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Silk Road Case: Prosecution Reads Alleged Transcript of DPR Arranging 5 Murders

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-come-at-the-king-you-best-not-miss dept.

New submitter BenBoy points out an article at Wired about the most recent developments in the trial of Ross Ulbricht, alleged to be the man behind the Silk Road digital black market, going by the alias Dread Pirate Roberts. The prosecution has now rested its case, but one of their last presentations was a series of communications between DPR and a supposed member of the Hell's Angels motorcycle club in which he arranged for hitmen to kill five different people. Wired notes, Ulbricht, who the prosecutors have sought to prove is that Dread Pirate Roberts, hasn't been charged with murder-for-hire in his Southern District of New York case, though he faces charges that include conspiracies to sell narcotics, launder money and more. (He does, however, face murder-for-hire charges in a separate case in Baltimore.) In fact, the prosecution admitted in court that the purported victims of the Silk Road killings were never found, and that Canadian police couldn't even locate records for anyone with their names. ... Even so, the prosecution took pains to read the entire conversation to the jury because it’s intended to show them the darkest side of the Silk Road’s short history. If genuine, the transcript shows that members of the Hell's Angels organization are familiar with using encryption to shield their communications from law enforcement. Forbes has a detailed update on how the rest of the case has progressed, and Ars has a brief article on today's closing arguments.

14 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Not really news by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Interesting

    From TFS: If genuine, the transcript shows that members of the Hell's Angels organization are familiar with using encryption to shield their communications from law enforcement.

    Not really news, I seem to recall coming across mention of this (with regards to the Angels) back in the late 90's/early 00's. Not that criminals using codes or ciphers or various other means of obscuring or obfuscating their communications is exactly new in any form.

    1. Re:Not really news by rubycodez · · Score: 2, Informative

      plenty of H.A. are ex-military

    2. Re:Not really news by DerekLyons · · Score: 2

      So? Being in the military doesn't necessarily make you familiar with encryption, or communications, or related security issues.

    3. Re:Not really news by rubycodez · · Score: 4, Funny

      They are there already there, Hells Angels MC So Cal. Since they are in your neighborhood, would you so kindly express to them that opinion about their masculinity and get back to us on their reactions and analysis of your point of view.

    4. Re:Not really news by fafalone · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Of course Hells Angels and every other large organization is using encryption tech to communicate. But that has nothing to do with anything mentioned in this article or post or even trial.

      It should be obvious to anyone who's even the slightest bit acquainted with scammers. The first thing I did when reading the transcript? Laughed and laughed and laughed since it was so blindingly obvious that lucydrops, FriendlyChemist, and redandwhite were all the same person working a scam. Blackmail (ludicrous to begin with, my ass you have tons of vendors details) not working? "Hi, I'm authorized to contract hits for a major gang! Need some help with your blackmail problem? And of course I don't mind killing the roommates too! It will get you a bulk rate on your hits! Then we'll sell dirt cheap Hells Angel brand drugs and let everyone else benefit from my lack of concern about who I am with!"
      Computer geek without the slightest clue how junkie hustlers work. Would bet anything asking DPR to front that alleged new vendor operation would have been the next step if not for the arrest. Funny stuff. Dudes own personal cash pinata, just keep whacking(!) for shiny bitcoin candy!

  2. Pro-tip by tehlinux · · Score: 2

    If someone tells you they are a hitman, that always means they are an undercover agent.

    --
    Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
    1. Re:Pro-tip by Megol · · Score: 2

      Not in this case - given that there's no indication that LE agents was involved at all.

  3. Impressive emails by bugs2squash · · Score: 2

    Say what you like about Hell's Angels, but they're clearly not uneducated. The emails are (so far as I can see) well composed, grammatically correct, use proper spelling, indeed they read as if a lawyer wrote them. I don't think many on /. would get past the Angel's written entrance exam (I wouldn't want to try the practical exam).

    --
    Nullius in verba
    1. Re:Impressive emails by jandersen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Say what you like about Hell's Angels, but they're clearly not uneducated

      Being intelligent and educated is not in itself proof of moral superiority; indeed, many of the most atrocious individuals throughout history have been highly educated and very intelligent. Just like having a 'faith' or believing in a cause does not make you a better person; in fact, recent reearch has shown that terrorism and similar crimes are most often morally motivated - ie. these are people who have thought about things and made a moral choice about what they are doing.

      I am not anti-intellectual, but I think it is important to understand this. On one hand, academic education is not enough - we must include moral education as well; but on the other hand, we must also break the religious monopoly on morality. Good morality makes excellent sense from a logical point of view, in that it pro-social; religion at best makes no difference, but is more likely to make people less moral because it can legitimise an 'us vs them' view on the world.

  4. Existence of hitman? by CODiNE · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm curious, has anyone ran the conversations from FriendlyChemist and Redandwhite through one of those grammar analyzing programs to see the likelihood that they're the same person? It looks fairly likely that DPR may have been scammed by someone wholly unconnected to the trial. $650k is quite a lot to make just sending a few emails around.

    Also it should be possible to trace both bitcoin wallets and see if there's any overlap between them.

    --
    Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
    1. Re:Existence of hitman? by gl4ss · · Score: 3, Informative

      nope. nobody believes that any murders happened.
      it's just to paint DPR as a bad guy to the jury. nothing else. why claim it in charges then? because the US justice system is full of bullshit and making up charges and then using those as threat to settle to lesser charges. what you're guilty of is then somewhere in the middle, perhaps.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  5. Re: seventh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Windows 10!

  6. Perhaps .... by King_TJ · · Score: 2

    But I've also read a fair bit of commentary (mostly from libertarian types who see some red flags about government taking Silk Road down), claiming the murder for hire claims are completely fabricated by the Feds, in order to get a stronger conviction.

    That would seem to be a possibility worth considering, at the very least. (It's not too difficult to see some parallels in the lengths they've gone to, trying to punish Kim DotCom as severely as possible.)

    Personally, I maintain that, really, the only big issue with Silk Road (both 1 and 2) was the effort made to create item categories that clearly proved the site operators knowingly/willingly facilitated transactions that would be illegal in the country they lived in. I rather like and support the idea of a big, anonymous marketplace -- but I think you have to approach such a thing so you're essentially a "common carrier". Nobody files charges against the phone company for providing a number to someone using it to make illegal drug deals, right? And nobody files charges against the mailman who actually delivers the illegal goods that someone purchases online. That's because we understand they're just doing a job of moving content around, and have no reasonable way to know what that content consists of.

  7. Re:Sheesh! I thought Reiser had a bad defense... by Macman408 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They might not have offered him a deal, or he might've been too stupid to take it. The prosecution apparently accused him of thinking he's too smart to be convicted (speaking of Hans Reiser...), and Ars Technica had an Op-Ed speculating that he might not be taking the advice of his lawyer as much as he should be - or his lawyer isn't doing a good job.

    Reading Ars Technica's great day-by-day coverage of the trial, I think the prosecution has probably done a great job of tying up all the evidence in a beautiful package for the jury, while the defense laid out a haphazard tale meant to distract and confuse the jury. This is exactly what happened when I served on a jury a couple years ago - maybe 3 of the people on the jury were somewhat swayed by the defense's arguments, but after a little deliberation, the rest of us convinced those 3 that he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

    I think the defense attorney probably did his job here in trying to confuse things - but seeing how the evidence was presented in Ars's articles, I think that he'd have to get really lucky with the jury to get an acquittal at this point.