or Hitler can be made on the internet without someone inevitably invoking Godwin's Law.
    - bduerst 12y ago
      Zike's Law: Whenever Nazi's are mentioned on the internet, someone inevitably mentions Godwin's Law.

api 12y ago

"I felt relieved: gone was the posturing so obvious in the previous candidates. They worked in advertising, at startups—Twitter employees who talked about how much money they made and the exotic locales where they took their vacations. Ross was a techie, but he didn't act like one. He seemed eloquent, optimistic, down-to-earth. He seemed trustworthy." As an aside, that's a sad little bit of commentary on the tech scene these days.

bsbechtel 12y ago
Sounds like what I've heard about 1999. Sign of a bubble?
- akashya 12y ago
  Definitely a sign of a bubble. Especially when reality is extremely close to the feelings expressed in that statement.
  - marktangotango 12y ago
    Nice observation guys, one I've wondered about myself. And totally off topic to the thread. Question is: how to prepare for the burst? I tend to think the current bubble is related to Fed policy, so when the money supply tights up, so will salaries. Just my two cents here. Edit: Yay! down votes!
    - pc86 12y ago
      My guess is they are because your comment has nothing to do with anything being discussed.
      - marktangotango 12y ago
        I was referring to the collapse in software development jobs after the 'first internet bubble' burst in 01-02 and extrapolating another jobs collapse after this bubble bursts. Guess people here don't have that perspective.

titanomachy 12y ago

On the last line of the FBI seizure form [1], does it say "Filastine currency"? What do you think they meant by that? AFAIK the Palestinian territories use Israeli currency, so that's probably not it... [1]: http://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/19835/1426102571747985.png http://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-images/contentima...

eli 12y ago
First hit on google http://filastine.com/log/l00t/ http://filastine.com/log/l00t/

arca_vorago 12y ago

The main thing I would like to know is why did he hire the lawyer he did? His defense basically sold him up the river, as can be seen from the scathing comments from the judge. Is it still a fair trial if your lawyer is incompetent?

dublinben 12y ago
They were probably angling for the conviction to be overturned on appeal. There was almost no chance of getting a "not guilty" verdict in this situation.
- andrewpi 12y ago
  Ineffective assistance of counsel is a very difficult appeal to win.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    I doubt that would be the question of law the appeal hinged on, but some of the procedural issues with the case. The government never fully explained how the evidence abroad was legally located or acquired, which could unravel the entire case.
    - simplicio 12y ago
      Most of the case was based on evidence found on the laptop seized when Ulrich was arrested. Even if the Server evidence was thrown out (which itself doesn't seem likely, IMHO) Ulrich still would've faced substantially the same case. The chat-logs that were evidence for all but one of the attempted murders he was indicted for were found on the server, which might be part of the reason he wasn't charged with those. Though those probably would've been difficult to get a conviction on in anycase, since no one knows who the "hitman" really was.
simplicio 12y ago
It's possible to get a re-trial on the grounds of incompetent defence, but the bar is really high. And since Ulbricht is still using the same lawyer for his appeals, it doesn't look like he's trying that route. His defense did seem pretty poor, but given the amount of evidence against him, its not really clear what a "good defense" would've looked like.

belowsanity 12y ago

Definitely checking this out later. I've been in a VICE documentary binge lately and this will add to my collection!

d23 12y ago

> How could someone intelligent enough to graduate with a master’s from Penn State be dumb enough to use his own personal email to advertise an illegal bazaar on a message board as basic as Shroomery.org? Does anyone honestly believe this is how he was caught? Or is it just parallel construction[1]? I wouldn't be surprised if Tor is completely compromised by the United States Government, and this fact is just being hidden. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

xorcist 12y ago
Does it matter? The fact of the matter he did make that post, and several others, with his personal email clearly visible on Archive.org. Even if they caught on to him some other way, not much work is required to follow those traces right to him.
- d23 12y ago
  So what? My personal email is probably in a lot of random places on the internet. If I commit the crime of public urination and the authorities are able to catch me because they have video cameras in my bathroom, is it a good thing that they can then google around for my email and say "Hey look, we found this guy because his email was registered on this public urination forum! That's how we caught him!"

driverdan 12y ago

Back in my days of credit card fraud and identity theft no one knew what I was doing. I simply refused to talk about what I did to earn money with friends. It was kind of fun to make it like a game. It was a little sketchy but I never seemed like a sketchy guy so maybe they suspected porn or something like that. It's not hard to have an online life that's different from the real world, that you hide from everyone.

usaphp 12y ago

How come he says "he did not own a cellphone" but in a fbi report it clearly says "Samsung smartphone"?