[Synaesthesia]

It was totally a political trial with many exaggerations and the government trying to "set an example".

- First-time offender

- All non-violent charges

- Two life sentences plus 40 years without parole

>Ross Ulbricht is condemned to die in prison for creating an anonymous e-commerce website called Silk Road. An entrepreneur passionate about free markets and privacy, he was 26 when he made the site. He was never prosecuted for causing harm or bodily injury and no victim was named at trial.

>Users of Silk Road chose to exchange a variety of goods, both legal and illegal, including drugs (most commonly small amounts of cannabis). Prohibited was anything involuntary that could harm a third party.

>Ross was not convicted of selling drugs or illegal items himself, but was held responsible for what others sold on the site.

[ddalex]

Didn't this guy try to hire a hitman ?

[blackshaw]

According to Wikipedia, Ulbricht allegedly tried to hire a hitman to murder at least five people, but this wasn't actually something he was formally charged with at trial.

> Federal prosecutors alleged that Ulbricht had paid $730,000 in murder-for-hire deals targeting at least five people,[27] allegedly because they threatened to reveal Ulbricht's Silk Road enterprise.[36] Prosecutors believe no contracted killing actually occurred.[27] Ulbricht was not charged in his trial in New York federal court with any murder for hire,[27][37] but evidence was introduced at trial supporting the allegations.[27][38] The evidence that Ulbricht had commissioned murders was considered by the judge in sentencing Ulbricht to life, and was a factor in the Second Circuit's decision to affirm the life sentence.[38]

[jjallen]

"no contracted killing actually occurred"

Isn't it illegal to hire people to kill people even if they aren't actually killed? Like when the police go undercover they don't wait for someone to be killed, they wait for definitive evidence that the hiring person seriously plans to follow through with it I thought.

[blackshaw]

Yep, that's what Joe Exotic is in jail for.

[loandbehold]

No killing actually occured because Ulbricht was incompetent at procuring contract killing. Ulbricht was scammed, paying $730K for nothing. But he did have the intention of having the victims killed.

[dachri]

It should be noted that the killing was conspiraed by FBI Agents where some of them also stealed a bunch of bitcoin for their own interest. It's nowhere mentioned cause it would put the Feds in a bad light

[ddalex]

Are you suggesting that FBI actually forced him to contract a hitman? My understanding is that FBI set up the bait and this guy eat it hook and all. It is not illegal or even immoral to bait somebody, there was no pressure, FBI presented the opportunity and this guy wanted to have somebody killed.

[w14]

It's certainly viewed as immoral at the very least in the UK.

"In R v Looseley; Attorney General's Reference (No 3 of 2000) [2002] 1 Cr. App. R. 29, the House of Lords held that although entrapment is not a substantive defence in English law, where an accused can show entrapment, the court may stay the proceedings as an abuse of the court's process or it may exclude evidence pursuant to Section 78 PACE 1984 ...

"Police conduct which brings about state-created crime is unacceptable and improper, and to prosecute in such circumstances would be an affront to the public conscience."

- https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/abuse-process

[q1w2]

Entrapment is when you motivate someone to commit a crime that they would not have otherwise committed.

In this case, this guy went looking for a contract killer and the police answered his request.

[deadly_syn]

Iirc there was some coercion component to it too. The set up was the hells angels were gonna kill the dude anyways and told him if they didnt most of silkroad probably get caught/deanonymised /arrested. Considering the other claims of potential corruption, id say that classifies as an existential threat scenerio entirely created by law enforcement to coarce him into hiring the assassins as a "now or never, life or death" of ross and his customers situation.

Not anything damning either way, bit definitely food for thought.

[slim]

I can easily see the fbi agents convincing him that his life was threatened by the 5 guys, offering to kill them, providing a contact for the hitman which is also an undercover fbi agent, then share the $750000

[vkou]

> >Ross was not convicted of selling drugs or illegal items himself, but was held responsible for what others sold on the site.

I'm pretty sure that running an illegal drug marketplace is also illegal.

[borski]

Sure, but that alone shouldn’t net someone two life sentences. Hiring a hit man to kill 5 people might.

[vkou]

If you can get five to ten years for selling a few thousand pills of fentanyl, it stands to reason that you may get fifty or thereabouts for running a marketplace where hundreds of such sales took place.

I'd also say that there's a significant moral difference between a first time offender, and a 'first time caught offender'. Al Capone and Bernie Madoff were also 'first time offenders' when they went to prison.

You don't whoops one-time-bad-lapse-of-judgement stumble into running a gang, a decade-long fraud... Or the biggest drug marketplace in the world.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

>creating an anonymous e-commerce website called Silk Road. An entrepreneur passionate about free markets and privacy,

That wording really goes out of it's way to sound like this might conceivably be legal, or at least not knowingly criminal.

[aeternum]

Was Napster knowingly criminal? By most accounts yes.

How about Uber? In most cities they were by allowing airport pickups?

How about Amazon? Remember when they aided and abetted customers with sales tax evasion for years?

[whatitmatteryo]

Napster was knowingly criminal. Source: I was there.

During discovery they found emails from Parker saying, "Of course it's illegal. We know it, they know it, we're going to be the biggest thing in the world anyways".

[xiphias2]

If you look at how Napster changed the movie and music industry it just makes more sense for the government to make an example of the Napster of drugs.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

If this is no big deal, then there would be no need to dance around it, right?

But I would not conflate sharing a music file with hiring a hit-man.

[ffggffggj]

Those are almost entirely civil issues so not really.

[scoofy]

“The Silk Road was fine”

-HN

[Chernobog]

While there are certainly problematic aspects of dark web markets, society do get some benefits. No physical contact between sellers and buyers, which reduces violence. Reviews of sellers and products makes it significantly easier to purchase safer drugs (for some drugs, adulterants and/or unpredictable potency are a bigger risk than the drug itself). This translates to fewer visits to the ER or morgue.

Edit: My personal opinion is that we should rid ourselves of the demand for dark web markets by regulating drugs. The regulations should focus on harm reduction, both for the users and society as a whole.

[scoofy]

>This translates to fewer visits to the ER or morgue.

Yea, you seem confused, the funeral I went to was because my friends brother actually had really easy access to really great heroin. For a long time actually. Surprisingly easy to get delivered…

It was only after he was a full-on junkie estranged from his family after they’d basically given up any wealth they had for rehabs and his theft and violence that the “benefits,” as you call them, of the dark web markets might have mattered in the slightest.

No, no, don’t let me rain on anyone’s parade. Whether it’s heroin, or meth, or who knows? Maybe even sex workers of dubious age and consent! The dark web is just connecting willing customers with quality products.

[bboygravity]

Getting rid of all dark webs would somehow prevent the symptoms you mention?

[bodangly]

These arguments seem logical, but are they backed up by anything other than gut feeling? If anything, harmful adulterants in drugs have only increased since dark net markets became a thing. There are lots of reasons for that, but it’s hard to argue DNMs have been a net positive given the statistics on drug abuse over the past decade.