Who Deserves This? (2018)
freeross.orgJust in case any of you are wondering who Ross is ...
He created the Silk Road, a popular online exchange for illegal drugs, and prosecutors alleged that he paid $730K to try to kill six people. (He was not, however, charged with attempted murder. Instead, he was charged and convicted of money laundering and drug offenses.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht
EDIT: I just want to make completely clear that I didn't post this info in an effort to discredit his essay's argument, which is that the U.S. prison system is in need of drastic reform. I agree wholeheartedly with that. I just wanted to give some context, because I didn't know who he was, and the "Who is Ross?" section of the freeross.org site makes it seem like he's an angelic Boy Scout philanthropist sweetheart.
These 7-year-old allegations relied solely on anonymous chats NEVER proven to have been authored by Ulbricht.
It's well known now there were multiple people behind the DPR accounts AND 2 corrupt agents (now in prison) had admin access too.
Never proven, never prosecuted and dismissed "with prejudice" by the govt, meaning they can never be used against him again.
Ross was NOT accused of selling drugs or laundering money, or hacking computers. Charges based on what others listed on SR (i.e, laundering money conspiracy charge = because some users were cashing out their btc for other currencies. Hacking conspiracy = because some users listed hacking tutorials or software.)
Wikiepedia shouldn't be used as a reliable source when it comes to legal cases.
Most cases are closed on circumstantial evidence.
Weird to see the same podcast that hosts freeross information as also hosting bitcoin podcasts.
Adrian Crenshaw the security researcher has a good defcon talk on how ross went down for SR. Don't post your tech problems for an illegal service on stackoverflow!
Is the appeal brief considered a reliable source?
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/186
"The district court found by a preponderance of the evidence that Ulbricht commissioned at least five murders in the course of protecting Silk Road's anonymity, a finding that Ulbricht does not challenge in this appeal. Ulbricht discussed those anticipated murders callously and casually in his journal and in his communications with the purported assassin Redandwhite."
"Ulbricht does not mention his orders for the commission of those murders until his reply brief. Even there, he does not argue that the district court erred in concluding that he deliberately commissioned those murders; rather, he claims instead only that the murders did not support a life sentence because they did not actually take place."
"But in evaluating Ulbricht's character and dangerousness, the most relevant points are that he wanted the murders to be committed, he paid for them, and he believed that they had been carried out. The fact that his hired assassin may have defrauded him does not reflect positively on Ulbricht's character. Commissioning the murders significantly justified the life sentence."
Nick Bilton did extensive research for his book American Kingpin and it all supports the theory that Ulbricht was the only DPR.
And it’s a good read if anyone hasn’t read it.
You're casting vague FUD and not going into the details. The murders-for-hire are absolutely the most critical part of this whole case.
>No one deserves this, even if they have to here for the sake of others’ safety. Certainly, the many non-violent drug offenders growing old in here don’t. Pain does not heal pain. A lost soul is not redeemed in a cage.
I agree with this part of Ulbricht's letter here. If not for those murders (which he believed were successfully carried out), he would be a non-violent drug offender, and not deserving of anywhere near a life sentence. But working your way up into a grandiose Walter White-style megalomaniac paying people to kill your foes? That's imperialistic tyrant behavior, not freedom fighter behavior.
He was very likely the only DPR (or at least the only significant one), and, in all likelihood, the chat logs are authentic. No, they weren't proven in court, due to the corrupt agents you mentioned (the defense would cast aspersions just as you did here), but if you look at the facts, they're very likely to be real. Also, the judge explicitly permitted the murder-for-hire evidence to be shown in court, which contributed to the judge's sentencing deccision.
Just to cover one of the six murders: Mark Force didn't have admin access when Ulbricht courted him to murder Curtis Green; Force was just a regular SR user at that point. (He did previously have illicit admin access via Green's account, but this account was disabled by an admin a while before the murder-for-hire conversations occurred.)
That entire encounter and conversation was documented in real-time by law enforcement who had access to Force's account, so Force couldn't have just doctored them. Yes, there are some other circumstances here, like Force (unknowingly to law enforcement at the moment) using Green's account to steal Bitcoins before all of this, which is what caused Ulbricht to later order Green's murder, but he definitely wasn't entrapped or tricked into murdering him. Ulbricht was the one who suggested the murder and requested it, and he paid him $80,000 upon seeing staged photos of what appeared to be Green's bloody corpse. These Bitcoin transactions are obviously all public.
