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Bitcoin Businesses

Seized Silk Road Bitcoin To Clear Ross Ulbricht's $183M Debt (coindesk.com) 83

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
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.
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Seized Silk Road Bitcoin To Clear Ross Ulbricht's $183M Debt More

Seized Silk Road Bitcoin To Clear Ross Ulbricht's $183M Debt

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  • How could he have been expected to pay anything if he has life without parole?

    • He does run an online store [freeross.org] where one can purchase several (legal) items to "help fund Ross’s struggle for freedom". I assume that any raised funds are no longer under threat of seizure to repay his debt.

    • Typically any money put into his commissary account over a certain amount will go to pay fines.

    • 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.

  • If he's sentenced to live without parole, how many f*cks does he give about debt?

  • If he has a federal life sentence, what could they possibly offer that he cares about?

  • to short bitcoin I guess

  • So why did we send this guy to prison for life? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday April 22, 2022 @02:22PM (#62469506)
    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?

      • Re:So why did we send this guy to prison for life? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by fafalone ( 633739 ) on Friday April 22, 2022 @03:31PM (#62469752)
        He was never charged for that. Sentencing somebody for conduct you haven't proved they committed should have been recognized as blatantly unconstitutional. But our courts still recognize a general 'drug exception' to every civil right you thought you had.
        • When the first few posts rolled in pointing out he had gotten a bigger sentence because he hired a hitman I wrote it off as the correct sentencing. But finding out the judge sentenced him to life on the basis of something that wasn't proven in court is legitimately terrifying.

          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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kunwon1 ( 795332 )
      I was wondering this too, this is the best explainer I found. https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]

      • Re:So why did we send this guy to prison for life? (Score:5, Informative)

        by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday April 22, 2022 @02:57PM (#62469626) Journal

        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.

        • 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

          • If you hire a hitman rather than attempt the murder yourself, are you a less violent offender?

            That's fully premeditated.

            • 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?"

              • 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.

                • 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.

                  • It was a setup, it was one of the investigators who pushed him to murder.

                    Yeah, that's something you made up.

                    • > 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

              • He may not be personally violent, but there are plenty more "subcontractors" that he could find and hire, upon his release from prison.

            • 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.

              • 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

              • 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.

          • Well, I think the problem with an organized crime related conviction is there is sometimes the rather obvious implication that this just happened to be the time they got caught, but they likely did similar things many other times because it was just part of doing business. Also somebody running a black market like this gets a little bit of the monstrous amount of evil they are facilitating - and that adds up to a lot.

    • Re:So why did we send this guy to prison for life? (Score:4, Informative)

      by mmell ( 832646 ) on Friday April 22, 2022 @02:51PM (#62469602)
      Uh, because he knowingly facilitated international drug and human trafficking. More than just that, but that'll do for starters.

      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.

      • 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.

        • Implementing a sales platform for drug and financial crimes doesn't rise to the equivalent of murder.

          The human trafficking part might, though.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mmell ( 832646 )
          But according to that logic, drug dealers shouldn't be held fully responsible for the overdose deaths they cause (not to mention all the other horrific effects of addiction). Human traffickers aren't as bad as human killers, either.

          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

    • 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

      • What? No, we're not better and safer. Buying drugs on the street, where there's a risk for violence and zero seller/product reputation, does not make anyone safer. And 5 others immediately popped up in it's place anyway. Darknet markets have done more to reduce the harms of drugs than a century of prohibition.

        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

        • 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.

    • 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.

    • It's hard to cut through all the online debate about the legalities, but here's [bitcoin.com] what makes me feel not too bad about his sentence: "Dread Pirate Roberts contacted Force, who used the alias "nob," about commissioning Green's murder. He wired $80,000 to Force to kill Green, and task force members faked Green's death, authorities said."

      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

      • > 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

      • > 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

    • 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

      • Nothing you're saying has anything to do with what happened or what he was convicted for.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nomadic ( 141991 )

        "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?

    • 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.

    • > 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.

    • 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.

      • 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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rgmoore ( 133276 )

        As others have pointed out, he tried to pay to kill some enemies but for some reason the Feds dropped those specific charges.

        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

    • > 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.

    • Because cryptocurrency.

  • I don't think the prison commissary takes bitcoin.

  • 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!

  • He forfeited all of that bitcoin already. It's surprising that they would wipe out his debt. Usually forfeited assets are gone for good.

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