The Silk Road's Alleged Right-Hand Man Will Finally Face a US Court (arstechnica.com)

It's been nearly five years since the FBI surrounded Ross Ulbricht in the science fiction section of a San Francisco library, arrested him, and grabbed the laptop from which he had run the dark web drug bazaar known as the Silk Road. Ulbricht went on trial in a New York courtroom, and is currently serving a life sentence without parole. But even now, the Silk Road saga still hasn't ended: Half a decade after Ulbricht's arrest, his alleged advisor, mentor and right-hand man Roger Clark will finally face a US court, too. From a report: On Friday, the FBI, IRS, DHS, and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York announced the extradition of 56-year-old Canadian man Roger Clark from a Thai jail cell to New York to face newly unsealed charges for his role in Silk Road's operation. The indictment accuses Clark, who allegedly went by the pseudonyms Variety Jones, Cimon, and Plural of Mongoose in his role as Silk Road's consigliere, of crimes ranging from narcotics trafficking to money laundering. But even those charges don't capture the outsize role Clark is believed to have played in building and managing the Silk Road, from security audits to marketing, and even reportedly encouraging Ulbricht to use violence to maintain his empire.

"As Ulbricht's right-hand man, Roger Clark allegedly advised him of methods to thwart law enforcement during the operation of this illegal ploy, pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process," writes FBI assistant director William Sweeney in a press statement. "Today's extradition of Roger Clark shows that despite alleged attempts to operate under the radar, he was never out of our reach."

Comments

Thailand

[Anonymous Coward]

Where criminals and pedophiles like to visit. Perhaps some day they'll grow meaningful laws.

Re: Thailand

[Anonymous Coward]

Iâ(TM)m sure a US prison will be an upgrade.

Re:Thailand

[b0s0z0ku]

Thailand laws are stricter than the US in some respects -- firing squad if you get caught with more than (a relatively small quantity) of drugs.

Re:Thailand

[scottragen]

Except an envelope full of money will make the problem disappear!

Re:Thailand

[Anonymous Coward]

And it won't in the US?
Just ask Kennedy.

Re: Thailand

[Anonymous Coward]

Back and to the left Kennedy?

Re: Thailand

[Reverend Green]

Thailand is a literal tyranny and a US-inspired police state. Really a shame he's so enthused about brutally repressing political dissent - otherwise Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-o-cha is a fine administrative leader and a friend of public transport.

That said, their judiciary is *at least* a corrupt as ours. So indeed if you have a big enough suitcase full of money you can probably do whatever you want. Guess Uncle Sam most have offered the Thai judge a bigger bag of cash than Clark could afford.

Thailand is one of the few places where a prisoner probably is genuinely better off getting extradited to America.

Re: Thailand

[Type44Q]

Thailand is one of the few places where a prisoner probably is genuinely better off getting extradited to America.

As corrupt and inhumane as the U.S. "justice" system is, I'm willing to bet that's it's still better than anywhere other than Europe, Canada/OZ/NZ, Japan and Korean. Obviously nothing to brag about, however...

Re: Thailand

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you have not encountered Pastor Peen's schtick before. He DGAF about thailand or any other country. All he cares about is fascism-enabling posturing about how horrible the US is. He's like a little ventriloquist dummy with president babystealer's hand up his ass: "There are a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?

Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[rsilvergun]

maybe I'm reading too much into it, but in this context and in American English the implication is that he deserves to face justice of some kind. As someone who'd like to see all drugs legalized (including the hard ones so that they can be treated as medical conditions) the headline reads with more than a little bias.

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[110010001000]

"Finally" means that it has been five years since his arrest.

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

If you legalize all drugs there will be so many dead kids you dumbass. OTOH, it might be a reasonable solution to our overpopulation problem.

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[HornWumpus]

Kids don't die from standardized dosages. They die because they're young and stupid and street drug strength varies widely.

Legalize good, old fashioned, wholesome cocaine, heroin and LSD. Keep the untested 'test chems' illegal.

Ask yourself: Is it illegality that stops you from shooting up heroin? Would you start if it was legal?

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

In places where drugs are legal there is actually less problems. Much, much, less. Less addiction, less crimes, less deaths, less people jailed and turned in to real criminals.

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[110010001000]

"Is it illegality that stops you from shooting up heroin? Would you start if it was legal?"