Read the chat logs ordering Green's and FriendlyChemist's (and later FriendlyChemist's associates) murders and tell me what you think:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gqepaijrm8lsqsm/260502700-Ulbricht... - Pages 31 - 51
https://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-bos...
You can see Ulbricht deliberating the decision with his "advisor", Variety Jones / Cimon, before finally concluding he had to die.
No, I didn't give a rock-solid defense of why I think they're authentic, but I don't have the time at the moment. If this thread is still active, I may give a more lengthy analysis later as to why I think they're legitimate.
I believe he's basically a modern mini-Pablo Escobar. I do think drugs should be legalized - specifically to prevent megalomaniacs like Ulbricht from gaining immense, malignant power and ambition. I hope to see the day when all drugs are legal for recreational use while he remains rotting in prison, aged 85.
>> The murders-for-hire are absolutely the most critical part of this whole case.
Well maybe he should have been charged for that.
It would've been good, for sure. It's unfortunate Mark Force had to fuck it all up.
To be clear, though, the judge did still explicitly permit the murder-for-hire evidence to be submitted during trial, even though he wasn't charged for it. They also factored it into the sentencing.
When I say "most critical part", I mean from a moral standpoint, especially for people who see no moral issue with drugs. For the government, the drug kingpin stuff was enough to build a case. For libertarian-sympathizing people who otherwise would've supported him, the murders-for-hire are what change this from something worthy of protest to something pretty open-and-shut.
The prosecutors were going after much more serious charges, namely the conspiracy to traffic narcotics and the CCE so they rightly threw the evidence towards proving those in court rather than take a segue into a charge that has something like a 10 year max sentence. A "non-violent" kingpin is a rarity, and they proved with massive amounts of evidence that Ulbricht was like any other kingpin, willing to use violence to protect his empire. The judge methodically walked through the sentencing guidelines, and Ulbricht scored a whopping 50 out of 43 (only 2 points were added for the directed use of violence).
Ulbricht should be grateful none of the murders actually happened as the CCE has a special clause for murders carried out as part of operating the criminal enterprise, making the defendant eligible for the death penalty. Contract murder is quite serious because of the huge amount of premeditation involved (i.e. not a "crime of passion" or temporary misjudgment) and cold-blooded motives such as money or concealing other criminal activity.
Furthermore, talking about the attempted murder in a vacuum is giving a pass to the similar violence that governments themselves do. Silk Road had to be vertically integrated for dispute resolution, whereas most businesses get to outsource their violence to the police.
Given that he was never charged with those attempted murders, I’m sympathetic to the argument that it should not have been used against him at sentencing.
But practically, it always seemed to me fairly obvious that he did author those messages. Do you not think that’s the case?
Luckily most law systems in the world don't have "seemed to me fairly obvious" as grounds that you can convict someone on.
Also, you're missing any sort of source/claim to back that it "seemed fairly obvious".
Meowface’s other reply in this thread said it better than I could. My point is, separate from the legal arguments, whether anyone here genuinely believes he did not order the murders and was framed. Have you read the chat transcripts?
That's not quite correct.
It is true that he was convicted of money laundering and drug offenses. However, during his sentencing hearing, the murder-for-hire which was never discussed or proved in court, was brought in as part of how long to lock him away.
That alone should vacate and admonish the judge for letting that scam take place.
A lifetime of imprisonment for selling drugs. That's beyond cruel. Meanwhile CEOs are making billions and getting a slap on the wrist, if anything. Ross doesn't deserve this. He's right. Now if he was convicted of murder or something similar, it would be different. But he wasn't.
I'm sorry, but boo fucking hoo. He knew exactly what he was doing -- running a drug trafficking marketplace -- was highly illegal. He went to extensive lengths to conceal that activity from law enforcement, so it's not like he didn't know what he was doing was against the law. He made a lot of money doing this.
I'm a big believer in criminal justice reform, but this is one of those instances where what he was doing was so dangerous that someone had to be made an example of at the highest level. To be honest, his arrest and conviction likely saved his life: sooner or later the cartels would have found him, tortured him to gain control of the site, then dissolved his body in acid.
