[q7]

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.

[mbillie1]

> 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)

[pakled_engineer]

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.

[tripzilch]

Got a link for the claims in those first two paragraphs for us? Because if that is true, it changes a whole bunch of things, including the argument about entrapment I made in a sibling thread.

It's a rather different thing if they entrap him with a tough moral dilemma than entrapping him with simply ordering a hit on people when it's not the only alternative to a whole bunch of other people having their lives destroyed, including targeting 3 people that just happen to live there.

[Disruptive_Dave]

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-2009...

[malka]

SO, in his line of business, what would be the 'good thing to do, when someone blackmail your whole customer base ? Sue ? Sadly, due to the prohibition, hitmen and violence are the only way for people like Ulbricht to deal with such issues.

[gnopgnip]

Did he send any money to the hitman?

[kevinnk]

Yes. For the first murder he spent $500,000 and for the second $80,000

[tripzilch]

> > 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.

But the FBI could basically do this to anyone: try and convince them using a play that involves fabricated emotional pressure, blackmail and, if some other comments are correct (I haven't followed the case that closely), even inventing physical danger and multiple other people's lives being on the line.

The FBI could do this to anyone, do you think it's fair or desirable that anyone that could be tricked into agreeing to hire a (fictional) hitman should in fact be charged with that crime and put into jail for the rest of their lives? Because I think that would be a lot of people you'd pre-emptively have to put in jail. Especially if they deliberately put in the classic moral dilemma of saving a whole bunch of people's lives from being destroyed versus killing the single person responsible.

How many people would make the same decision if confronted with this circumstance? Should they all be put in jail, just for the fact that they would've made that choice if it had been real? Because I don't think that's a very good "test" for detecting "bad people" or people that are really dangerous for society. You can argue about the moral choice (since those victims would merely "have their lives ruined", not be actually killed), but as presented I think it's a really difficult dilemma, and I couldn't really fault a person for choosing one way or another. It's a terrible moral dilemma that I personally just hope to never have to face in my life.

So, having argued that any random person who would make this choice is not necessarily so bad they should be convicted, what differentiates Ross Ulbricht? Seems that, in this particular context, his "crime" was that because of his involvements, he was a person likely to actually face this dilemma situation at some point in his Silk Road career. That seems about the only reason to expose Ulbricht to this moral dilemma situation, instead of just any (or every) random person on the streets.

So then, really, is it reasonable to entrap and then convict someone because they are involved in business that may likely at some point in the future lead to a situation where they would have to make choices like these?

To repeat, if the hitman thing had just been about offing a competitor for financial or business gains, my whole argument above doesn't hold. But they actively put him in a situation where there was no moral right answer, and then convicted him for it.

EDIT: if this is true then that rather changes the whole story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9192416

[Retra]

"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...

I'm not seeing the entrapment here...

[s73v3r]

Some people, blinded by their desire to see drugs legalized, will see any action taken in the presence of an undercover officer as entrapment.

[jessaustin]

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]

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]

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]

Not necessarily, but when you have a guy who's hiring fake hitmen to punish sellers trying to rip off buyers it's hard to argue that he never would have considered a hitman if not for law enforcement intervention.

[nsnick]

What you are describing is extortion not entrapment. Do you know what entrapment is?

[emodendroket]

The practice of law enforcement officers inducing a person to commit a crime he otherwise would not likely have committed. I have a hard time seeing why my extreme example couldn't be found to be entrapment if any law enforcement official were foolhardy enough to try it.

[api]

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]

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]

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]

> "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.

[Retra]

It's not a clever argument, it's just the better of two options. If we are killing the guy because he might turn us in, then I should also just kill you because you've threatened to turn me in. There is no way that is a winning proposition for anybody, so it doesn't guarantee any safety for anyone.

If you're willing to kill someone to avoid jail, you better believe I would be willing to turn you in if you've already decided to turn me in because I don't want to kill someone. If we DO kill them, then by the same logic, I should have you killed to.

Threatening the person you are working with to "deal with threats" is just stupid. It just means you have to be dealt with as well.

[s73v3r]

I'm sorry, but that idea that because it exists outside the law, people can't settle disputes with anything other than murder is complete horseshit. They choose to employ violence, and as such, they are completely and 100% responsible for their actions.

[msandford]

> I'm sorry, but that idea that because it exists outside the law, people can't settle disputes with anything other than murder is complete horseshit.

Please explain to me how two criminals who have some sort of dispute -- like say how to disburse the proceeds from a robbery -- have any recourse through the courts. I'm not saying violence in the ONLY answer, but it's definitely the only one that I can think of that doesn't involve them going to jail.

They can't sue because the thing under dispute is an ill-gotten-gain and thus the court wouldn't adjudicate the issue that is for them at hand but instead put them both in jail for stealing.

What are their other choices? Just suck it up and deal with the fact that they got screwed? Sure, but then the next time a robbery comes around, everyone knows that they can screw you and you'll just suck it up. Yay, free labor! That won't end badly for you will it?

Maybe they can pre-negotiate a contract that specifies how a certain sum of money will be distributed but which doesn't specify how it comes to be? Why would a law-abiding person write such a contract? Take them to court and you might win, but the police might investigate and again you're both in jail.

I'm not saying that there is no possible alternative ever, but your simply asserting that something is true and then providing absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back up that claim isn't terribly convincing.

[MarcusVorenus]

So if someone offered you to kill al-Baghdadi for 10 bucks, you would just say no?

[mootothemax]

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.

[rqebmm]

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.

[zajd]

Hiring a hitman to kill someone goes a little past "a bad decision"

[paulhauggis]

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]

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]

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.

[boyaka]

Relevant story with a reddit twist, except I believe drugs did actually exist. Cool story though if you haven't heard of it.

http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/headline-story/...

[darkhorn]

Whoaa!!! This is the USA? Fucked up. I don't know such things done by the police in European Union.

[pakled_engineer]

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-traf...

[q7]

The way I read about it, the FBI arrested one of this employees and made it appear as if that employee took all of his money and did not talk to Ulbricht anymore. Then the FBI created another persona that did talk to him, and waited until his hitman order. It was all part of an elaborate play.

"It's only because you support the legalization of drugs"

Oh please. Ad hominem much?