Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

Murder. You forgot murder. About 6 attempted murders. Murder.

 

he wasn't convicted of murder. Wasn't even charged with murder. Commodore listed everything correctly that he was charged with (he was found guilty on every charge).

 

The question did not address the full circumstances of what lead to his sentencing. Convictions and charges alone are not used in determining sentencing. The manner in which the crime was committed and the character of the individual being sentenced are also regarded. The question concerning what charges or convictions lead to the sentencing are incomplete and must address other issues. Such as attempted murder.

 

He was charged under the Kingpin statute and the enterprise's acts included murder for hire plots.

It's in the indictment.

 

http://www.epixhd.com/movie/deep-web/

Pretty cool documentary made by Alex Winters. Free if you have epix channel.

 

Thank you for clearing that up. There appears to have been a lot of confusion. I wonder if some of the confusion was intentional misinformation.

 

To follow up on his point, you don't even need to read the indictment. The article the OP posted had a quote from the judge stating directly that the murder for hire was a basis for the decision. And IIRC she took into account 5 of the 6 accusations of murder for hire.

I don't think it was misinformation as much as failure to read the article or at the least skim it.

 

Nope . he has been charged with attempted murder, but that is a later trial in Baltimore. The judge was very careful in the sentencing to never bring up murder.

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-creator-ross-ulbricht-sentenced-life-prison/

Like I said before, Commodore had every thing correct. No murder anywhere in any of the charges. This is not to say he didn't hire a hit on someone.

 

They never became charges but were brought up by the judge. Unless I am missing something, those 5 out of 6 murder attempts were used against him. From the article:

 

Sorry smallanvor, the murder plots were an element of the CCE charge (as well as a used to establish other elements of other charges)

I don't use "wired" - I use federal court records; from a motion in limine decided on Jan 15 of this year:

Further, the evidence has additional relevance to the CCE charge in Count Four. One of the elements of the CCE offense is that defendant occupied "a position of organizer, a supervisory position, or any other position of management." Aiello, 864 F.2d at 264 . Evidence that Ulbricht solicited murders-for-hire of individuals who threatened Silk Road is relevant to show Ulbricht's supervisory role in the criminal enterprise—that he protected the criminal enterprise of which he was the leader. The first alleged murder-for-hire solicitation is particularly probative in this regard because the target was a Silk Road employee. Ulbricht suspected an employee of stealing approximately $350,000 worth of bitcoins from vendor accounts, and his alleged response—to solicit another Silk Road user to murder the Employee—shows that he occupied a central managerial role in the criminal enterprise. Evidence that Ulbricht expressed surprise that the Employee stole from him because he had the Employee's driver's license (obtained in connection with the Employee's work on Silk Road) is further proof that Ulbricht was at the top of the Silk Road hierarchy.12

 

Looks like it has been further backed by the evidence you used in this post.

 

True, but surely you are not claiming that the usual punishment is life without parole?

 

Ross tried to murder a few people after being prompted by undercovers.

of course the agents who went after him extorted him for money and were accused of fraud, and most likely broke the CFAA (never resolved), the same set of laws they used to drive Aaron Swartz to suicide.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/30/silk-road-agents-accused-fraud

nothing to see here though other than rampant over-prosecution of cyberoffenses.

 

Max Butler says "Hi".

 

The penalties for violating the Kingpin statute that Ulbricht was convicted under can go all the way up to death, if actual murder occurs.

 

I hate to break it you bro but unfortunately you're in the same boat steered by the Commodore, who happens to be a Robert Hazelwood at the helm.

Just because you use bitcoins and the dark Web to facilitate drug trafficking and murder plots rather than prepaid cell phones or stash houses doesn't make it any less of a crime and certainly doesn't render said crimes into a bunch of (nonviolent harmless DAT BE DA SUBTEXT AMIRITE) cyberoffenses - regardless of what one thinks about drug laws.

 

I'm with SamFisher on this one.

Also I'd hope the agents who were scumbags and broke a bunch of laws get what's coming to them.

Also, an aside, but I think it is kind of dumb to just say he "created the marketplace" ... But I'd say the same for Ebay. It's be one thing for someone to say sell something on EBay described as one thing and ship it and have it be a bomb that blows. Ebay shouldn't be liable for that. It's another if someone on EBay is advertising something illegal and sells it. Then... In my opinion, Ebay should be liable and individuals at EBay should be liable.

 

I agree that hiring for murder is a crime no matter where it happens.

I just think that in a case where prosecuting agents have been accused of committing fraud and extortion, there would be more attention paid to potential CFAA and Fourth Amendment violations in looking for evidence--"fruits of the poisonous tree" my amateur law sleuthing is telling me.

I've read the technical specifications of what the FBI on and off claims what happened for them to get the server IP address, and I'm of the opinion that something isn't right here at all--and that something won't be properly examined which is a problem not only in this case, but any other.

The prosecution of Ross rests on a shaky continual legacy of infiltrations, arrests, and jailings that show a disproportionate zeal and one-sided focus on cyberoffenses. Who watches the watchers? When it comes to prosecutions like this, a precious few apparantly.

 

I'm pretty sure if he had created a real-life location for illegal things to be bought and sold, the Feds would have gone after him there too. And if necessary, used informants and traps and the like to catch him.

 

Would they have committed fraud, tried to extort him and violated federal laws doing so? That seems a step beyond "informants and traps".

Would they also be arguing over unsettled areas of the law with broad implications, sometimes arbitrarily?

There are a LOT of legal minefields this case and others like it trip, nevermind technical ones.

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/feds-silk-road-hack-legal/

The bolded means that something as arbitrary as using a cloud service that contracts with European server hosts would expose Americans to varying arbitrary degrees of legal protection for their fundamental right to privacy.

it's not a trifling manner. and I think in a rush to prosecute and over-prosecute anybody online, from script kiddies running mainly harmless DDoS attacks to virtual druglords--the government is causing unneeded harm itself.

The horse has left the stable in any case. The darknet is filled with Silk Road clones now, many of them perhaps even worse than what Ross sunk to.