I’ve thought the punishment of Ross was extremely too harsh: life in prison without the possibility of parole. I know the government paints this picture of him as a major drug smuggler, but I think we in the tech world are smarter than that and realize creating a platform is different than selling. After all, are EBay and Amazon liable for all the counterfeit things on their page? Should Bezos go to jail?
I also think the Silk Road story would be a fascinating 2-season, 20 episode series on Netflix. Read the story linked below for a great 2 hour read.
Wired did an awful job at covering the case. Total sensationalism. That link you sent is a 6-year-old hit-piece. Nothing more.
This case generated sensationalism and media like Wired and ArsTechnica ran with it, at the expense of a young man awaiting trial. They destroyed his public image and relayed false and inaccurate information. It's sad to see people still sharing those superficial and sensationalized articles years after.
You should check this. Based on 400+ references, incl. investigation reports and more never-before-seen docs. The real story is SO much more interesting & mind-blowing than Ross being that one guy running the site the whole time.
I am not going to trust the veracity of any story hosted at a site called freeross.org. They have no objectivity.
You’re being downvoted for disagreeing when GP says “Ars and Wired are garbage media, you should instead trust this post _from Ross’s own website_ as the truth”. Come on HN
Of course, it isn't objective, and you can't resent the operator of that site for that. freeross is operated by his close family, including his mother.
Except Amazon doesn't have a category called "Counterfeit Beats Headphones". Silk Road had categories for items that were explicitly illegal; those categories were created by site administrators. The "just a marketplace" argument doesn't really pass the test; SR was complicit. I can't open a flea market with a section called "Cocaine" and claim innocence when merchants actually sell Cocaine.
However, I agree his punishment is excessive; a 20-40 years sentence with possibility of parole would seem appropriate.
It would be great if we could get explicit categories for counterfeit items on Amazon!
If Bezos tried to have six people killed, then yeah, he should be in jail.
Except Ross never did. False allegations used to smear him.
A document on his computer saying that he paid a supposed hitman and they ran with the cash, and chatlogs of him talking to the hitman, and an "immutable public ledger" with a record of the payment whose time and amount matches up with the note on the laptop are all ridiculous government smears. And there's nothing at all sociopathic about lying to your parents all the way until their bankruptcy in asserting your innocence.
Except we have evidence he did, that was submitted in trial and was not challenged by his lawyers.
They should really track down whomever framed him how shouldn't they? As you say, it's serious business.
> After all, are [...] Amazon liable for all the counterfeit things on their page? Should Bezos go to jail?
Yes. Amazon is fucking up the functioning of the overall market, by undercutting legal products with fraudulent fake products, while shielding the criminals from retribution. It's been extremely harmful and Bezos should be punished for it.
Which store on Amazon is ran by Bezos?
All of them.
Seems like you also think that Mark Zuckerberg runs my FB profile? IMHO that is a very unproductive way of thought. Also (on top of absence of practical correctness) most likely formally incorrect, but I'm not a English native speaker. Definitely would be invalid in my language though.
Amazon mingles inventory and delivers counterfeit goods on behalf of legitimate sellers. Your Facebook analogy is broken because Facebook is a completely different industry with completely different operations but to fix it, imagine if Facebook mixed up your posts with content written by spammers and served it to your friends under your name. Then you could say that Zuckerberg is in fact running your profile and ruining the social ecosystem by essentially laundering crime to lower his costs.
Okay, that makes sense, I didn't know Amazon does that.
> Imagine the worst torture you can think of that doesn’t leave the victim disabled, something you can’t deny is cruel: burning, flogging — take your pick. If the victims themselves would prefer this torture to imprisonment, the inescapable conclusion is that prison is worse, even more cruel. I, and every prisoner I have asked, would prefer any amount of pain and cruelty, for a limited duration, to the years and decades we’re forced to spend here—spirits crushed, hope abandoned, relegated to irrelevance.
People will say they choose all sorts of theoretical punishments that have no chance of happening. In reality, I doubt very many people would actually go through with it if actually given the chance.
Philosophically, it's an interesting idea for discussion.
Sentence criminals to a certain amount of pain, and let them choose whether to experience it via decades of low-grade boredom, or hours/minutes/seconds of intense agony.
