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Silk Road Trial Defense: Mt. Gox CEO Was the Real Dread Pirate Roberts
rossgneumann writes The defense team for Ross Ulbricht, the 30-year-old man accused of running the online black market Silk Road under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts, just dropped an unexpected new theory: Mark Karpeles, the CEO of failed Bitcoin company Mt. Gox, is the real Dread Pirate Roberts. "We have the name of the real mastermind and it's not Ulbricht," Joshua Dratel, Ulbricht's lawyer, said in court today. He plans to argue that Karpeles framed Ulbricht.
At this point, I don't care who the real 'dread pirate Roberts' is. I'm here for the show, and the show just got good.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You see, *this* would have been the Ripped from the Headlines story of the century.
I love, love, love this story. Murder for hire, drugs, computers, cryptocurrency, false identities, frame-ups, parallel construction. Oh man, I can't wait for the miniseries.
It's official. Ross Ulbricht is trolling the government.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
Gotta make lemonade with the lemons you have...
I hear they're also using the "My client is too intelligent to have made such stupid errors" defense that didn't work out so well for Hans Reiser.
"I am not left-handed."
Karpeles: "I'm not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either. His name was Cummerbund, and he's been living like a king in Patagonia for 20 years."
The agent's theory that this was done to keep the price of bitcoins high doesn't make sense. There's more money to be made in arbitrage by having the price fluctuate wildly, especially if you're the one controlling when bitcoins that are taken off the market (MtGox trades them for real money) are converted to other currencies.. A small float leaves it open to greater manipulation, same as penny stocks.
Also, why would anyone wait until now to introduce such a theory? "Oh, maybe they want to sue the US after? for damages" Not gonna happen - you have a responsibility to mitigate any damage done, and giving up the real person running it would do that. Unless he thought that he could win another way and get back all those bitcoins ... and now realizes he can't no matter what.
Just too convenient an excuse at the last minute for my tastes - and my common sense. And now he's gonna piss off the jury,because they're going to smell it for what it is - an attempt to fool the jury.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Hans Reiser tried the "somebody else did it" defense. He suggested it was somebody else, but presented no more than vague hints in that general direction suggesting that somebody else had motive. (And, of course, it was all silly hand-waving, since he later confessed and led police to the body.) For Ulbrict's sake, let's hope he has something more substantive.
The police have no obligation to investigate alternate suspects once they've decided on one to charge. If you, defendant, want to blame the crime on somebody else, you need to perform your own investigation rather than merely pointing out the police didn't chase after whomever the defendant thinks would be a more worthy suspect.
I don't know if Ulbrict has some real evidence; if he did, you'd think he would have released it by now.
That would be cool...
Karpeles: "I'm not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either. His name was Cummerbund, and he's been living like a king in Patagonia for 20 years."
His real name was Elvis, but he's 'retired' now and only impersonated by folks here and there.
Or maybe it isn't.
Just personally I'd liked the idea of the defendant stepping up, admitting running the whole thing, and saying he'd arranged a x many hundred thousand/million drug deals where nobody got hurt, nobody was coerced and to possibly point out that the major issue with narcotics is merely how they're handled, rather than their eternal existence and the last century's completely useless attempts at prohibition.
Whoever ran SR, they'll forever have my admiration for what they did and voluntarily banning the sale of items that certain governments to this day refuse to consider as 'harmful'.
The Charlie Hebdo incident that occurred last week. Would this be more, or less likely to have occurred if we lived under the rules of the USA or Silk Road?
Having oil traded in dollars seems to be working out reasonably well for some.
Blame the dead bank....
If this is the best he can do, I'm going out on a limb here and predicting he will be convicted on all counts....
BTC is just a cauldron of crime and deceit, it's basically used to launder money, hide assets and pay for illegal goods... Oh yea, now and then somebody does something perfectly legal using it...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
*stands*
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I guess Cummerbund can get into the fur business with bitcoin - http://motherboard.vice.com/read/beaver-slayers-of-patagonia?trk_source=popular
at what point do they trot out Vinnie and Butch before the strongmen get rushed into the Witness Protection System? this looks like the eMafia.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I think these guys are the "real killers" too
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
and just how the hell did you get in here?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI:_Cyber
If it hadn't been for this kids and their dog
The drag is that there probably is a more Evil character involved than DPR, much like the movie.
I predict there will be R.O.U.S. springing from the woodwork everywhere soon as well. :)
There is a lot of Parallel Construction at work as well.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Reprobates of Unusual Size? I don't believe they exist.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
He didn't.
...can't wait to see the "proof"
Hans Reiser did nothing wrong.
Nina was an adulteress and the Old Testament commands Reiser to kill her. Kill her he did.
It also allows marrying young girls (female children), even in cases of rape.
It says man is the master of the woman.
I believe him.
I'd be all over that Kim Something Ill or other, and blame North Korea! After all, they have the most elite hackers in the world! Use the FBI against themselves.
Kaperles did nothing wrong.
I seem to originally recall when he was first arrested, that he was charged with actually having people killed.
This having been proudly announced before they actually knew who these people were, had any bodies, just ridiculously, laughable over-charging (and clearly designed to bias whatever came next).
I'm interest to see where this all goes - but so far it appears to be utter bollocks and lies (now) from both sides.
The U.S. government that is prosecuting Ross pays for killings every day. Why should they have a monopoly?
Because that's what a government is: a (local) monopoly on the use of force. The justification for this is "so that the strong should not harm the weak."
It's refreshing that you're openly anarchic rather than merely libertarian.
Or so you've been told by the Fed^H^H^H Media.
Where the FBI submit a swore affidavit that Kim DotCom is Dread Pirate Roberts to the New Zealand courts in a bid to further his extradition to US, because surely those sheep-loving Kiwis can't possibly resist the War-on-Drugs(tm) as a legitimate reason to let the MPAA/RIAA go after Kim DotCom for digital piracy[1].
If he wasn't under so much financial pressure (freezing of assets) I'd expect him to make a press release suggesting it himself.
But the conspiracy theorists will posit that John McAfee is the real Dread Pirate Roberts. I mean he was found in Belize of all places. What do you think it was really doing there? Creating his second, pseudonyms fortune, this time without the IRS insisting on payments. Hell, half of software multimillionaires who have been in tufts with the IRS themselves would likely support his venture on the down low.
[1] Okay, infringement of intellectual property doesn't have the same sense of dire urgency does it.
This is not a serious theory. They just need to provide sliver of doubt in the minds of the jury. Then at the end they say: "are you really, really sure it wasn't Karpeles who framed mr Ulbricht here?"
well theyre obviously American...