The Hated One
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The truth and lies about Ross Ulbricht
🕑 Added 2025-01-23 14:08:02 +0000 UTCAll my thoughts and debrief on what's happened to Ross Ulbricht
From my notes:
Trump pardons Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7e0jve875o
US President Donald Trump says he has signed a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, who operated Silk Road, the dark web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold.
Ulbricht was convicted in 2015 in New York in a narcotics and money-laundering conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison.
Trump championed Ulbricht's cause, joining libertarians who said the conviction was an example of government overreach. On Tuesday, he said he had called Ulbricht's mother to inform her that he had granted a pardon to her son.
Silk Road, which was shut down in 2013 after police arrested Ulbricht, sold illegal drugs using Bitcoin, as well as hacking equipment and stolen passports.
Ulbricht was found guilty of charges including conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking.
Dismissal with prejudice: https://freeross.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Doc_14_Dismissal_Indictment_7-26-2018.pdf
Allegations Never Prosecuted and Dismissed: https://freeross.org/false-allegations/
After Ross was arrested in San Francisco in 2013, he was sent to NYC for prosecution. At his bail hearing in NYC, prosecutors alleged that Ross planned murder-for-hire on six people he had never met and claimed that he was too dangerous to be granted bail.
Yet, when Ross was indicted a few months later in early 2014, the allegations were absent from the indictment.[2] Later, when Ross’s trial took place in NYC in early 2015, the murder-for-hire allegations were still absent from his charges. The NYC prosecution never charged Ross for murder-for-hire and all his charges at trial were non-violent.
Right after Ross’s arrest, prosecutors in the state of Maryland filed a separate indictment that contained the only allegation of murder-for-hire ever filed against Ross. The indictment referenced an alleged hit on Curtis Green, a Silk Road administrator (more on Curtis Green below). For nearly five years, that indictment was left untouched, unprosecuted. Eventually, in July 2018, the District of Maryland dismissed it with prejudice, meaning it can never be re-filed or used against Ross again.[3][4]It was never proven that Ross was the one who authored any of the online anonymous chats and text files the allegations relied on. There is hard evidence and testimony—even from the lead Silk Road investigator—showing that multiple people operated the top administrator account under the Dread Pirate Roberts (“DPR” for short) handle.
Unprosecuted and now dismissed, the only allegation of murder-for-hire ever filed against Ross was filed in Maryland, where rampant corruption occurred during the Silk Road investigation. The indictment was based on information provided by corrupt federal agent Carl Mark Force, who had unfettered access to Silk Road and admittedly took over accounts and “sought deliberately to undermine the integrity of the ongoing investigation.”[5][6] Carl Force and Shaun Bridges, another corrupt agent, had full admin privileges to Silk Road, meaning they could usurp control of any account, including that of DPR, and change anything in the Silk Road database, such as forum posts and chat messages.[7][8] Both Force and Bridges were sent to prison for their crimes related to the Silk Road investigation.
Corrupt DEA agent
Former DEA Agent Sentenced for Extortion, Money Laundering and Obstruction Related to Silk Road Investigation: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-dea-agent-sentenced-extortion-money-laundering-and-obstruction-related-silk-road
A former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent was sentenced today to 78 months in prison for extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice, which crimes he committed while working as an undercover agent investigating Silk Road, an online marketplace used to facilitate the sale and purchase of illegal drugs and other contraband.
Carl M. Force, 46, of Baltimore, pleaded guilty on July 1, 2015, before U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg of the Northern District of California. In addition to imposing the prison term, the court ordered Force to pay $340,000 in restitution and serve three years of supervised release following his sentence.
Force was a special agent with the DEA for 15 years. From 2012 through 2013, he was assigned to the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force, a multi-agency group investigating illegal activity on the Silk Road. Force served as an undercover agent and was tasked with, among other things, establishing communications with a target of the investigation, Ross Ulbricht, aka “Dread Pirate Roberts.”
