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Silk Road founder sentenced to life in prison

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F

fierrotlepou

Member
PlayALLtheGames said:
Weeell ok, but I mean who HASN'T ordered one or two or five people killed in their lifetime, you know?

I mean, certainly we've all wanted to and just didn't have the resources. Are we really any more innocent than he?
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Ehhh... If someone were to actually CONFIRM that they would KILL this person, I would've probably thought about it a bit harder...
 
A

adamsappel

Member
I might not have had a problem with Silk Road itself, but the guy did try to have people killed. Sentence is just.

The Technomancer said:
If heroin users could just quit cold turkey easily I would have basically no problem with its sale, for the same reason that I'm more or less fine with marijuana.
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Is it addiction itself that you object to? Heroin isn't harmful. People die from overdosing or adulterants.
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
Green forwarded one troubling customer service complaint from a woman whose brother overdosed on heroin from Silk Road and noted that under the current system, children could use the site. Perhaps that was a hair too much freedom, Green said. DPR erupted: “THAT’S MY WHOLE IDEA!” Any constraints would destroy the fundamental concept, he said, and refused any assistance for the grieving sister. And yet Green stayed on, despite the insensitivity and ethical contradictions, becoming one of Silk Road’s most trusted employees.
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Oh yeah this guy is a real winner all right.
 
F

FrsDvl

Member
Red_Man said:
Not surprised seeing as it's in the US, he really lost control of himself. For anyone interested in this site's history or the story of the guy behind it and how difficult it was to catch him, Wired has an amazing write up on him here:

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/?mbid=social_twitter

It's quite long, but worth the read. It's a Hollywood story through and through.
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That was a great read! Thanks for posting this. What a story, should make a good movie.
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
DREAD: ok, so can you change the order to execute rather than torture?

DREAD: he was on the inside for a while, and now that he’s been arrested, I’m afraid he’ll give up info.

...
At one point, DPR corrected Inigo that this action was not revenge; it was justice—a new justice, according to the law of the Silk Road
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He might have been talking to an undercover cop, but he wanted it done.

This dude is no better than any run of the mill piece of shit Mafioso.
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
His investigation had started entirely at his desk with virtual gumshoe diligence, poking around Tor’s IP publishing protocol and spending time on Silk Road looking for chatter about the site’s security. His lucky break came from a thread on Reddit: A user posted a warning that Silk Road’s IP address was “leaking”—visible to other computers. Dread Pirate Roberts (or DPR, as he was often called) had been alerted to the problem by a user but ignored the warning. Silk Road’s success was making DPR arrogant. He had let down his guard, confidently telling colleagues that the site would never be found.

Tarbell threw data at Silk Road, hoping to see the leak. He entered usernames with bad passwords (and vice versa) and pasted data into input fields—all the while using regular old freeware to analyze network traffic and collect the IPs communicating with his machine. Then he tested those. On June 5, 2013, after staring at IP addresses for hours, Tarbell pasted one of them—193.107.86.49—into a browser and suddenly there it was: the Silk Road Captcha field. He showed it to fellow agent Ilhwan Yum and to Tom Kiernan, the civilian computer technician who formed the technical backbone of the cybersquad. This was what the team had been waiting for: a misconfiguration somewhere on the site that revealed the real IP address of Silk Road, which Tarbell proceeded to trace all the way to the state-of-the-art facility in Iceland.
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Arrogance and delusions of god hood leading to his fall. Love it
 
D

DarkFlow

Banned
gutshot said:
He ordered hits on 5 people.
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He was never charged with these, they have zero to do with his sentencing.

