What happened to Silk Road 2.0 founder Blake Benthall?

[dKingston]

Funny how we hear about Ross Ulbricht almost daily .. but total silence on the fate of Blake Benthall, the founder of silk road 2.0 .. any news on this guy??

[pereira4]

I can't find any news myself, the most recent news are from January. I guess they don't care as much as the first Silk Road. What are they going to do? There will be infinite Silk Roads for life. The headline is shocking only once.

[Quickseller]

He was arrested last November. When he was arrested, he more or less immediately confessed to running Silk Road2 so the chances are that he is trying to work out some kind of deal and as a result there are likely going to be less pre-trial motions filed.

Considering how bad his operational security was (based on what was in the complaint against him), it does not take very big of a tinfoil hat to believe that he was somehow involved with law enforcement (aka SR2 was a honeypot)

[ambitlons]

Yeah haven't heard much about him/it and as stated above now if 1 goes down 3-4 pop up lol. Kinda off-topic but didn't one just recently run off with every ones $?

[bryant.coleman]

He was arrested last November. When he was arrested, he more or less immediately confessed to running Silk Road2 so the chances are that he is trying to work out some kind of deal and as a result there are likely going to be less pre-trial motions filed.

So my guess is that he will receive a slightly lenient prison sentence when compared to Ross Ullbricht? May be he'll get 20 years or 30 years in jail and he'll be out in 15. And I don't know for sure whether SR 2.0 was a honeypot or not. But the security was extremely bad, and a lot of vendor accounts were getting hacked there.

[bonipper]

He was arrested last November. When he was arrested, he more or less immediately confessed to running Silk Road2 so the chances are that he is trying to work out some kind of deal and as a result there are likely going to be less pre-trial motions filed.

So my guess is that he will receive a slightly lenient prison sentence when compared to Ross Ullbricht? May be he'll get 20 years or 30 years in jail and he'll be out in 15. And I don't know for sure whether SR 2.0 was a honeypot or not. But the security was extremely bad, and a lot of vendor accounts were getting hacked there.

Ross pleaded not guilty so had to get the maximum sentence possible if found guilty. Pleading guilty like Blake Benthall would get a more lenient sentence because it indicates remorse. It also saves the legal system a lot of hassle so the trial will probably be over and done very quickly when it eventually happens.

Ross should have pleaded guilty if he wanted to stand the slightest chance of ever being released.

[S4VV4S]

Funny how we hear about Ross Ulbricht almost daily .. but total silence on the fate of Blake Benthall, the founder of silk road 2.0 .. any news on this guy??

Ross is the first to create an online black market, so like Bitcoin he is more famous than others.
Didn't Blake buy Silk Road 2.0 from someone named defcon?

He was arrested last November. When he was arrested, he more or less immediately confessed to running Silk Road2 so the chances are that he is trying to work out some kind of deal and as a result there are likely going to be less pre-trial motions filed.

So my guess is that he will receive a slightly lenient prison sentence when compared to Ross Ullbricht? May be he'll get 20 years or 30 years in jail and he'll be out in 15. And I don't know for sure whether SR 2.0 was a honeypot or not. But the security was extremely bad, and a lot of vendor accounts were getting hacked there.

How comes the security was that bad?
Wasn't SR 2.0 a clone of SR 1.0?

[madonnino]

defcon= blake


How comes the security was that bad?
Wasn't SR 2.0 a clone of SR 1.0?


In May, agents were able to locate the server hosting Silk Road 2.0 in a foreign country, tracing alleged ownership back to Benthall. As the agent wrote: “Based on a review of records provided by the service provider for the Silk Road 2.0 Server, I have discovered that the server was controlled and maintained during the relevant time by an individual using the email account blake@benthall.net.”

[WhatTheGox]

He was arrested last November. When he was arrested, he more or less immediately confessed to running Silk Road2 so the chances are that he is trying to work out some kind of deal and as a result there are likely going to be less pre-trial motions filed.

So my guess is that he will receive a slightly lenient prison sentence when compared to Ross Ullbricht? May be he'll get 20 years or 30 years in jail and he'll be out in 15. And I don't know for sure whether SR 2.0 was a honeypot or not. But the security was extremely bad, and a lot of vendor accounts were getting hacked there.

Ross pleaded not guilty so had to get the maximum sentence possible if found guilty. Pleading guilty like Blake Benthall would get a more lenient sentence because it indicates remorse. It also saves the legal system a lot of hassle so the trial will probably be over and done very quickly when it eventually happens.

Ross should have pleaded guilty if he wanted to stand the slightest chance of ever being released.

Maybe Ross was screwed either way based on his charges perhaps his defence decided might aswell go down with a fight.  If you remember the prosecution wanted to send out a message im not sure pleading guilty would have given him his old age, who knows.

