4 ms·
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
by ufmace 11y 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 11y agoI 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 agoIf gamblers are any indication, what happens when you hit $10M is you start to think about what $100M would be like...
- arikrak 11y agoOr if people are any indication.. (though the economy depends on that)
- fweespeech 11y agoYeah, 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.
- hurin 11y ago> but how much better could anybody here do? Well, Kim Dotcom is still kicking it. As for Ross, the evidence might have been circumstantial at best if his un-encrypted notebook wasn't grabbed.
- unavoidable 11y agoKim Dotcom is "kicking it" about as well as Julian Assange is. It's not like he's hidden somewhere. The authorities know exactly who he is, where he is, how much he owns, and how to get it. They're just sorting out the court procedures to make sure they get all of it. In any event, Ross was running something somewhat more illicit than Megaupload. His opsec probably should have been commensurately better.
- jaryd 11y agoWhat always gets me is how (in this situation) he would ever operate a laptop that was usable without being plugged in... If he had simply removed the battery and kept the thing plugged then the laptop would have powered off immediately after it was grabbed.
- MichaelGG 11y agoWhy would the LEOs unplug the device? They'd use one of those power transfer gadgets to cutover to battery and keep it running. Same as with desktops and servers. They can just grab him, not necessarily the device.
- SamReidHughes 11y agoWell, if you want to be ready to quick-twitch turn off the device, pulling a power cord is usually a lot simpler than removing the battery.
- jaryd 11y agoThe idea is that typically people expect a laptop to remain powered when the cord is unplugged (due to the battery), and so in a situation where the laptop is grabbed the power is cut immediately (and unexpectedly) and the hard-drive is no longer decrypted. As another commenter pointed out, a forensics team could then probably grab whatever they needed from the system memory (presuming they acted fast enough), but as I understand it the problem becomes significantly more complicated.
- wsxcde 11y ago> Enough to keep the Feds away for how long, exactly? In your question lies the answer to another: why are exit scams so prevalent in bitcoin marketplaces?
- avn2109 11y agoI would have run my operation from Russia or China, and made sure to never traffic anything illegal in my host country.