Ross Ulbricht, sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for creating the darknet marketplace Silk Road, cheap.
Ulbricht is a freedom fighter to some, and a dangerous criminal to others. The first one knows Ulbricht as described in Forbes“A principled libertarian and cypherpunk in the same vein as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto”.
Ulbricht had a theory: that violent drug cartels would have no chance of sustaining themselves in a free market environment where the state did not control the use of substances, because non-violent operations would simply outperform the violent ones based on demand.
Most who believe the latter, however, often base their opinion on claims that Ulbricht tried to hire a hitman on the former Silk Road administrator, who was under accused of stealing bitcoin from the site. While Ulbricht's supporters rejoice, critics ask: why would an online community defend so strongly a tried murderer?
So the controversies and total corruption surrounding Ulbricht's accusation should not be ignored.
The charges against Ulbricht
On February 5, 2015, a jury in the Southern District of New York Ulbricht was found guilty non-violent crimes only, including multiple charges of narcotics distribution, computer hacking, conspiracy to operate a criminal enterprise, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The judge sentenced Ulbricht to two life sentences plus forty years without the possibility of parole – nearly twice the sentence of Sinaloa violent leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The alleged murder arose out of recruitment costs out of another caseregistered in May 2013 in Maryland. The indictment alleged, based on chat logs obtained from the Silk Road site, that Ulbricht attempted to murder Curtis Green to steal bitcoin from the project.
As the chat logs read according to the case, Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR), the nickname given to Ulbricht, wrote to another Silk Road user, who he believed to be a drug kingpin who was able to order a hitter:
“I would like to beat him up, (sic) then he made him return the bitcoins he stole. (sic) sit down at his computer and make him do it.”
A day later, the indictment says, DPR reportedly changed his mind, writing: “Can you change the order to death rather than torture?”
According to the indictment, DPR said Green “was on the inside for a while, and now that he's been arrested, I'm afraid he's going to give information,” reportedly saying that he had “never killed anyone before, but this is the right move in this case.”
A few days later, $40,000 was deposited into the hitman's account, and DPR requested “proof of death” via video or photos to send the rest of the payment.
On February 21, 2013, King told DPR that Green was dead – “they killed him this weekend,” he wrote, telling him that he had died of asphyxiation, and that the body had been destroyed to completely to destroy evidence.
Except it wasn't a king's pen. It was DEA agent Carl Force who, as it would turn out later, liked to get involved in a small criminal enterprise himself when he got the chance.
Real Theft And Fake Murder
During the investigation, Green had been cooperating with law enforcement, providing DEA Agent Carl Force and Secret Service Shaun Bridges access to the Silk Road site.
During one of the law enforcement sessions on Silk Road, a series of “massive thefts” occurred on the site, which would later be traced back to Bridges. plead guilty to steal $350,000 in bitcoin during the robbery, or $800,000 at the time of his guilty plea.
That account, run by Bridges and in consultation with Force, had received “at least 20,000 bitcoins,” according to the complaint. Force, posing as the drug kingpin “Nob”, then staged the fake hit and, along with Bridges, faked Green's death.
Force went on to create the false identity “Death from Above” to extort $250,000 from DPR, saying: “I know you had something to do with the disappearance and death (Green's ). I just wanted to let you know I'm coming. you (…) You are a dead man.
Bridges was sentenced to 24 months in prison to run consecutive to a 71-month sentence he received for a similar offense in 2015, while the Force was sentenced to 78 months in prison. Information about the corrupt agents was never made available for use in Ulbricht's defense.
Who is the dread pirate Roberts
Dread Pirate Roberts, the pseudonym given to Ulbricht, taken from the 1973 novel “The Princess Bride” by William Goldman, shows an identity that multiple characters assume. The identity of the Dread Pirate Roberts, as written by Goldman, is shared between pirates to intimidate opponents, and given in secrecy.
During the public proceedings of the case, evidence emerged that DPR Silk Road was not run solely by Ulbricht. In a conversation with old friend Richard Bates, who helped Ulbricht establish the Silk Road site, Ulbricht responded with “Glad that's not my problem anymore” when I was told about the news coverage of the site.
During the trial, prosecutors tried the defense stopped from questioning another law enforcement official, special agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan of the Department of Homeland Security, who believed that DPR was Mark Kapeles – the former Commander of Mt. Gox, who was later convicted of deleting the records of Mt. Gox and reducing the supply exchange's records by tens of millions.
Der-Yeghiayan had referred to an exclusive interview with DPR in Forbes, in which the pseudonymous Silk Road operator had said that “he did not actually create the Silk Road, but rather befriended the creator and later acquired the site from him.
According to Der-Yeghiayan, DPR's handwriting was very similar to that of the suspect, Mark Kapeles – and Der-Yeghiayan is not the only one who claims that DPR looked like someone else. As Dark Wallet developer Amir Taaki said:
“Years ago, when I sent a message to Silk Road, I had a conversation with the DPR – a very personal conversation where he (talked) about how he one day hopes to be on the side of the out fighting for freedom together. You know, without having. A year (or) two years later when I messaged the guy – I'm pretty sure he wasn't the same guy the attitude in me was very different from the eager and wordy DPR of the early days. “
This argument was further supported by a prominent Silk Road vendor, who claimed that there were 'at least two other people – if not three people' – who were running Silk Road. ” Der-Yeghiayan confirms this belief in an email ten days before Ulbricht's arrest, telling that “We helped the other two administrators get away.”
Silk Road employee Andrew Jones, who had set up a 'secret handshake' with Ulbricht in 2012 to confirm identity, didn't think Ulbricht was the late DPR, either.
According to court documents, Jones asked DPR for a book recommendation, to which the correct answer would be “anything by Rothbard” – an answer that DPR did not give when asked a year later.
To add intellectual insult to operational injury, someone had to login to DPR account six weeks after the arrest of Ulbricht, who was in federal custody at the time – perhaps it was the corrupt agents, who had administrative access to the site, or another DPR all together.
As said by Green himself: “and to all those who say 'were there several DPRs', of course there was – I was once a DPR. So if I was, who else?”
Regarding the murder-for-hire charges, Green said that he did not believe that Ulbricht ordered a blow on him. As Green said in 2017:
“Ross Ulbricht got a raw deal. There's a lot more to the Silk Road story than people know, and I can't talk about it yet. I don't believe Ross is dangerous or a character to be order a hit on anyone.
To cut to the chase: yes, Ross Ulbricht operated Silk Road. No, it looks like Ross Ulbricht is not the only person with access to the DPR account. Ross Ulbricht was never convicted of the murder-for-hire charges. The case was dismissed in 2018 with prejudice, meaning it could no longer be filed.
For all we know, we are all Dread Pirate Roberts.