The seven charges include three drug counts: distributing or aiding and abetting the distribution of narcotics, distributing narcotics or aiding and abetting distribution over the Internet, and conspiracy to violate narcotics laws. He was also convicted on a fourth count of conspiracy to run a "continuing criminal enterprise," which involves supervising at least five other people in an organization. in addition, he was convicted on conspiracy charges for computer hacking, distributing false identification, and money laundering.
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...y-in-silk-road-online-drug-trafficking-trial/

Prosecutors' allegations that Ulbricht tried to arrange several murders-for-hire also came up at trial, but he was not charged for them in this case. Instead, one of those six accusations is pending in Maryland.
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...nd-ross-ulbricht-sentenced-to-life-in-prison/

So yeah, it's a little stiff for selling drugs.
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
Oh the poor man running a giant criminal empire. Why we should totally take pity on this poor unfortunate soul who had no problems theoretically selling drugs to kids.
 
D

DarkFlow

Banned
Maximo said:
Some people really need to read the article Before replying, this is not a *Yeah drugs should be legal that sentence is bullshit!" The man ordered hits on people..doesn't surprise me he got life.
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You should also read what he was convicted of. Ordering hits wasn't one of them. I didn't know we now sentenced people based on shit they weren't even charged with.
 
Tesseract

Tesseract

Banned
i miss heyday silkroad, not its users (once it became a racket)

i'm short on many hard to come by compounds because the dread couldn't control himself. i had to abandon tons of experiments because of this shit.

i should be able to purchase any quantity of any substance available without provocation, although i understand why people desire otherwise. but it's w/e now, the wild west is over.

now i gotta deal with poly and their insanely legal prices.
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
DarkFlow said:
You should also read what he was convicted of. Ordering hits wasn't one of them. I didn't know we now sentenced people based on shit they weren't even charged with.
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He ran a giant criminal empire. He wasn't some street level dealer. Jesus people make it sound like all he did was sell a bit of weed.

His arrest is a thing of beauty

What unfolded next was a piece of improvisational theater. At 3:14 pm, DPR was typing away, writing to Cirrus. Just then, a middle-aged woman and man came toward Ross, ambling along in the kind of semihomeless shuffle you might often see in a San Francisco library. “Fuck you!” the woman yelled when they were directly behind Ross’ chair. As if they were a deranged couple about to fight, the man grabbed the woman by the collar and raised his fist.

Ross turned around for just a second, during which a hand reached across the table and grasped Ross’ Samsung. The petite, unassuming young Asian woman sitting across from Ross this whole time was, to everyone’s surprise, also an FBI agent. Ross lunged for his machine, a hair too late, as she turned like a quarterback for a quick handoff to Kiernan, who appeared out of nowhere—as instructed—to get the laptop. It took less than 10 seconds. From afar, Tarbell was astonished by the elegant choreography of the whole thing. It looked like the police procedural version of a tight jazz quartet.
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D

DarkFlow

Banned
excelsiorlef said:
He ran a giant criminal empire. He wasn't some street level dealer. Jesus people make it sound like all he did was sell a bit of weed.
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That's fine, but stop bring up the hits. He was never charged with them in this case, so they bare zero relevance to his sentencing.
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
DarkFlow said:
That's fine, but stop bring up the hits. He was never charged with them in this case, so they bare zero relevance to his sentencing.
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Sure to justify the sentence, but a lot of folks here were pointing to the hits to signify why he is undeserving of sympathy and that's pretty much fair game.

The hits aren't needed to justify the sentence anyway, the vast criminal empire is sufficient.
 
Q

qcf x2

Member
DarkFlow said:
He was never charged with these, they have zero to do with his sentencing.

So yeah, it's a little stiff for selling drugs.
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I disagree, also consider what other horrible, illegal transactions were facilitated using Silk Road. He's a POS, knew what he was doing was illegal and that terrible stuff was bought/sold/traded there, but he didn't care. I'm pretty sure if someone explicitly told him he ran the risk of serving life in prison (or worse), he would have done it anyway. I mean, I'm pretty sure he was aware that he was going all in. And he didn't care because he didn't think he'd get caught, so why should anyone?
 
