Seized Silk Road Bitcoin To Clear Ross Ulbricht's $183M Debt (coindesk.com) 83
Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht will see his $183 million debt wiped out following the seizure of $3 billion in bitcoin connected to an unnamed Silk Road hacker, according to a court filing. From a report: In 2015, Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He was also ordered to pay $183 million in restitution, a figure calculated from the total illegal sales on Silk Road using an exchange rate at the time of each transaction. Court documents in 2020 reveal that the Justice Department seized 69,370 bitcoins from a hacker who moved the trove to a private wallet in April 2013. Ulbricht has been given a surprising reprieve, with the Justice Department making a deal with him in February 2021 that forfeits any claim Ulbricht may have had to the stolen bitcoin in exchange for the restitution to be repaid once the bitcoin is sold.
I do not understand (Score:2)
How could he have been expected to pay anything if he has life without parole?
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Re:I do not understand (Score:4, Interesting)
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or bored day-drinkers
What about the not-bored day-drinkers? What should we do?
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Have a drink. That's what I'm doing
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But he did not steal anything, did not damage anything. There is nothing to "restitute".
Indeed. The money was received from willing customers.
This is just government persecution of a job-creating entrepreneur.
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Typically any money put into his commissary account over a certain amount will go to pay fines.
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If he had debt while being in jail, debt recovery agencies could go for his personal assets. With the debt paid off, his relatives may still get something in his will.
Am I missing something here? (Score:1)
If he's sentenced to live without parole, how many f*cks does he give about debt?
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I don't understand why he would agree to any deal that didn't allow him out of prison
Why would he care? (Score:2)
If he has a federal life sentence, what could they possibly offer that he cares about?
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Debt and a massive freezing of his assets makes it difficult for him to hire a lawyer for appeals.
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They could make life nicer for him in prison. There's a huge difference between being in SuperMax and Club Fed. Even within a prison, there are different levels of treatment.
in some prisons toilet paper is something you pay (Score:2)
in some prisons toilet paper is something you pay for.
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what could they possibly offer that he cares about?
Conjugal visits with his GF would be nice.
Time (Score:2)
69,370 bitcoins.. (Score:1)
..is a lot of doll hairs.
So why did we send this guy to prison for life? (Score:5, Insightful)
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https://reason.com/2018/07/25/... [reason.com]
Re:So why did we send this guy to prison for life? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent up (Score:2)
With something like that you could craft laws to put anyone behind bars for life with ease. Just pass a law that criminalizes something with a potential life sentence and the judge will always have a ready-made excuse to levvy the
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Re:So why did we send this guy to prison for life? (Score:5, Informative)
Basically because he tried to hire a hitman (or did hire and the "hitman" ran off with the money). He wasn't convicted of it in court, but the government showed evidence of it during the sentencing stage, so the judge gave him the maximum sentence available (for the crimes he was convicted for). When he appealed, the evidence helped convince the appellate court that the sentence was fair.
What was the evidence? I don't know, that's beyond my research time.
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I remember the murder for hire incident, and the evidence was fairly damning, but Life without Parole for for Dread Pirate Roberts?
Ulbricht was 26 years of age when he started Silk Road, and not yet 30 when he was arrested... certainly, young enough for redemption.
If you hire a hitman rather than attempt the murder yourself, are you a less violent offender? Seems like that dataset would skew advantage to the wealthy since they can more easily budget subcontracting out the wet work. About time they get a br
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If you hire a hitman rather than attempt the murder yourself, are you a less violent offender?
That's fully premeditated.
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If you hire a hitman rather than attempt the murder yourself, are you a less violent offender?
That's fully premeditated.
It is, but if we agree that not all men are predisposed to red-handed murder, might we also stipulate that, "Without the subcontractor, no murder would have occurred?"
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I am sympathetic to him, but there must be something wrong with his head if he actually does try to murder people. Not just thinks about it, but pays for it.
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It was a setup, it was one of the investigators who pushed him to murder. It was the investigator who 'carried out' (not really) the murder. It was all so they could justify locking up a peaceful man. They lied, mislead and manipulated him into that so they could have the higher moral ground. Otherwise they would have just been locking up a guy who found a less violent way to provide commodities to people who wanted them.
The drug war is a con.
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It was a setup, it was one of the investigators who pushed him to murder.
Yeah, that's something you made up.
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> Yeah, that's something you made up.
No, that's what happened. They framed the sites admin with a package of 20k of coke on his front doorstep, then stole coins of the site and blamed the admin, then suggested that Russ kill the guy.
It was 100% a setup so that they could charge a guy who had done something immoral (like murder) rather than just a guy who helped people get their medicines (drugs).
