Silk Road operator sentenced to life in prison

[MannDude]

As per: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/29/silk-road-ross-ulbricht-sentencedRoss Ulbricht, the man who was behind the famous 'Silk Road' site on Tor's deepweb was sentenced to the rest of his life behind bars.

The 31-year-old physics graduate and former boy scout was handed five sentences: one for 20 years, one for 15 years, one for five and two for life. All are to be served concurrently with no chance of parole.

Quite the severe punishment if you ask me and the textbook definition of someone having "the book thrown at them". I of course will not defend his actions, they were highly illegal and a punishment if caught should have been expected and known to be severe from the get-go, however I did not expect it to be so severe.

What are your thoughts on this case?

 

[Aldryic C'boas]

A good example of actions having consequences. 

 

[William]

A good example of actions having consequences. 

Pretty much, if you sell 2mil+ in drugs you go to jail, simple as that.

 

[rds100]

Pretty much, if you sell 2mil+ in drugs you go to jail, simple as that.

Correction, only if you do it without paying the commission to the ones in power. The authorities don't like competition.

 

[MannDude]

Pretty much, if you sell 2mil+ in drugs you go to jail, simple as that.

Prosecutors said Silk Road had generated nearly $213.9m (£140m) in sales and $13.2m in commissions before police shut it down.

His site brokered the sale of over $200,000,000 worth of product/service and he (I assume he) earned $13,200,000 in commissions from the transactions. Quite an impressive amount of cash flow.

As far as sellers/buyers go from the site... I never understood how anyone could purchase items from it with confidence that the seller themselves wasn't a government agency. Sure, they had a rating system and there were sellers on there who had a long history and good reputation but those would be the ones I'd be most suspicious of... Maybe I'm just overly paranoid of everything. Haha.

 

[KuJoe]

Drugs aside, didn't Silk Road also seller murder for hire services (AKA hitmen)? This I found more disturbing than the drugs and if so I can agree with the punishment more so than just drug related offenses.


Drugs are bad mkay, but murder is much much worse.

 

[DomainBop]

His site brokered the sale of over $200,000,000 worth of product/service and he (I assume he) earned $13,200,000 in commissions from the transactions. Quite an impressive amount of cash flow.

A much smaller amount and not nearly as impressive cash flow or profits compared to the amount of drug cartel  money major banks like HSBC ($881 billion), Wachovia ($400 billion), etc have been caught laundering.  The major difference between the Silk Road CEO's life sentence and drug money laundering banking executives who never see the inside of a prison cell being the banking industry has lobbyists showering cash on corrupt politicians in all branches of the Federal government

TL;DR SilkRoad's CEO deserved the sentence he received but the government needs to enforce the laws equally and start jailing and handing out life sentences to the executives from the major financial industry players whose money laundering allows the drug trade to flourish..