Slashdot Mirror
Silk Road 2.0 Deputy Arrested
An anonymous reader writes With the Ulbricht trial ongoing in a case over the original Silk Road, Homeland Security agents have made another arrest in the Silk Road 2.0 case more than two and a half months after the site was shut down. This time they arrested Brian Richard Farrell who went by the moniker "DoctorClu." From the article: "Homeland Security agents tracked Silk Road 2.0 activity to Farrell's Bellevue home in July, according to an affidavit by Special Agent Michael Larson. In the months that followed, agents watched his activities and interviewed a roommate who said Farrell received UPS, FedEx and postal packages daily. One package was found to contain 107 Xanax pills, Larson said. That led to a search on Jan. 2 that recovered computers, drug paraphernalia, silver bullion bars worth $3,900, and $35,000 in cash, Larson said."
The original submission to /. linked to http://qntra.net/2015/01/another-big-silk-road-2-0-arrest-full-complaint/ which actually included the complaint text. I don't see how a local San Antonio news outlet is even the slightest bit local to a Washinton State man being arrested in... Washinton State.
One day the world will be liberated and people will be free to trade. Right now we live in a Kafkaesque dystopia.
I mean I know people running criminal enterprises aren't all that bright usually, but you'd think the smart play would be to avoid obvious telltales like an overlarge amount of shipments to your house.
The right way to do this would be to open up a shell storefront and conduct a legitimate trade for its cover value, and get your shipments there. How about one of those mailbox places?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
To get $40k in drug trafficking shut down. Way to go guys.
This is a good thing. There are some idiots who think illegal activities done anonymously over the Internet can't be uncovered by the authorities.
I'm glad these evildoers are being pursued and punished. That will teach these evildoers not to be commit such nefarious acts.
I hope they lock em up and throw away the key. Good riddance.
If I was going to do something of this kind I'd probably not live in our current police state. Weird why not somewhere in the Caribbean?
The stories about how these people get caught are usually "convenient", but I'm guessing it's parallel construction derived from classified capabilities (most likely that Tor is fully penetrated by the NSA).
Defense in depth, people.
Yes, sometimes people get caught due to stupid oversights, such as being the only dorm room's network node on campus that is connected to Tor at the moment that the bomb threat was emailed. That's why god invented VPN gateways running on VPSs and so forth, though.
Listen, I don't like cops and in my opinion the war on drugs is utter bullshit
as well as an obvious failure with respect to its claimed goal of ending sale and use of illegal
drugs.
But these Silk Road people rubbed the noses of those in power with the notion that they
were going to sell drugs illegally and get away with it. That was just ASKING for trouble.
Plenty of people engage in illegal stuff and never get caught, but they do it in ways
which do not draw attention to themselves. Unless you have a desire to get caught,
stealth has got to be part of your core philosophy. Silk Road on the other hand flaunted
the ability to conduct illegal transactions and that brought them special attention from
The Man. If you want to get away with stuff you don't want to tell your enemy you are
doing the stuff you want to get away with -- doing so is like hitting a hornet's nest with
a baseball bat. Of course the hornets come out, what the fuck did you think was going to
happen ?
'
one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine [..] carries a mandatory minimum prison term of 10 years and a maximum punishment of life in prison
America, what is wrong with you? A man accused of conspiring to distribute drugs, not accused of actually distributing any drugs at all but simply conspiring to do so, faces at minimum a decade in prison and perhaps the rest of his life in prison? What the fuck? Your murderers get much less time in prison after the government has proven that they killed someone. This man is accused merely of planning or thinking of committing a crime, and if found guilty will be locked up for no less than ten full years.
Absolute insanity.
One package was found to contain 107 Xanax pills, ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The goal is to make the public believe that anyone using silk road is a drug dealer(1st), later anyone left will be a terrorist.
The problem of anonymity is the issue and problem is that is still difficult to figure out who is who is the homeland securities problem.
The cops (or Feds?) did you the common public relations ploy: pointing out they confiscated silver bullion, among other things. The police are always presenting a list of things confiscated, and often on the list are things that are perfectly legal to own but are presented in a provocative fashion (unless paid for by illegally gotten gains). Things like guns, porn, computers, security alarms, dogs that might bite (usually shot on site by you-know-who), silver, gold, or beef bullion, even cash. The horror!
20 or so years ago I remember reading in the paper where some guys vintage guitar collection was being auctioned off, because it was suspected it was paid for with ill gotten gains.
Course, now-a-days the police just steal things for their department. I wonder if Eric Holders recent policy changes in this regard will really change anything?
for someone with a psychiatric problem? Less if they take more than one a day?
That isn't even slightly suspicious. I had a prescription for 30 of them to take one per evening.
We live (or in principle do) in a democratic republic where our government's purpose is to PROTECT our RIGHTS. Some fool judge way back reasoned that a farmer growing his own grain and using it himself affects interstate commerce, and thus can be regulated. This is an insane ruling and is the reason the federal government can regulate just about anything.
Currently the US estimates that it spends $5 Billion on health care costs associated with heroin use. In addition it is estimated that heroin costs about $11 billion in lost productivity.
If all those drug users were not doing drugs, it doesn't mean that they would automatically be leading healthy, happy lives. However, I'll take that number at face value for the sake of argument.
So we have a number that represents the cost to society. Now prove to me that it would cost society that same amount or more if it was completely legal and unregulated. I am willing to give you odds that the cost of enforcement, legal expenses, incarceration, and health care cost for will always exceed the legal costs. The lost productivity will probably be equal either way, health care costs will be slightly less, since it will be easier to get pure, consistent quantities, and then there is all the other costs that make it way more expensive to regulate.
Then there are the moral costs of propping up narco governments and essentially providing price supports for organized crime. Cheaper, Ha! Lost productivity my ass....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!