-snip-
A crime requires not only an unlawful act but also what is called "mens rea"[1] an intent to do something criminal. The written, signed and timestamped statement in advance clearly shows that mens rea is not given in Laudas case. Whether or not this should be a right DT or Staff should have when investigating I have no opinion on yet. My frist gut instict tells me it would not be a good idea to make this common practice.
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_reaI have to disagree with you on this point. Lauda posted an encrypted message onto two pastbins and included the hash of a recently found block in the message. The pastbins would theoretically prove that the message was created on or before a certain time, and the hash of the recent block proves that the message was created on or after a certain time. The message however was encrypted to Lauda's GPG key only, so one could argue that message would only be shown if the extortion attempt was unsuccessful and was called out about it. It is also unclear if the message was actually
signed, all I know is that it was encrypted.
Yeah, we can ditch the signed part, it also was a bad move to encrypt it to their own key as this leaves only the two pages to confirm the integrity of the message. For all we know the encrypted message is a cookie recipe.
I would work under the assumption that Lauda did in fact encrypt the message that he posted. However the fact that anyone would ever know what the message said if Lauda decrypted it for us (and lauda would only decrypt the message if he was called out about the extortion), makes me think the message was more an insurance policy, and less a declaration of what he will actually do if the extortion was successful. If Lauda did get paid off, then zeroaxl would logically not have made the extortion public, and no one would ever have been the wiser when Lauda ended up keeping the proceeds to himself (or sharing them with his co-conspirators).
There is also evidence that the extortion continued after Lauda was called out on it. For example
this shows that Zeroxal received a threat that his mother would receive a phone call,
this post shows that TMAN was giving Zeroxal more reasons to avoid a police report being filed against him by paying the extortion, and
this post is evidence that Zeroxal was given a reason to pay up, or else he would not be able to continue doing business on the forum. I would also point out that
this thread was opened, yet Zeroxal was never given negative trust (as of the time of this post).
--snip--
There is no time given by Zeroxal, so when the call took place is not clear. Might have been yesterday for all we know, both speak in past tense so I think its unlikely that it was moments before the posts.
"the hole is getting deeper. " does not sound like there is still a way out of this. This was also posted in public. Thus I cant follow your argument that it was another extortion attempt. Looks more like scorn to me.
(note that zeroaxl's OP in his thread had the message that lauda sent say that it was continued from slack). I get the feeling that the extortion threat was something more along the lines of "if you don't pay up, then me and my friends will call the police and make it difficult for you to trade on bitcointalk". It seems that minifrij first opened his thread to show that they were serious about making good on their threats, then TMAN opened his thread once zeroaxl responded to the extortion attempt by opening a scam accusation against Lauda. TMAN made
this post to install additional fear into what will happen if they made good on their threat to contact the police if TMAN does not pay up, I think "the hole is getting deeper" means that zeroaxl will get in more trouble if the police are contacted.
I don't think this was a situation in which Lauda acted alone, I think many people worked together in regards to this extortion attempt. There are four additional people who confirmed in zeroaxl's thread that they knew about the extortion attempt prior to it taking place. I cannot authoritatively say that any of those people participated in any conspiracy, however I believe that it does give credence to my belief that both minnifrij and TMAN conspired with lauda to attempt to extort zeroxal.
Going back to one of my previous examples, if you were threatening to tell my wife that I was having an affair (even though this is not true), the above would be very similar to making this extortion demand, then later posting statistics about divorce rates after affairs, or saying that you talked to my wife today and that you think she would be heartbroken if she found out she was cheated on. The purpose would be to install fear, not make an additional extortion demand.
The fact that both Zeroxal closed his thread against Lauda, and TMAN and minifrij closed their threads against Zeroxal at roughly the same time makes me believe that Zeroxal ended up paying the extortion payment. I have not seen any evidence that Lauda has not profited from this apparent payment.
I think they talk or talked on slack. I dont approve of this, but asssuming a extortion payment was made is just that, an assumption.
Yes, they talk on Slack, probably more than they talk on here. I spoke to zeroaxl who has advised me that he
did not make any extortion payment and that everyone agreed to close their respective threads because they would talk about things privately. Even if my assumption that zeroaxl paid up is incorrect, this does not change the fact that Lauda attempted to extort zeroaxl (unsuccessfully).
I don't think that a signed message is sufficient to remove Mens rea from what Lauda did, if anything it shows that Lauda knew in advance that what he was doing was wrong. I don't think any court would accept this kind of statement as a defense to a crime.
Probably not, but I dont think this will end up in front of a court either. Unless we consider this forums scam accusation section its court.
I understand that extortion is a felony and a serious crime, so it is possible the federal government may attempt to prosecute lauda, especially how public the extortion attempt has become. I am not sure how high a priority this kind of crime would be, nor am I sure how good of a job Lauda did in protecting his identity.
Regardless of if this case ends up in court or not, I do think this is a reasonable standard when deciding if something is right or wrong, or when deciding if someone is a scammer by attempting to extort someone.
Ross Ulbright's lawyer tried to get the whole case against him thrown out because there was a corrupt FBI agent who had extorted him. IIRC correctly, the reason why it was not thrown out is because all of the evidence used against Ross was gather by another field office.
Im still undecided whether I approve of the method or not. No, actually a simple kant makes me strongly disagree with this method. Which seems a common theme with me and Lauda.
If you were still undecided if you approved of this method or not, then I would say this:
The broad decision to be able to break the law by a law enforcement agent does not rest with the individual agent, but rather someone very high up the chain of command (the agent's boss's boss's.....boss), probably someone with 'director' and/or 'chief' in their title. It would not be okay for a DEA agent on the street to sell illegal drugs to someone with the intention of trying to find the "head" of a drug cartel if they are not previously assigned to the case, and approved to be breaking certain laws to help with the investigation. The "chief' would send word down the chain of command that a specific agent has approval to break certain, specific laws to help investigate the case.
I also remember a case a few years ago where someone tried to rob a citizen's house, the citizen was able to successfully stop the robbery, placed the robber under citizens arrest, and drove the robber to the jail. The citizen was able to prevent the robber from leaving by placing him under citizens arrest, however the act of moving the robber from their house to the police station (Point "A" to point "B"), constituted kidnapping, and the citizen was charged with such crime.
