Silk Road raided by the FBI

[kro]

Seemed like a bright fellow with a college education.  The lure of easy money is a road paved to hell.

I BET IT WAS FUN THOUGH!!!!!!

 

[texteditor]

What I find interesting is he lived a modest lifestyle. Shared an apartment, paid $1,000/mo or so for rent. Didn't live like a millionaire.

That's because his millions of "dollars" were completely theoretical until he could cash them out, which hadn't been possible to do with bitcoins en masse for some time

Also the dude was an idiot, which is also a viable explanation

iii. The agents showed ULBRICHT a photo of one of the seized counterfeit identity documents, which was a California driver's license bearing ULBRICHT's photo and true date of birth, but bearing a name other than his. ULBRICHT generally refused to answer any questions pertaining to the purchase of this or other counterfeit identity documents. However, ULBRICHT volunteered that "hypothetically" anyone could go onto a website named "Silk Road" on "Tor" and purchase any drugs or fake identity documents the person wanted.

 

[texteditor]

lol, Slate has more info on the alleged $80k "clean hit" referred to in the court documents:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/10/02/ross_william_ulbricht_maryland_indictment_the_alleged_silk_road_mastermind.html

A new charge against Ulbricht now provides details of that “clean hit,” which, as it turns out, was neither clean nor a hit. An indictment from the U.S. District Court in Maryland alleges that, in January 2013, Ulbricht attempted to arrange the murder of a former employee who had recently been arrested by the feds. Unfortunately for him, the “assassin” he tried to hire was an undercover federal agent.

According to the indictment, Ulbricht sent the agent $40,000 up front; once the hit was “confirmed” by means of an elaborately staged photograph,Ulbricht sent him another $40,000.

holy shit

 

[RiotSecurity]

lol, Slate has more info on the alleged $80k "clean hit" referred to in the court documents:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/10/02/ross_william_ulbricht_maryland_indictment_the_alleged_silk_road_mastermind.html

holy shit

I wish I had this kids money.

 

[raindog308]

He seems to have been rather stupid...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24371894

I've never run a major global criminal ring on the Internet, but if I did...I could not be careful enough.  Certainly a lot more careful than this guy.

 

[Kakashi]

Yeah he gave the game away. Then again if drugs were legalised then this guy would be nothing more than an entrepreneur. 

 

[texteditor]

Q: What kind of cryptocurrency 'drug kingpin' wires money to a 'hitman'?

A: A really dumb one:

The agent led Ulbricht to believe that the killing had been carried out, including sending staged photos of the employee being tortured, authorities say. On March 1, they say, Ulbricht wired $80,000 from an account in Australia to an account controlled by authorities.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/blog/bs-md-silk-road-shut-down-20131002,0,7548092.story

 

[kaniini]

The more hilarious part of this story was that one of the "employees" of Silk Road was an undercover agent too.  Since October 2011.

I guess they were concentrating on tracing the big players on the market for the past year, and then with the government shutdown underway, went in for the kill.

 

[WelltodoInformalCattle]

I see no downside in this guy's misfortune. Anyone think otherwise?

 

[drmike]

I think this guy earned his ass kicking.   I don't support dope dealing, even when pharma companies and so called doctors do it "legally".

There is untold hell all over the place from the SilkRoad deals - especially the drug ones.  Not everyone is a civilized recreational user spending spare income for fun.

The hit part, grrr...  Feds and sting involvement made this lucky or we'd have a deceased person potentially.

Question is if SilkRoad wasn't a honeypot/lure since day one.

 

[texteditor]

I see no downside in this guy's misfortune. Anyone think otherwise?

Aside from Google+ losing one of the last 50 or so people using it, nope.

 

[texteditor]

I do think it would have been cooler if the Feds kept the fact that the first hit was 'staged' up until the ex-employee/target of the hit could show up to witness at the trial.

 

[drmike]

^--- that would be honestly, the funniest trial in history.

 

[joepie91]

Quick analysis of the consequences of this bust that I wrote earlier today: http://joepie91.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/a-realistic-analysis-of-the-fallout-of-the-silk-road-bust/

 

[texteditor]

Painting this as just another battle in the War on Drugs kinda glosses over the whole 'tried to hire multiple hitmen for multiple hits' thing.

 

[joepie91]

Painting this as just another battle in the War on Drugs kinda glosses over the whole 'tried to hire multiple hitmen for multiple hits' thing.

There's simply not enough information available about the hitmen thing, as of yet, to say anything useful about it. Not to mention that it's completely irrelevant to the rest of the article.

 

[Reece-DM]

lol, Slate has more info on the alleged $80k "clean hit" referred to in the court documents:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/10/02/ross_william_ulbricht_maryland_indictment_the_alleged_silk_road_mastermind.html

holy shit

That just proves theres a 99.9999% chance they could of taken SilkRoad down years ago. Let's be fair they like to keep these "Dark" sites online to lure in more and more people. Not even taking into consideration the it could of been the feds who made SilkRoad..Let's be honest who really knows? Remember Tor was developed for the Navy..

 

[Cloudrck]

Anyone read this page 24

http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/%7Enweaver/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47811.msg568744#msg568744

Seems like he wasn't as smart as he thought. Made novice mistakes.

How long until someone takes his place? Drug dealers/conspirators are like roaches, kill one and there are 10 more waiting in the wall.

 

[WelltodoInformalCattle]

There's simply not enough information available about the hitmen thing, as of yet, to say anything useful about it. Not to mention that it's completely irrelevant to the rest of the article.

Should've left out the 'Availibility of Drugs' bit out altogether or at least revised it.

This is a commonly mentioned one. Indeed there will likely be a temporary rise in the amount of street-dealing (and the associated violence and trouble) while Silk Road is gone.

That's a groundless assumption based on your personal opinion

 

[texteditor]

Little known fact that there was no drug trade before Silk Road existed