In connection with his guilty plea, Force admitted that, while working in an undercover capacity using his DEA-sanctioned persona, “Nob,” in the summer of 2013, Force offered to sell Ulbricht fake drivers’ licenses and “inside” law enforcement information about the Silk Road investigation. Force admitted that he attempted to conceal his communications with Ulbricht about the payments by directing Ulbricht to use encrypted messaging. Force admitted that he understood the payments from Ulbricht, which were made in bitcoin, were government property, as they constituted evidence of a crime, and that he falsified official reports and stole the funds, which he deposited into his own personal account. Force admitted that, as Nob, he received bitcoin payments from Ulbricht worth more than approximately $100,000.
In addition, Force admitted that he devised and participated in a scheme to fraudulently obtain additional funds from Ulbricht through another online persona, “French Maid,” of which his task force colleagues were not aware. Force admitted that, as French Maid, he solicited and received bitcoin payments from Ulbricht worth approximately $100,000 in exchange for information concerning the government’s investigation into the Silk Road.
Comments
The Hated One
Not at all! I encourage feedback. I am just a person with flaws and biases and it's necessary to hear what people have to say.
oo
no problem. hope you didn’t get the wrong intension from my message. appreciate you’re work!
The Hated One
I'll check it and read about it. Thanks for sharing. I really appreciate it.
oo
yea I get you, just wanted to make u aware about something that’s also a big issue atm. you’ll never guess how much this stuff is being abused
The Hated One
Hey. I am not really an expert on this, I am not sure I have that much more to say. I was just trying to bring forward different arguments.
oo
this was just out the top of my head im not 100% sure bout this
oo
Hey, im not English, so my grammar might suck! Thanks for the episode, it’s great. wanted to comment about the drug part in the ending. I used to do drugs, and everything I consumed was completely legal. So in case the of the ending of this ep, making drugs out of thin air, could be completely legal. There is a thing called NPS (new psychoactive substances), it’s pretty interesting you should read into it a bit to understand what i mean! Please let me know what you think about it. Not tryna judge you but just wanted to tell you about it. Love your work!
The Hated One
Hey, that's actually an important part of the story. If you follow the BBC article I linked, there is a mention that the judge hope this would deter others from operating a site on For, but right after the shutdown of Silkroad, even bigger marketplaces opens up. The market demand for this seems to be too great for even the risk of a life sentence. That being sent, I don't think Ulbricht was a saint either and I think other people, like Snowden, were far more deserving of a pardon but will probably never get it. And you are also correct that criminals are learning from Ulbricht's opsec mistakes. It's a case that's been studied deeply by the broader infosec community too. Due to the fact that he was actually breaking the law and did so knowingly, maybe a 10-year sentence would be justifiable. But a life sentence is very brutal. Thank you so much for your valuable inputs and feedback. I really appreciate all of it!
Sentinel Sten
Good episode, thanks for sharing. We discussed some points in your previous post and here are my final thoughts: His sentencing was overstated, overcharged in comparison with more severe crimes that actually harm people. And punishing that person unjustly as to make an example of him is no justice at all, it is retributive, focusing on punishing the individual as an end in itself, rather than prioritizing rehabilitation. It is punishment for something that hasn't even happened. And his investigators turned out to be the bigger criminals by stealing from the country and taking advantage of this operation for personal benefits. Silk road, you say, was apparently regulated to the point where harmful material is not permitted by the moderators, which would make it a truly libre store with absence of government regulations. Since his imprisonment 10 years ago, how many people were deterred from operating illegal drug websites on the dark net? I'd like to think that the criminals didn't think twice, and it was obvious that an effective example could not have been made. If anything the new criminals would learn from his mistakes and improve. He's been in jail for a long time, it could be considered that he has served his penalty long enough. As an avid proponent of rectitude, equity, and justice, I find the principles under which he was convicted to be inequitable and slanted towards prejudice.