D

DarkFlow

Banned
excelsiorlef said:
Sure to justify the sentence, but a lot of folks here were pointing to the hits to signify why he is undeserving of sympathy and that's pretty much fair game.

The hits aren't needed to justify the sentence anyway, the vast criminal empire is sufficient.
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I think "vast criminal empire" is a tad overreaching, He's not Wilson Fisk here. Yes he was a douchebag, and also rather dumb since he still claims he was sit up even with the mountains of shit off his computer that says otherwise. I still don't think he deserves life for THESE charges. The Maryland case that does address the hits is another matter.

qcf x2 said:
I disagree, also consider what other horrible, illegal transactions were facilitated using Silk Road. He's a POS, knew what he was doing was illegal and that terrible stuff was bought/sold/traded there, but he didn't care. I'm pretty sure if someone explicitly told him he ran the risk of serving life in prison (or worse), he would have done it anyway. I mean, I'm pretty sure he was aware that he was going all in. And he didn't care because he didn't think he'd get caught, so why should anyone?
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http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/...online-drug-dealer-supertrips-gets-10-years-3

This guy also ran a large drug selling operation on silk road, made over $3 million and only got 10 years...

Equipped with only a laptop, an iPhone and a backpack, Slomp shipped 14 kilos of MDMA, 566,000 ecstacy pills and four kilos of cocaine and other drugs through the mail, using the online moniker “SuperTrips.”

Some drugs ended up in Chicago, but Slomp shipped to almost every continent, boasting he had “big stockpiles of product, you literally cannot empty me out.”
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G

gutshot

Member
excelsiorlef said:
Sure to justify the sentence, but a lot of folks here were pointing to the hits to signify why he is undeserving of sympathy and that's pretty much fair game.

The hits aren't needed to justify the sentence anyway, the vast criminal empire is sufficient.
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Exactly. This dude behaved like a drug kingpin and is fully deserving of the sentence handed down.
 
K

koryuken

Member
This is some ice cold shit for the judge to say:

But in her sentencing statement, Forrest denied even that the Silk Road was a naive experiment, or some sort of youthful mistake. “It was a carefully planned life’s work. It was your opus,” she said. “You wanted it to be your legacy. And it is.”
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I

Irnbru

Member
DarkFlow said:
I think "vast criminal empire" is a tad overreaching, He's not Wilson Fisk here. Yes he was a douchebag, and also rather dumb since he still claims he was sit up even with the mountains of shit off his computer that says otherwise. I still don't think he deserves life for THESE charges. The Maryland case that does address the hits is another matter.

http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/...online-drug-dealer-supertrips-gets-10-years-3

This guy also ran a large drug selling operation on silk road, made over $3 million and only got 10 years...
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Tad overreaching? An enterprise worth more than billion? Um ok. This is the new world of criminal empire, not with a don but a tech head.
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
DarkFlow said:
I think "vast criminal empire" is a tad overreaching, He's not Wilson Fisk here. Yes he was a douchebag, and also rather dumb since he still claims he was sit up even with the mountains of shit off his computer that says otherwise. I still don't think he deserves life for THESE charges. The Maryland case that does address the hits is another matter.

http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/...online-drug-dealer-supertrips-gets-10-years-3

This guy also ran a large drug selling operation on silk road, made over $3 million and only got 10 years...
Click to expand...

3 million 10 years.

Multiple billion hmmm? Life sounds good.

Also note that if that guy ran it on silk road, Ross was the one enabling him to do so, so he's responsible for them too.
 
W

wildfire

Banned
qcf x2 said:
I disagree, also consider what other horrible, illegal transactions were facilitated using Silk Road.
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While this guy is a POS for hiring assassins your other points are mostly invalid.

Silk Road was used to facilitate other purchases other than drugs but after awhile he put an end to that which is why off shoots like the Armory came about. It's all the more reason I find him to be a hypocrite for banning the sale of weapons and prostitution but goes around and tries to hire a hitman later on.


