Maryland Indictment Says Silk Road Founder Tried To Arrange Murder of Employee

Robotron23 writes "Further charges have been made against Silk Road founder Ross William Ulbricht, aka 'Dread Pirate Roberts'. Yesterday saw the shutdown of Silk Road, a website Ulbricht founded which specialized in the sale of illegal items such as recreational drugs. As well as paying for a hit on a forum member, Ulbricht later requested an undercover agent murder an arrested employee of Silk Road, terming it 'the right move.' Upon receiving staged photos of torture and eventually the corpse, Ulbricht paid in full."

Comments

Stupidity as a Defense

[cyberpocalypse]

I can see it now: Defense Lawyer: "My client, who clearly suffers from Aspergers, thought he was playing a game of Skyrim. Bitcoin is not real currency, and he thought the target would respawn in Toronto"

Of course...

[SDF-7]

It is the Dread Pirate Roberts, after all.

Good night Wesley -- good work, I'll most likely kill you in the morning.

Re:Of course...

[travdaddy]

He is not the Dread Pirate Roberts. He inherited Silk Road from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts. The man he inherited it from is not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Roberts has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia.

Credible, unfortunately.

[Joining Yet Again]

People who think they've invented a better society are the nastiest sort. The biggest problem is that they're stupid - they create a simplistic, inadequate set of rules to live by. Whether they're underground libertards (as here), staunch conservatives or flag-waving Leninists, they soon find that their utopia isn't quite working out the way they planned.

And then they start killing people.

Re:Credible, unfortunately.

[Zero__Kelvin]

"People who think they've invented a better society are the nastiest sort. "

Yes. I hate people who try to create a better society. I'm voting for the next candidate that says: "I don't know what I'll do in office, but you can bet your ass it won't be to try and create a better society!"

Re:Credible, unfortunately.

[Joining Yet Again]

Don't strawman, now. Trying to create a better society is a very different thing from thinking you've invented one.

Re:Credible, unfortunately.

[IamTheRealMike]

Nailed it.

Ulbricht called himself an "agorist". Agorism is a strong form of anarcho-capitalist politics, which believes the if the state were to disappear a peaceful utopia would result. It explicitly rejects the political process as a means to bring about this change. Instead agorists believe in "counter economics", i.e. engaging in illegal activity not in order to benefit from it per se but rather to undermine the state and bring about an agorist world.

Agorists are often inspired by the writings of a guy called Murray Rothbard, and Ulbricht was fond of quoting Rothbard in order to explain why he thought certain ways. Rothbard DID believe in voting as a means to bring about change, and was thus not strictly an agorist. However if you actually read Rothbards writings (he wrote a book), then you will find it relatively empty of insight - he is the kind of person who makes a statement that seems reasonable, and then repeatedly extrapolates it in steps, until it becomes something that is flatly contradicted by observable reality. You can read what he thought about cartels and monopolies for an example of this kind of thinking. He concludes based on a long and twisty argument that cartels are inherently unstable and monopolies aren't a problem (because eventually a competitor will arise ... somehow), which doesn't match how real markets seem to work.

DPR is thus a man who frequently quotes an overly simplistic book of philosophy that provides no evidence for its claims, and uses it to justify a quest to overthrow civilisation via crime in order to established a promised utopia. That description reminds me of another category of criminal that has occupied a lot of attention from western governments in the last decade.

Re:No. The cat has FriendlyChemists tongue Slashdo

[CajunArson]

"So, in other words, the FBI is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder."

What part of "staged photos" do you not understand?