The whole thing was a fabricated setup by the investigators. Without their deliberate manipulation there was n
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That's fully premeditated.
Why does "premeditation" make murder worse?
It seems to me that a guy who kills in a sudden fit of rage is more dangerous than someone who plans carefully.
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The way I see it someone who murders *randomly* in a fit of undirected rage would be locked up in a mental facility pending evaluation because he's a danger to potentially everyone. Someone who murders another in a fit of directed rage because of some beef is only dangerous to people who directly have a "reason" to be killed in the moment and so is less of a danger to society in general.
Why specifically premeditated is worse I can't really pin down other than a feeling that someone who plans a crime also pl
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Because most of us feel confident in our ability to not provoking others into murderous rages. So far I've been very successful at that.
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These are compelling points that you make. Thanks.
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"ignore all the other ways in which society has access to drugs and just focus on this one because bitcoin!"
Yes, the federal government certainly doesn't care about any other drug dealers. That's why he is the only person in prison over drugs.
Re:So why did we send this guy to prison for life? (Score:4, Informative)
Even if there weren't a string of dead bodies to tie to SilkRoad, the magnitude of his gross disregard for local and international laws rises to the level of justifying a life sentence without the possibility of parole. You don't need to be a murderer to justify a life sentence - that's just the most obvious example.
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You don't need to be a murderer to justify a life sentence
Fuck that. You should absolutely have to do a very small list of crimes to qualify for a life sentence. Murder, raping kids, torture, or directing others you exert authority over to do those, that's it. Implementing a sales platform for drug and financial crimes doesn't rise to the equivalent of murder.
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Implementing a sales platform for drug and financial crimes doesn't rise to the equivalent of murder.
The human trafficking part might, though.
Not charged with human trafficking (Score:2)
The human trafficking part might, though.
But he wasn't charged with human trafficking. Sentencing needs to reflect the charges.
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Sorry, we already hold drug dealers accountable for overdose deaths. Not as often as we should, but as a matter of law, we do. And the man who orders a hit on Silkroad (for example) . . . since he's not the trigger-man, I suppose he should get something less than a life sente
Re: So why did we send this guy to prison for life (Score:1)
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Are we really a better and safer society because this guy is going to spend his dying day behind bars?
Are we better and safer? Yes. Not sure if life imprisonment is necessarily proportional but someone who en-mass provided illegal services to others including drug trafficking and money laundering services, but you don't need to go and kill someone directly to do something illegal. Or many things illegal. Or even run a business and make profits based on providing illegal services to other people trying to do something illegal. Given the scope of his operations it's inconceivable that he wasn't indirectly res
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And you're completely fucking wrong at the end. The central issue in his appeals were that the judge sentenced him for the murder-for-hire bullshit even though he wasn't convicted of it at trial. Th
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Buying drugs on the street, where there's a risk for violence and zero seller/product reputation, does not make anyone safer.
You said it yourself, there's a risk for violence and zero seller/product reputation. That turns people away. Make no mistake this is not a zero sum game.
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Our implementation of justice is far from perfect, and it includes numerous examples where the punishment is mismatched to the crime.
Those with power naturally see crimes of disobedience to them which enrichen plebs up to higher social classes as capital offenses, whereas something like a pleb murdering another pleb is quite petty. Their perspective is only one voice in the conversation of legislation, but a loud one.
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So, he did contract a murder.
Yes, the hired hitmen were actually federal agents so nobody was murdered, and yes they turned out to be corrupt because they stole bitcoin. P
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> I have not seen anything refuting that.
I looked into this a while back. The data is out there for those who wish to look.
Top evidentiary points I recall:
* This was based on the testimony of those corrupts cops.
* There were 4 DPR's based on stylometry and usage patterns. One of them wrote this, allegedly, and it didn't match the one they said Ulbricht was.
* Ulbricht has a solid alibi making him unable to be online when these messages were sent.
Are those all bulletproof? No. Is there a reasonable do
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> I have not seen anything refuting that.
Yah... no. Justice does not (or is not supposed to) work like that. The onus is (supposed to be) on the prosecution to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt; not on the defendant to prove his innocence. And not only did the prosecution not prove it; whatever "evidence" the they had on the murder-for-hire bit was so flimsy and insubstantial they didn't even *TRY* to actually charge him on it. Those shenanigans sure as hell leave me with enough doubt as to th
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As a progressive, I'm sure you can understand all of the anger that other progressives have over this case. The idea that somebody can use bitcoin to sidestep the banking system, and thus not be subject to US laws when making financial transactions, is just appalling to you. Progressives don't like the idea of a government not being completely in control over its citizens lives, especially when it means they might be able to evade taxes. That last bit alone is worthy of a death sentence to progressives; for
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It's called hyperbole. But it's not exactly far off the mark even though I tried for it to be. Go read rsilvergun's own posts if you don't believe me.
