Rampion
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October 02, 2013, 11:46:06 PM Last edit: October 03, 2013, 12:24:50 AM by Rampion |
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The plot thickens (many similarities with the Walter White saga, both in the supposed facts and in the psychology related to them): The Maryland charges stem from his alleged interactions starting in April 2012 with an undercover agent here. The agent began communicating with Ulbricht, court documents say, claiming to be a high-level drug smuggler who wanted to move inventory on Silk Road.
When one of Ulbricht's employees got arrested in January as a result of one their arranged transactions, authorities say Ulbricht worried that the employee would blow his cover.
Ulbricht allegedly asked the undercover agent to have the employee killed, saying he had "never killed a man or had one killed before, but it is the right move in this case."
The agent led Ulbricht to believe that the killing had been carried out, including staged photos of the employee being tortured, and on March 1 Ulbricht wired $80,000 from an account in Austrailia to an account controlled by authorities.
The series of events emboldened Ulbricht, according to separate documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Later in March, according to private messages reviewed by federal agents, a Silk Road vendor threatened to blackmail Ulbricht by exposing information about the site's users and transactions.
Ulbricht then reached out to a user to take care of the problem, according to court records.
"I would like to put a bounty on his head if it's not too much trouble for you," he wrote in a message on March 29, authorities say in court documents. "Necessities like this do happen from time to time for a person in my position."
Messages exchanged between Ulbricht and the user show they discussed prices between $150,000 and $300,000, depending on whether Ulbricht wanted it done "clean or non-clean." On April 1, the user told Ulbricht that his problem had been "taken care of" and sent a picture of the victim.
It's not clear whether such a killing occurred -- agents wrote that they could find no record of there being someone with the name of the victim that was exchanged. They said they contacted authorities in White Rock, British Columbia about whether a homicide had been committed on March 31.
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acoindr
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October 02, 2013, 11:49:46 PM |
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Hmm, looks like I have to withdraw much of my skepticism about the assassination text allegedly found on DPR's server: The agent led Ulbricht to believe that the killing had been carried out, including staged photos of the employee being tortured, and on March 1 Ulbricht wired $80,000 from an account in Austrailia to an account controlled by authorities.
Such a wire from a bank account in Australia should be easy to verify but harder to fake.
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nandika (OP)
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October 02, 2013, 11:50:58 PM |
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who decides what should be illegal anyway? I never remember attending to a yearly/bi-yearly...so on voting regarding any of the matter (legality of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, etc..)
I thought we are in a democracy, why don't our opinion count???
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Severian
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October 02, 2013, 11:56:30 PM |
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Hmm, looks like I have to withdraw much of my skepticism about the assassination text allegedly found on DPR's server...Such a wire from a bank account in Australia should be easy to verify but harder to fake. The source of the info/disinfo is still the Feds so skepticism is always in order. These are the same mindsets that took $5 million from gox just cuz.
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forevernoob
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October 03, 2013, 12:00:58 AM |
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Was all of his bitcoins compromised by the Feds? If I had that much BTC I would spread it out.
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acoindr
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October 03, 2013, 12:03:10 AM |
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Hmm, looks like I have to withdraw much of my skepticism about the assassination text allegedly found on DPR's server...Such a wire from a bank account in Australia should be easy to verify but harder to fake. The source of the info/disinfo is still the Feds so skepticism is always in order. ... That's why I said "much" not all. The vital piece of information for me is the bank account wire. I can't see that being easy to fabricate. I'm not saying impossible, but certainly not easy. For any fabrication a government makes the risk must be weighed for the possibility of being caught, and if so the ramifications of that. In this case the assassination story IMO leans more on the side of truthfulness of the feds this time.
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theymos
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October 03, 2013, 12:10:20 AM |
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It's tragic that an innocent person will be inprisoned by the government and that the free market has been interfered with, but I'm confident that an even better Silk Road will appear in the near future. Didn't DPR say that he bought Silk Road from someone else? What happened to that? Was he just lying? Would you believe that I, as an ancap, also find Rothbard unconvincing? Not only that, but I don't think the "non-aggression principle" is an adequate guide for political philosophy. I'm not a libertarian due to moral axioms, but rather, because I think it produces the best outcomes.