[bryant.coleman]

Maybe Ross was screwed either way based on his charges perhaps his defence decided might aswell go down with a fight.  If you remember the prosecution wanted to send out a message im not sure pleading guilty would have given him his old age, who knows.

Agreed. With all those multiple attempt to murder, moneylaundering and drug offence charges, he would have got Life without parole anyway. So it was better to go down fighting. But it is not true that he didn't expressed any remorse. He wrote a letter to the judge (Katherine Forrest), expressing his regret.

[Beliathon]

Funny how we hear about Ross Ulbricht almost daily .. but total silence on the fate of Blake Benthall, the founder of silk road 2.0 .. any news on this guy??

Obviously police fed him to the wood chipper to extract information. Unfortunately it was amateur hour and they put him in head first, so the only information they got was explosive diarrhea.

[Ingatqhvq]

It can't be worse than  Ross Ulbricht, the amount of money involved in Silk Road 2.0 is much less than Silk Road 1.0.

[bonipper]

It can't be worse than  Ross Ulbricht, the amount of money involved in Silk Road 2.0 is much less than Silk Road 1.0.

As far as I know Blake Benthall didn't have any attempted murder charges against him, so he's unlikely to get whatever sentence Ross gets if he is found guilty. However, apart from the murder charge he's likely to face the same charges that Ross faced. If he get's lucky he might get released in his old age, but it's debatable if he will ever get released. That's assuming he's being charged in a state without the death sentence. Which state is he being charged in?

[LFC_Bitcoin]

I thought about Benthall the other week, certainly hasn't been any where near as much fuss made about him as Ulbricht. I think Benthall was a lot younger & Silk Road 2.0 was a lot more unprofessional if I may say so.
As far as I'm aware Silk Road 1.0 had a lot more money go through it & there aren't any murder for hire rumours regarding Silk Road 2.0 (please correct me if I'm wrong).
Imo Silk Road 1.0 was a lot more shady, a lot darker.
I guess we'll hear more about Benthall's fate when he is sentenced etc.

Does anybody know if any of the major drug dealers using Silk Road 1.0 got caught?
I always wondered that, surely they would be handed as big a sentence as Ulbricht if they were dealing in large quantities.

[bryant.coleman]

It can't be worse than  Ross Ulbricht, the amount of money involved in Silk Road 2.0 is much less than Silk Road 1.0.

The amount of money involved was never a major factor during the trial of Ross Ullbricht. In the United States, the punishment is the same, if you are caught with 1 kg of cocaine or 1 ton of cocaine. Katherine Forrest never mentioned the Silk Road revenues / trade volume anywhere in the judgement remarks.

[bitowl]

Bumping out of curiosity.

[Gleb Gamow]

Maybe Ross was screwed either way based on his charges perhaps his defence decided might aswell go down with a fight.  If you remember the prosecution wanted to send out a message im not sure pleading guilty would have given him his old age, who knows.

Agreed. With all those multiple attempt to murder, moneylaundering and drug offence charges, he would have got Life without parole anyway. So it was better to go down fighting. But it is not true that he didn't expressed any remorse. He wrote a letter to the judge (Katherine Forrest), expressing his regret.

The fake murders were never mentioned during the trial.

[DarfNader]

He was arrested last November. When he was arrested, he more or less immediately confessed to running Silk Road2 so the chances are that he is trying to work out some kind of deal and as a result there are likely going to be less pre-trial motions filed.

Considering how bad his operational security was (based on what was in the complaint against him), it does not take very big of a tinfoil hat to believe that he was somehow involved with law enforcement (aka SR2 was a honeypot)

I worked with the guy and while he was an anathema, I don't think he was running a honeypot, especially with the way he was spending his money near the end.

He was a really good guy and we worked together for about a year or more. At a legit firm. I  thought his programming was decent but he did NOT pair well with others so I am told, even though we all know pairing is for pant's shitters anyway! He domineers projects and shit like that so he made some enemies, but that is just what people said.I am sure they were a little jealous too because he got shit done FAST. I did his DevOps stuff on Chef for him, set up shifting keys, tripwire, as well as other security hardening (that is pretty much necessary for VPCs in AWS) so he didn't really have those skills since I was doing it for him. I think he was young and idealistic. While he eventually spent the money, I think he was into it for either the lols of stickin it to the man.  He made great pay doing software so I don't see why he would risk it or SR2 unless he really wanted to do it for politics. Has he asked me to do "private consulting for him" i don't know if I'd have peeked or not, but I certainly would not want to go down doing that shit! NO WAY NO HOW!

[farharhadi]

If something happens that can not be left alone,
The amount of money involved in Silk Road 2.0 is much smaller than Silk Road 1.0.