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rsilvergun is a right wing conservative, the opposite of a progressive. You got all your labels backwards.
Progressives want to end the drug war, always have.
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"Progressives don't like the idea of a government not being completely in control over its citizens lives"
Then why are progressives the ones working against police brutality and prosecutorial overreach?
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They're only against those when the victim is somebody that they like.
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Are we really a better and safer society because this guy is going to spend his dying day behind bars?
If I learned anything from watching Stargate SG1, it's that you get rid of one bad guy and it just creates a power vacuum that someone worse will fill. I'm sure there's still dark web marketplaces for guns, drugs, hitmen, and kiddie porn (though I am certainly not going to research that statement).
That being said, crime is like dealing with an ant infestation in your home. You'll never get rid of all of the ants, but you can bait and eliminate the ones that are trying to take up residence in your house.
He paid $80K to put a hit in someone (Score:3)
> non-violent. I don't call him ordering any hits on anyone
He paid $80,000 to put a hit on someone.
Which is generally the type of life he led - a habitual criminal, every day.
Re:So why did we send this guy to prison for life? (Score:4)
As far as I know he was non-violent. I don't call him ordering any hits on anyone and I didn't see anything in the Wikipedia article about him. As near as I can tell he refused to plead deal bargain so they nailed his ass to the wall. Are we really a better and safer society because this guy is going to spend his dying day behind bars?
As others have pointed out, he tried to pay to kill some enemies but for some reason the Feds dropped those specific charges. However, that's part of why "Bad man go away forever" in this case.
I'd like to point out something I've noticed recently in the USA, where I live. Man, it just seems like this is a great time to be a criminal. All over the USA, I'm reading about how very bad people will kill someone or multiple people and they'll plea bargain a deal where they can apply for parole after X years. It wasn't that long ago that if you killed people in some states, your plea bargain was life without parole instead of the death penalty. Now all over the US I see various criminals pleading guilty to lesser charges so they will get some time before they can apply for parole. It just seems like all you have to do is hire a real attorney instead of using the public defender, have your attorney say "We want to go to court on this" and the plea bargain deal of your life will shortly appear. It seems like no DAs anywhere want to try actual cases any more. Looks like Ulbricht was tried a few years too early to take advantage of that.
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Then we let O.J. go free because cops in LA use the N-word.
Rather, the cops in LA were so racist that the Jury didn't trust them to investigate a black man.
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Now all over the US I see various criminals pleading guilty to lesser charges so they will get some time before they can apply for parole. It just seems like all you have to do is hire a real attorney instead of using the public defender, have your attorney say "We want to go to court on this" and the plea bargain deal of your life will shortly appear. It seems like no DAs anywhere want to try actual cases any more. Looks like Ulbricht was tried a few years too early to take advantage of that.
I don't mind the idea that most defendants plea out as it implies that both sides came to an agreement on the underlying facts of what happened.
Unfortunately, the way to incentivize defendants to plea out tends to be overcharging so you can negotiate away the BS charges, which isn't a great system when stuff actually goes to trial.
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From his Wikipedia article, it sounds as if the murder for hire was a separate case in a separate court. When he got life+ at his first trial, the feds probably decided it would be a waste of time and effort to add to the sentence, which seems like a reasonable decision. Just like it's reasonable to agree to cancel his $183 million debt, which he was never going to pay anyway, in ex
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> Are we really a better and safer society because this guy is going to spend his dying day behind bars?
What's that got to do with anything?
CIA depends on drug running [youtube.com] to fund their blockops, and Silk Road was an existential threat. Nobody wants to buy poisoned, cut drugs from some street thug when they can mail-order stuff that has 10,000 verified 5* reviews (I'm assuming it's like Amazon but whatever they use they have reputation systems).
People don't really want to die of fentanyl poisoning.
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Free Ross Ulbricht! Free drugs for all! (Score:2)
Restitution? (Score:1)
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I don't think the prison commissary takes bitcoin (Score:2)
I don't think the prison commissary takes bitcoin.
Okay ... (Score:2)
So exactly at what point do all these bitcoins turn into real money that ends up in public coffers?
As for that "Free Ross DAO" purchase ... well, I'm just glad none of MY nonprofit / charitable donations go to _that_ bunch of damned fools!
Why? (Score:1)
He forfeited all of that bitcoin already. It's surprising that they would wipe out his debt. Usually forfeited assets are gone for good.