6 ms·

tl;dr: Ross was a colossal idiot who ignored warnings about the shoddy state of his opsec. I hate to say it, because Ross and I have a few mutual friends, but

• Estragon 12y ago
  It's pretty amazing how the use of Tor drives this kind of wishful ignorance. You see it all the time on /r/darknetmarkets
  • fredgrott 11y ago
    Notice that even the two agents caught stealing from Ross thought tor as secure Also notice that most criminals are dumb and send their drug shipments through regular mail or air mail..very stupid..and also notice that those shipments tipped off LE.. Take-way anonymous is only secure at its weakest link..the weakest link here was the physical drug shipments..that will never be secure..ever
    • sliverstorm 11y ago
      the weakest link here was the physical drug shipments..that will never be secure..ever Well, it can be if you develop your own underground distribution networks, but then you aren't a darknet message board, you're the mafia.
      • Estragon 11y ago
        Maybe there's a way to do it with throwaway robots.
• granfalloon 12y ago
  Deserves it because he was stupid??? Or do you mean because of what he did?
• ufmace 12y ago
  Calling him stupid seems to kinda miss the point to me. I think it's more that when you're up against the Feds, especially on something so deeply entrenched as being illegal worldwide as distributing drugs on a massive scale, you're going to get caught eventually, because it only takes one mistake. Sure, he was kinda dumb and made a lot more than one mistake, but how much better could anybody here do? Enough to keep the Feds away for how long, exactly? Another year or two maybe? I kinda sympathize with his position in a way. He was clearly in over his head both on the technological front and on the administration front, despite making piles of money. When that happens in a normal business, you hire some help. But how do you find help to hire for such a massively illegal operation? Finding anyone who could be trusted is a tough problem, much less someone who can be trusted and also has strong technical skills.
  • fweespeech 12y ago
    I think the main thing is I would have sold it wholesale for Bitcoin as soon as it was stable and profitable enough that I could make $10 million USD. He hit that point pretty early on. The again, I wouldn't start an illegal business intentionally...so there is that.
    • sliverstorm 11y ago
      If gamblers are any indication, what happens when you hit $10M is you start to think about what $100M would be like...
      • arikrak 11y ago
        Or if people are any indication.. (though the economy depends on that)
      • fweespeech 11y ago
        Yeah, I don't have that urge. My spending hasn't increased [with the exception of what I spend to help my SO out when she is unemployed] since I started making $40k, let alone what I make now.
  • 11y ago
• BoxKeyboard 11y ago
  Eh. I dunno. When you get in that deep it kinda feels like it's an inevitability, one way or the other. I hate doing it because it's almost cliche at this point, but Avon Barksdale has a pretty good point: "Comin up the way we did, you know, you kind of expect that. Waitin on it. See, the thing is, you only got to fuck up once. Be a little slow, be a little late, just once. And how you ain't gonna never be slow? Never be late? You can't plan through no shit like this, man. It's life."
• davidmr 11y ago
  So yes, in retrospect he made some very basic errors. That said, it's pretty easy to call someone stupid after reading a long-form piece informed by a full indictment of their crimes produced by an intergovernmental criminal investigation and subsequent trial. I have no experience in the matter, but I imagine that being the kingpin of such an organization tends to pull one's head in so many directions that it's easy for smart people to do dumb things unknowingly.