[jawns]

Just in case any of you are wondering who Ross is ...

He created the Silk Road, a popular online exchange for illegal drugs, and prosecutors alleged that he paid $730K to try to kill six people. (He was not, however, charged with attempted murder. Instead, he was charged and convicted of money laundering and drug offenses.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht

EDIT: I just want to make completely clear that I didn't post this info in an effort to discredit his essay's argument, which is that the U.S. prison system is in need of drastic reform. I agree wholeheartedly with that. I just wanted to give some context, because I didn't know who he was, and the "Who is Ross?" section of the freeross.org site makes it seem like he's an angelic Boy Scout philanthropist sweetheart.

[cicada-3301]

These 7-year-old allegations relied solely on anonymous chats NEVER proven to have been authored by Ulbricht.

It's well known now there were multiple people behind the DPR accounts AND 2 corrupt agents (now in prison) had admin access too.

Never proven, never prosecuted and dismissed "with prejudice" by the govt, meaning they can never be used against him again.

Ross was NOT accused of selling drugs or laundering money, or hacking computers. Charges based on what others listed on SR (i.e, laundering money conspiracy charge = because some users were cashing out their btc for other currencies. Hacking conspiracy = because some users listed hacking tutorials or software.)

Wikiepedia shouldn't be used as a reliable source when it comes to legal cases.

[friendlybus]

Most cases are closed on circumstantial evidence.

Weird to see the same podcast that hosts freeross information as also hosting bitcoin podcasts.

Adrian Crenshaw the security researcher has a good defcon talk on how ross went down for SR. Don't post your tech problems for an illegal service on stackoverflow!

https://youtu.be/eQ2OZKitRwc?t=2136

[eLLyfiGneg]

Is the appeal brief considered a reliable source?

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/186

"The district court found by a preponderance of the evidence that Ulbricht commissioned at least five murders in the course of protecting Silk Road's anonymity, a finding that Ulbricht does not challenge in this appeal. Ulbricht discussed those anticipated murders callously and casually in his journal and in his communications with the purported assassin Redandwhite."

"Ulbricht does not mention his orders for the commission of those murders until his reply brief. Even there, he does not argue that the district court erred in concluding that he deliberately commissioned those murders; rather, he claims instead only that the murders did not support a life sentence because they did not actually take place."

"But in evaluating Ulbricht's character and dangerousness, the most relevant points are that he wanted the murders to be committed, he paid for them, and he believed that they had been carried out. The fact that his hired assassin may have defrauded him does not reflect positively on Ulbricht's character. Commissioning the murders significantly justified the life sentence."

[wmf]

Nick Bilton did extensive research for his book American Kingpin and it all supports the theory that Ulbricht was the only DPR.

[jason_slack]

And it’s a good read if anyone hasn’t read it.

[meowface]

You're casting vague FUD and not going into the details. The murders-for-hire are absolutely the most critical part of this whole case.

>No one deserves this, even if they have to here for the sake of others’ safety. Certainly, the many non-violent drug offenders growing old in here don’t. Pain does not heal pain. A lost soul is not redeemed in a cage.

I agree with this part of Ulbricht's letter here. If not for those murders (which he believed were successfully carried out), he would be a non-violent drug offender, and not deserving of anywhere near a life sentence. But working your way up into a grandiose Walter White-style megalomaniac paying people to kill your foes? That's imperialistic tyrant behavior, not freedom fighter behavior.

He was very likely the only DPR (or at least the only significant one), and, in all likelihood, the chat logs are authentic. No, they weren't proven in court, due to the corrupt agents you mentioned (the defense would cast aspersions just as you did here), but if you look at the facts, they're very likely to be real. Also, the judge explicitly permitted the murder-for-hire evidence to be shown in court, which contributed to the judge's sentencing deccision.

Just to cover one of the six murders: Mark Force didn't have admin access when Ulbricht courted him to murder Curtis Green; Force was just a regular SR user at that point. (He did previously have illicit admin access via Green's account, but this account was disabled by an admin a while before the murder-for-hire conversations occurred.)

That entire encounter and conversation was documented in real-time by law enforcement who had access to Force's account, so Force couldn't have just doctored them. Yes, there are some other circumstances here, like Force (unknowingly to law enforcement at the moment) using Green's account to steal Bitcoins before all of this, which is what caused Ulbricht to later order Green's murder, but he definitely wasn't entrapped or tricked into murdering him. Ulbricht was the one who suggested the murder and requested it, and he paid him $80,000 upon seeing staged photos of what appeared to be Green's bloody corpse. These Bitcoin transactions are obviously all public.