I'm also a "Friedmanite ancap", though I also generally believe that the NAP is a good moral rule to follow in almost all cases. Rothbard may have contributed a lot to libertarianism and economics, but his ethical theory is contradictory in some places in disturbing in others. Even if you're an ancap purely for moral reasons, it's good to know the non-moral arguments for it: A lot of people simply disagree with the NAP, and your moral arguments will be useless against such people.
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1NXYoJ5xU91Jp83XfVMHwwTUyZFK64BoAD
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tysat
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Keep it real
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October 03, 2013, 12:11:17 AM |
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The timeline in the post is wrong, the server image is from June 2013 not 2012. Also he's assuming the LE has control of the forums, doesn't state that they do.
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Chronikka
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October 03, 2013, 12:17:05 AM |
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Kind of creepy looking at a transaction that may have been for a murder-for-hire
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"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination" -Albert Einstein
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mikegogulski
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October 03, 2013, 12:18:06 AM |
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My short definition of murder: an unjustified killing.
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greyhawk
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October 03, 2013, 12:19:36 AM |
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It's tragic that an innocent person will be inprisoned by the government and that the free market has been interfered with, but I'm confident that an even better Silk Road will appear in the near future.
Yeah, that poor innocent man that only ordered two hits on people to be killed. What's the world coming to when you can't even have people killed that threaten your business?
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Jenger
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October 03, 2013, 12:22:39 AM |
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To be fair, the second person who the hit was placed on was blackmailing him heavy for half a million dollars. Not to say that justifies a killing in any way, when you are dealing with shady business, you will get shady results.
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Severian
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October 03, 2013, 12:24:32 AM |
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The vital piece of information for me is the bank account wire. I can't see that being easy to fabricate. The bank wire could be real and they massaged the back story to their benefit. Old trick. I put nothing past people that think it's acceptable to spy on the whole planet. an innocent person will be imprisoned by the government and that the free market has been interfered with Yep. That's what The State does.
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niko
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October 03, 2013, 12:26:59 AM |
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Can someone explain how they managed to identify his server running a Tor service? From there on it seems straight forward, they got access to the server through a request with the LE in the host country.
Anyone?
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They're there, in their room. Your mining rig is on fire, yet you're very calm.
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DoomDumas
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Bitcoin
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October 03, 2013, 12:30:46 AM |
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This made my day, I think it's good for BTC in general, as authority now understand that BTC are'nt as anonymous they might tought it was.. And this also made my day because I had some buy order pending for few months on CaVirtex, and they almost all got filled bought as low as 81$ This could hurt Bitcoins... not much happening in turns of exchange rate It JUST happened.....I see btc going down a bit, but rebounding. Might be a nice time to buy
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ZetaOS
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October 07, 2013, 03:52:05 AM |
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We Are Up!
Happy to be back
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VolanicEruptor
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October 07, 2013, 12:34:20 PM |
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We Are Up!
Happy to be back
While bitcointalk was down, someone mentioned in an IRC channel that the only BTC the feds seized were from buyer and seller accounts. Apparently ulbrichts BTC was never seized and still lies in a wallet somewhere (which makes sense, because I always wondered how the FBI could ever get their hands on that). I couldn't find this is any recent news articles, however, and contradicts what I've read before. Can anybody confirm this?
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Benson Samuel
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Landscaping Bitcoin for India!
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October 07, 2013, 12:42:42 PM |
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We Are Up!
Happy to be back
While bitcointalk was down, someone mentioned in an IRC channel that the only BTC the feds seized were from buyer and seller accounts. Apparently ulbrichts BTC was never seized and still lies in a wallet somewhere (which makes sense, because I always wondered how the FBI could ever get their hands on that). I couldn't find this is any recent news articles, however, and contradicts what I've read before. Can anybody confirm this? I read this as well. 27K was the buyer and seller funds. 600K was the amount supposed to have been collected by Ross in commisions. They have not yet got their hands on this.
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dserrano5
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October 07, 2013, 12:43:25 PM |
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While bitcointalk was down, someone mentioned in an IRC channel that the only BTC the feds seized were from buyer and seller accounts. Apparently ulbrichts BTC was never seized and still lies in a wallet somewhere (which makes sense, because I always wondered how the FBI could ever get their hands on that). I couldn't find this is any recent news articles, however, and contradicts what I've read before. Can anybody confirm this?
Recent article: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/07/fbi-bitcoin-silk-road-ross-ulbricht
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