dreadpirateroberts
Latest
Ross Ulbricht appeals his Silk Road conviction
Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht isn't taking his conviction laying down. His attorneys have appealed for a new trial in the case, primarily citing evidence of corrupt DEA and Secret Service agents that wasn't revealed until after the original trial. Allegedly, the government hid the agents' bitcoin laundering activities until it was too late, potentially skewing the outcome. As they both worked together and had experience with forensics (in the Secret Service agent's case), there's a possibility that they could have planted evidence to guarantee the conviction.
The Silk Road bust almost didn't happen
Officials like to boast about taking down Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht (aka Dread Pirate Roberts), but it turns out that they almost didn't get him at all. The New York Times has learned that the Internal Revenue Service's Greg Alford spent months sifting through chat logs and other details to link Ulbricht to the online black market, but the DEA and FBI didn't take the tax investigator's work seriously. If it weren't for his insistence on pursuing the case and reviewing evidence, Ulbricht might still be running the Dark Web service today.
Another Silk Road spy pleaded guilty to laundering bitcoins
$820,000. That's how much former Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges pilfered in bitcoin during his time investigating the online black market, Silk Road. Bridges pleaded guilty to money laundering and obstruction of justice recently and the Department of Justice says that it was analyzing the "block chain and data" from Silk Road's servers that lead the breadcrumb trail of ill-gotten gains back to him. Bridges funneled his 20,000 bitcoins, at that time worth $350,000, through a series of "complex transactions" with a stop at Mt. Gox before transferring them into US dollars in early 2013. It isn't nearly as flagrant as his colleague Carl Force's transgressions (a movie deal? Seriously?), but the amount of money Bridges tried stealing was an awful lot higher.
Silk Road investigator pleads guilty to stealing bitcoins
Disgraced DEA agent Carl Force has pleaded guilty to charges of extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice. The official committed the crimes while himself investigating the online black market Silk Road, as well as the activities of its founder, Russ "Dread Pirate Roberts" Ulbricht. In a statement from the Department of Justice, Force used "Nob," a DEA-sanctioned online persona to conduct some after hours business with Ulbricht, amongst other things.
Silk Road creator could spend decades behind bars
Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht aka Dread Pirate Roberts will be an old man by the time he gets out of prison. The 31-year-old is already expected to serve a minimum of 20 years after being found guilty on seven charges, including money laundering and narcotics trafficking. But the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, is aiming to get an even lengthier sentence, one "substantially above the mandatory minimum." In a letter for New York Judge Katherine B. Forrest, Bharara's office wrote (emphasis ours):
Silk Road Survival: In conversation with 'Deep Web' director Alex Winter
An unassuming, Mormon family man. A brilliant physics and engineering student with a goofy smile. Five years ago, neither of these men knew each other, let alone suspected that they'd be drawn into a web suffused with libertarian dogma, hard drugs and the sort of rhetorical dedication that allegedly drove that student -- Ross Ulbricht -- to order a hit on that family man. That's the weighty world that digital documentarian Alex Winter set out to explore in his new film, Deep Web. By his own admission, the documentary -- which first appeared at SXSW in March and hits Epix on May 31st -- can't tell the whole story of the Silk Road, an anonymous bazaar of hallucinogens, hitmen and, really, whatever you were looking for. Ulbricht is still behind bars after being found guilty of all seven charges leveled at him earlier this year, which included narcotics trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering. One even crowned him a "kingpin," and stuck him with the punishment attached to the title. While he and the rest of us wait to see what his sentencing holds, though, Deep Web acts as an important crash course in the events that led to all this. We spoke to director Winter to understand how and why he put the story together on film.
Judge denies mistrial in case against Silk Road's founder (again)
If you were hoping that Ross Ulbricht (Dread Pirate Roberts of Silk Road fame) was going to get a retrial, you might wanna walk those expectations back a bit. Okay; a lot. Despite the two former federal agents involved in the investigation purportedly stealing bitcoins and committing wire fraud during the investigation, the presiding judge Katherine Forrest has denied a motion for a new trial. Albrecht's defense protested, saying that the warrantless attempts to identify the Silk Road server violated his privacy rights and that the corruption charges demanded another look to see if the case had been tainted, as Wired tells it. None of that changed her mind though. She says that the evidence of Ulbricht's guilt was "overwhelming" and that there was little chance that conceding to any of those defenses would alter the outcome of the trial at all.
US Marshals will auction 50,000 Bitcoins seized from Silk Road
Want a virtual piece of law enforcement history? You're about to get your chance. The US Marshal's Service is holding an auction on December 4th that will sell off 50,000 Bitcoins from Ross Ulbricht (aka Dread Pirate Roberts), the alleged founder of the black market website Silk Road. You'll need plenty of real-world cash to get your hands on this digital currency, though. The feds are selling the digital currency in batches of 2,000 to 3,000 coins, and you'll need to place a minimum $100,000 deposit by December 1st to claim one of them. Not exactly an impulse purchase, then. At least this isn't the last auction you'll see -- police seized a total of 144,000 Bitcoins in the Silk Road bust last year, and roughly half of them have yet to go on sale. [Image credit: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer]
'Deep Web' is a show based on the Silk Road story
If the hacker bits in House of Cards' second season stoked a fire in you for the illicit parts of the internet, maybe Spike TV and Gary Oldman (pictured above) have you covered. The former has partnered with the latter and a few others to produce a series called Deep Web about, you guessed it, the hidden version of the internet where one can buy just about anything you could imagine. Like hacking software, drugs and automatic weaponry, for example. The show is based on Ross Ulbricht's ascension to the top of the online underworld and the Silk Road's bitcoin shopping mall, according to Deadline. Other details are scarce at the moment including when we might actually see it and how fictionalized it'll be (our guess? pretty heavily), but there's plenty of time for that info to surface, we'd imagine. For now, let's just hope there are 100 percent less guinea pigs and obscure techno than in what we've seen recently. [Image credit: AFP/Getty Images]
FBI seizes black market website Silk Road, arrests its founder
Light just reached one of the darker corners of the web: the FBI has seized Silk Road, a site infamous for hosting anonymized, Bitcoin-based drug and gun sales. The move follows a sting operation that also led to the arrest of site founder Ross Ulbricht (aka Dread Pirate Roberts) for alleged hacking, money laundering and narcotics trafficking. While the seizure isn't likely to stop online contraband purchases, it's potentially a big blow. At current Bitcoin values, Silk Road generated $1.2 billion in revenue from just two years of operation -- the kind of cash that we'd expect from a large, legitimate e-commerce venture. The FBI's move also demonstrates that anonymizing technology like Tor won't always keep law enforcement at bay.
