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.

Comments

Grab the popcorn

[phantomfive]

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.

Trolling

[Forgefather]

It's official. Ross Ulbricht is trolling the government.

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so much it's actually what the witness (and agent for the gov) thought in 2012
""I have a wealth of evidence to prove that [Karpeles] is Dread Pirate Roberts," the agent wrote at the time.

Karpeles, who is from France, ran what was once the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, which was based in Tokyo. DerYeghiayan's theory was that Karpeles wanted to create a market that used Bitcoin in order to keep the price of the semi-anonymous cryptocurrency robust, which he believed was probable cause for Karpeles's arrest. (Mt. Gox went bankrupt in early 2014.)"

100% Pure USDA-Disapporoved Bull

[BarbaraHudson]

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.

Re:100% Pure USDA-Disapporoved Bull

[drerwk]

I don't think the soundness of the theory is so important to the jury as is the fact that the agent was sure this other guy was the DPR, and now the agent is sure the defendant is the DPR - the agent has to admit to being wrong before and can be asked why in 6 months he would not have a new theory about who really is the DPR. I think it leaves a lot of doubt about the certainty the agent ought to feel about his theory.

Re:100% Pure USDA-Disapporoved Bull

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wait until now?

Now, they've got a Federal agent on the witness stand, they've gotten his files through discovery, and they're asking him to read from those files.

Money quotes like "I have a wealth of evidence to prove that [Karpeles] is Dread Pirate Roberts"

Did the Fed have a fully consistent theory of how and why Karpeles was interested in keeping a lot of bitcoin on the move?

Who cares - the discovery produced excellent reasonable doubt from a prosecution expert witness.

If they'd introduced this argument ahead of this agent's testimony, the DoJ would have made him temporarily unavailable until they reclassified his work on national security grounds. The prosecution's already halted the trial to have a meltdown at the notion that the defendant is entitled to a vigorous defense.

Re:100% Pure USDA-Disapporoved Bull

[BarbaraHudson]

The juror is there to determine the facts of the case. The prosecution and defense are both giving their sides. The jury may decide that there's reasonable doubt, doubt but it's not reasonable, or no doubt one way or another. It's their call. They really don't care about the agent's theories, because they are not FACTS.

You can present 1,000 theories about why there should be some doubt about you being the killer, including the police originally thinking it was someone else - but if facts, such as a video surfaces of you doing the deed, and they find the weapon with your dna and fingerprints on it, you're most likely toast. The facts trump any amount of theories.

Re:FUD

[jdavidb]

Do you also support contract killings? Because he ordered hits on a few people.

The U.S. government that is prosecuting Ross pays for killings every day. Why should they have a monopoly?