Personally, in an ideal world that is not this one, I think that prison serves the dual purpose of rehabilitation and removal-from-society, and that the "voluntary torture" approach serves neither end. But in our actual world, prison is only sometimes barely-rehabilitative, and I'm not sure how valuable removal from society is on its own. So... interesting discussion, at least.
Philosophically interesting, but I'm not sure it really serves all the purposes prison has. There are four widely recognized ones: retribution, discouragement of crime, protection of society (via isolation of harmful members), and rehabilitation. A short period of intense suffering, even supposing you could inflict an equivalent amount of "pain units", only addresses retribution and discouragement of crime.
As for protection of society, I don't think Ross Ulbricht would be a threat to society if he were released now. He is in prison mainly to serve as an example to others. There are probably a lot of other people like him in prison.
As for rehabilitation, I would think that in most cases it could be better accomplished via a community based program. For example, drug rehab works better in drug treatment facilities than in prison.
Sure, I'm not speaking specifically of Ross' case, but the general case of prisoners preferring a quick, extreme punishment to a drawn out, mild punishment.
I agree that Ross is not someone who is a serious reoffender risk. OTOH, justice professionals might feel differently based on his lack of contrition (this typically counts against convicts at sentencing, partly because there's a view that it says something about recidivism risk). https://fortune.com/2015/06/01/why-a-judge-threw-the-book-at...
There are cases where we want to punish some behavior, but it is not necessary to remove them from society.
An example is for example the Enron case. The executives needed to be punished, but I doubt they were an ongoing threat to society after they had been exposed.
Ross Ulbricht is another example. I doubt that he is an ongoing threat to society but still needs some punishment for breaking the law.
Bernie Madoff is another example. I doubt that he is an ongoing threat to society, but he is in prison as punishment and to serve as a deterrent to others.
In cases like these, the "voluntary corporal punishment" might be an option.
The ever-interesting thing about Ulbricht – every thread devolves into a discussion on whether he "paid someone to murder someone else".
Every stitch of evidence says he did. Defenders will make two claims: 1. he was never charged – despite the fact the schemes were absolutely a part of the conspiracy charges he was convicted of or 2. the evidence was planted!
The first fact being provably untrue and the second being impossible to disprove.
Prison is a dark, and horrendous existence. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I would spend a lifetime avoiding it. I believe in rehabilitation and remorse. I don't believe in "throwing away" people who make mistakes.
But once you've decided that the death of one person is worth less than the "value" of your business, a business specifically designed to thwart obvious laws for your own profit, I have a hard time finding sympathy for you, beyond the basic sympathy I'd extend anyone who is being forced to live with the consequences of their actions.
I agree the punishment is to harsh for drug smuggling, but if he did attempt to murder six people, then it's not. He should have his day in court for attempted murder.
He had his day and the charge was dismissed and can never be brought back. In the US at least this is a done deal as far as the justice system is concerned.
My "favorite" thing about the case was how the feds found him buying a fake id in a "random" customs check. I'll bet you there was some parallel construction going on.
FWIW I have a hard time having sympathy for a drug kingpin hacker doing hard time. Mess with the best, die like the rest.
> I don’t claim that we don’t need to keep some people separated from free society.
Like people who contract the murders of other other people, in order to keep their criminal empire, with zero remorse or appreciation what they have done? Exactly.
That always seemed like a frame job to me. Ross was a good kid from Westlake with utopian ideals who got in over his head, so they had to smear his character for this takedown so the public could stomach it. The FBI also stole 1600 Bitcoins in the process, so it's not like the agents involved didn't have an incentive. [1]
They wanted to make an example out of him, and to add insult to injury, they took him out on a bullshit charge so he couldn't become a martyr for his well-meaning ideals of ending prohibition.
[1] https://news.bitcoin.com/rogue-silk-road-agent-admits-to-ste...
He wasn't convicted of that, so...
Nor even charged
Like people who are framed? By corrupt agents, who also got sentenced by the way?
Yeah, throw away the keys. Why not send him to Guantanamo while we're at it? There are plenty of innocent people there to keep him company.
Reading this, it sounds like he is not pleading not guilty, but rather saying whatever has been done but blah blah I don't deserve this. Reading into his thought process feels very dark, I may be reading too much here but there almost seems to be some subtle undertones of vengeance and encouraging (maybe his past friends) to help seek revenge to what happened to him.