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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.
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.
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.
unfortunately, i think you are overestimating most juries
their affinity/ understanding of soap opera level drama is way more than their understanding of basic tor networking or how bitcoin works
get into the technical facts that prove ulbricht is guilty, and their eyes will glaze over and they will fall asleep
start tossing random unfounded accusation smoke screens, the prosecution shouting "objection," the judge growling "sustained"... and they'll perk right up and start writing notes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What is entertaining is that this agent was actually after Karpeles in 2012 and 2013 as the DPR, complete with prepping search warrants on flimsy and thin theories and asking other agents in separate operations focused on Karpeles not to spook him and ruin his own investigation and reading them the riot act when they did spook him. So really he's just using the Agent's own history to cast doubt.
This is an awesome development! That Karpeles is so hate-able.
Has anyone watched "The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin" scene where Karpeles apologizes for losing everyone's money? It's hilarious. He says, in Japanese (paraphrasing here), "There was inadequate security, and we lost everyone's bitcoins. I am very sorry about that," and he bows down at the waist, and stays there (awkwardly) for an eternity! It's the funniest thing to see this pudgy Frenchman speaking Japanese and awkwardly performing these Japanese rituals.
Here's a picture: http://www.dailytech.com/Mt+Go...
Do you say this because the jurors are your peers?
I've been on juries where the people with BS detectors were a vocal minority. It made me think: "What if I was on a jury where the guy with the BS detector wasn't so vocal?"
The worst part is that on one of these, we found the guy not guilty even though he had obviously done it -- because the prosecution failed to prove their case but attempted to lean on BS to prop things up instead of evidence, leaving reasonable doubt.
See, the prosecution thought they'd done enough because most of the jury was nodding and obviously agreeing with their argument. That one guy pointed out the fact that no actual evidence had been presented, just circumstantial evidence.
Unfortunately, that one guy wasn't even me :) The prosecutors did a really good job until you broke everything down and tossed out what wasn't fact -- which on this case took days of being sequestered to fully untangle. Many others were really annoyed that the one guy wouldn't just shut up and let everyone go home on a guilty verdict.