Read the chat logs ordering Green's and FriendlyChemist's (and later FriendlyChemist's associates) murders and tell me what you think:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gqepaijrm8lsqsm/260502700-Ulbricht... - Pages 31 - 51

https://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-bos...

You can see Ulbricht deliberating the decision with his "advisor", Variety Jones / Cimon, before finally concluding he had to die.

No, I didn't give a rock-solid defense of why I think they're authentic, but I don't have the time at the moment. If this thread is still active, I may give a more lengthy analysis later as to why I think they're legitimate.

I believe he's basically a modern mini-Pablo Escobar. I do think drugs should be legalized - specifically to prevent megalomaniacs like Ulbricht from gaining immense, malignant power and ambition. I hope to see the day when all drugs are legal for recreational use while he remains rotting in prison, aged 85.

[alexandercrohde]

>> The murders-for-hire are absolutely the most critical part of this whole case.

Well maybe he should have been charged for that.

[meowface]

It would've been good, for sure. It's unfortunate Mark Force had to fuck it all up.

To be clear, though, the judge did still explicitly permit the murder-for-hire evidence to be submitted during trial, even though he wasn't charged for it. They also factored it into the sentencing.

When I say "most critical part", I mean from a moral standpoint, especially for people who see no moral issue with drugs. For the government, the drug kingpin stuff was enough to build a case. For libertarian-sympathizing people who otherwise would've supported him, the murders-for-hire are what change this from something worthy of protest to something pretty open-and-shut.

[eLLyfiGneg]

The prosecutors were going after much more serious charges, namely the conspiracy to traffic narcotics and the CCE so they rightly threw the evidence towards proving those in court rather than take a segue into a charge that has something like a 10 year max sentence. A "non-violent" kingpin is a rarity, and they proved with massive amounts of evidence that Ulbricht was like any other kingpin, willing to use violence to protect his empire. The judge methodically walked through the sentencing guidelines, and Ulbricht scored a whopping 50 out of 43 (only 2 points were added for the directed use of violence).

Ulbricht should be grateful none of the murders actually happened as the CCE has a special clause for murders carried out as part of operating the criminal enterprise, making the defendant eligible for the death penalty. Contract murder is quite serious because of the huge amount of premeditation involved (i.e. not a "crime of passion" or temporary misjudgment) and cold-blooded motives such as money or concealing other criminal activity.

[mindslight]

Furthermore, talking about the attempted murder in a vacuum is giving a pass to the similar violence that governments themselves do. Silk Road had to be vertically integrated for dispute resolution, whereas most businesses get to outsource their violence to the police.

[berberous]

Given that he was never charged with those attempted murders, I’m sympathetic to the argument that it should not have been used against him at sentencing.

But practically, it always seemed to me fairly obvious that he did author those messages. Do you not think that’s the case?

[capableweb]

Luckily most law systems in the world don't have "seemed to me fairly obvious" as grounds that you can convict someone on.

Also, you're missing any sort of source/claim to back that it "seemed fairly obvious".

[berberous]

Meowface’s other reply in this thread said it better than I could. My point is, separate from the legal arguments, whether anyone here genuinely believes he did not order the murders and was framed. Have you read the chat transcripts?

[crankylinuxuser]

That's not quite correct.

It is true that he was convicted of money laundering and drug offenses. However, during his sentencing hearing, the murder-for-hire which was never discussed or proved in court, was brought in as part of how long to lock him away.

That alone should vacate and admonish the judge for letting that scam take place.

[mnm1]

A lifetime of imprisonment for selling drugs. That's beyond cruel. Meanwhile CEOs are making billions and getting a slap on the wrist, if anything. Ross doesn't deserve this. He's right. Now if he was convicted of murder or something similar, it would be different. But he wasn't.

[wayoutthere]

I'm sorry, but boo fucking hoo. He knew exactly what he was doing -- running a drug trafficking marketplace -- was highly illegal. He went to extensive lengths to conceal that activity from law enforcement, so it's not like he didn't know what he was doing was against the law. He made a lot of money doing this.

I'm a big believer in criminal justice reform, but this is one of those instances where what he was doing was so dangerous that someone had to be made an example of at the highest level. To be honest, his arrest and conviction likely saved his life: sooner or later the cartels would have found him, tortured him to gain control of the site, then dissolved his body in acid.