Also your attempt to imply Silk Road is unsafe in general is false. Face to face interactions increases the likely hood of getting into a fight if the deal goes wrong. User and seller reviews helped mitigate the risk of bad sales while enforcing civility between everyone.

The only thing you're right about is that he is the boss of a criminal empire. His scope is far larger than a local corner peddler.
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
DarkFlow said:
Lol he didn't have anywhere close to a billion dollars.
Click to expand...

It made for ambitious business plans. DPR wanted to expand his liberty-fueled brand into an empire, with his own Silk Road–affiliated bitcoin exchange, credit union, and encrypted communication service. Buoyed by quick success, DPR shared the heady enthusiasm of the licit startup world. Whereas he’d once considered selling Silk Road for $1 billion, he told a reporter in a rare, encrypted chat interview that Silk Road was worth 10 figures, maybe 11.
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I mean maybe he's lying.
 
D

DarkFlow

Banned
Tesseract

Tesseract

Banned
many of the enablers were mad scientist types, wanting for substances and animals and electronics to run experiments on.

early 2012-ish was when orders for medicine and such usurped drugs. it was a short lived (but good) time. a little while later everything went sour.

before i bailed i bought was a rare physics tome, and a bunch of lab supplies.
 
D

DarkFlow

Banned
Toxi said:
Heroin-dealer defense force. Now I've seen everything.
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Why do you automatically assume we are defending drug dealing if we don't agree with the length. I don't see anyone saying he should have got of free and clear. I just take issue with the length, that is all.
 
C

CornBurrito

Member
frankie_baby said:
He tried to have people assinated due to pressure from others and any customers that died knew the risks
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lol yeah, once I felt pressured at school and then tried to kill a ton of people. Thankfully everyone said it was all cool because it is totally fine to try to kill people if you feel pressured. #ColumbineWasJustified

Oh wait... no sorry, you're fucked up.
 
T

Toxi

Banned
DarkFlow said:
Why do you automatically assume we are defending drug dealing if we don't agree with the length. I don't see anyone saying he should have got of free and clear. I just take issue with the length, that is all.
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I don't.
Green forwarded one troubling customer service complaint from a woman whose brother overdosed on heroin from Silk Road and noted that under the current system, children could use the site. Perhaps that was a hair too much freedom, Green said. DPR erupted: “THAT’S MY WHOLE IDEA!” Any constraints would destroy the fundamental concept, he said, and refused any assistance for the grieving sister.
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Wow, what a hero.

DPR messaged Nob that he had a “problem” in Utah that required violence. According to the backstory Force had created for Nob, his criminal repertoire included enforcement and collection talents, so he acted the part. Sitting in the Marriott, Force received a PDF of the target, opened it, and discovered a scan of Green’s driver’s license photo.

...

Later that day, DPR messaged Nob.

DREAD: ok, so can you change the order to execute rather than torture?

DREAD: he was on the inside for a while, and now that he’s been arrested, I’m afraid he’ll give up info.

Of course, DPR was right that Green had been flipped—by the very same man he’d just hired as an assassin. It was a surprising escalation. The Silk Road leader, who waxed lyrical about “respecting” the Silk Road community, was now pondering pricing for murder.

DREAD: never killed a man or had one killed before, but it is the right move in this case.

DREAD: how much will it cost?

DREAD: ballpark?

DREAD: less than $100k?

DREAD: have you killed or had someone killed before?
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Guys, he didn't order a hit on someone, except he did and gave the order straight to the FBI.
 
A

A More Normal Bird

Unconfirmed Member
DarkFlow said:
And your point? He was sentenced according to his crime. They didn't tack on extra years for shit he wasn't charged for.
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I think the point is that posters on NeoGaf aren't judges or jury members and therefore are free to consider things external to the specific legal processes when giving their opinion on this sentence.
 
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