FBI arrests Silk Road drugs site suspect

Silk Road paid thousands in shake-downs from malicious hackers

http://www.cso.com.au/article/564997/silk-road-paid-thousands-shake-downs-from-malicious-hackers/

 

It's probably impossible to anonymize that many Bircoins in any workable time

 

Ulbricht tells judge: I’m not going to testify
https://twitter.com/arstechnica/status/562462488827289600

 

By Andy Greenberg

Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht Convicted of All 7 Charges | WIRED

 

The question I have is if Ulbricht had not taken profits off of each illegal drug transaction, could he not then have been defended on the basis of just providing a storefront website presence for each seller, and thereby been exonerated In other words his only financial interest in his website would be his tenants and he would have had no fiduciary relationship with the sellers, other than in collecting the monthly/yearly rent of their website presence and on that basis he would only be guilty of running a website instead of a drug empire.

-- Tom

 

ARS Now has a series on the Silk Road Trial -
http://arstechnica.com/series/the-silk-road-trial/

 

He could be charged under conspiracy laws in that instance, which are often quite vague and can be used to indict someone with only minimal involvement in a crime for full responsibility. An analogy could be made to owning and renting out a crack house, and obviously that's very very illegal.

Beyond the store, there's the murders for hire, conspiracy to murder in aid of racketeering, that's probably a life sentence on its own... I don't understand how somebody would expect a hitman off the internet to be real and not either a scam or LE, it's mind boggling.

 

The whole thing is mind boggling All I do is play with stuff, and write how-to guides. And I'm far more careful than he apparently was. This was Darwin award level foolishness.

 

What I see is a naive young man too caught up in his esoteric bubble to be able to view reality like a normal person. I would imagine that most sane people, after making tens of millions of dollars from a high profile criminal scheme, and being confronted with a situation where somebody knows too much, would simply cash out and ride into the sunset instead of trying to hire an anonymous hitman!

If he simply called it quits and shut everything down right before the "murders," he probably would have gotten away with more money than he could spend in a lifetime, despite the mistakes. I'm surprised how many people still feel sorry for the guy, I can see how a free market is idealistic, but he took it much too far and deserves whatever they give him.

 

5 technologies that betrayed Silk Road leader's anonymity

http://www.computerworld.com/articl...hat-betrayed-silk-road-leaders-anonymity.html

 

Ross Ulbricht Didn’t Create Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts. This Guy Did.

-- Tom

 

The reluctant king of the hidden internet.

 

@lotuseclat79 - thanks for posting that! Aeon magazine is now one of my bookmarks.

 

Convicted Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht demands trial do-over

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/convicted-silk-road-mastermind-ross-ulbricht-demands-trial-do-over/

 

"I'm going to put all my illegally earned money in the hands of two strangers of which I don't even know their faces, real names or where they live, only that they are fraud specialists. What can possibly go wrong?"

 

Two feds who investigated Silk Road accused of stealing from it, too.

-- Tom

 

http://www.computerworld.com/articl...eft-charges-in-bid-for-silk-road-retrial.html