Yes.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

So you would kill yourself if it weren't illegal?
Because heroin...
It's literally suicide, so you just proved how much we should listen to you.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[tylersoze]

Please donâ(TM)t lump LSD in with heroin and cocaine. Psychedelics are non addictive and some of the safest drugs you can put in your body. With the right set and setting psychedelics can in fact be a good for an individual and society as a whole. The general public conception of psychedelics is literally the same level as âoereefer madnessâ was about marijuana. It comes from the exact same kind of moral panic. How many drugs do you know of that turn most people that use them in the correct context into evangelists for their use?

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Type44Q]

Dude, no offense but we already know you're not that bright...

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe I'm reading too much into it, but in this context and in American English the implication is that he deserves to face justice of some kind. As someone who'd like to see all drugs legalized (including the hard ones so that they can be treated as medical conditions) the headline reads with more than a little bias.

The one crime that Roger Clark has committed, that wasn't mentioned in the litany of crimes he was charged with, is the crime of being A Competitor To Governments' Law Enforcement Agencies .

All the crimes that he has been charged, from narcotic to violence, have and are being done by CIA / NSA / FBI and so on.

The lesson all of us need to learn from this silk-road saga is --- The Government Hates Competition

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Zontar The Mindless]

Perhaps you're forgetting that lots of other things were sold through Silk Road, and not just drugs--things like murder for hire?

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Dutch Gun]

If you legalize all drugs there will be so many dead kids you dumbass. OTOH, it might be a reasonable solution to our overpopulation problem.

Legalization means legal for adults, not children. It would likely still be 21 and older.

Probably a few kids would sneak some pot, just like they do now. And likely the same number of kids would die from pot overdoses, which is... zero.

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

Wumpus needs to OD soon, this methed out crank is out of useful brainpower.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Type44Q]

Weed and 'shrooms come from the earth; LSD was a bioweapon. Yeah, I know it's apparently all the rage now; that doesn't change the fact that it only comes from clandestine laboratories. Buyer fucking beware.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Type44Q]

How many of those "ads" were placed by the Feds??

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to the killing of civilians by Obama and the US military as a result of illegal drone strikes? Hope you did not ignore those. The US media sure did.

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you're forgetting that he was never charged for murder for hire, and the judge
referenced that in his sentencing. I would think that being sentenced and referencing
charges that were not used in trial against you would give reason for an appeal.

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask yourself: Is it illegality that stops you from shooting up heroin? Would you start if it was legal?

Smoking is legal, extremely addictive, and yet people start smoking every day. The smoking rate is around 20% in the US! It used to be MUCH higher. If it were illegal, far less people would start smoking.

I'm certainly not advocating making smoking illegal. And I'm not even saying we shouldn't make drugs legal. But you're naive if you think that if we make heroin legal that we won't get a LOT of people addicted to heroin.

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Applehu Akbar]

If you legalize all drugs there will be so many dead kids you dumbass. OTOH, it might be a reasonable solution to our overpopulation problem.

No, but it could be a reasonable solution to the idiot problem.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[HornWumpus]

Jesus fucking tits, you hippies are tiresome. I called it 'wholesome'.

I'd agree that most people's first trip (in the right context) is good for them, but their 100th? No. Too much, brains are fried, the Grateful Dead starts to sound good for fucks sake, that should be a warning.

At least it won't make you start to like techno, like MDMA...That is a dire warning BTW. Death before disco! Keep Ecstasy illegal, only _you_ can prevent disco!

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[HornWumpus]

And the doses these days. It's robbery.

When I was a kid, if a tab didn't have 250 mics, we wanted our dollar back!

As to the labs, always been that way. Owsley, the famous drug chemist, was the first fucker to add just a little strychnine, to enhance visuals. Now people, with no clue, think he was 'special'.

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd probably start out with opium. Most people don't start off with heroin.

Posting AC for detailing drug use. Some friends bought some opium just over 30 years ago. They shared it with me and others and it was awesome. The bowl we used to smoke it and which was normally just used for pot had a beautiful aroma about it for a while after that.

Maybe I could handle buying a little opium once in a while and not give in to harder stuff.

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

Do most people start up smoking as an adult 18+ or as a child? One is illegal and one is not.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

How you turned "all drugs" into "just pot" amazes me.

I'm gonna finish this bowl of weed now.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

An overdose of heroin might kill you, as would an overdose of about anything at all, such as water or air, but generally, heroin does not kill in and of itself. William S. Boroughs lived to a ripe old age, as do many junkies. Lifestyle and diet is a better indicator of mortality than whether a subject is a junkie.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[triffid_98]

I'm not even sure if it's legality, here in California it's like $7 a pack and a 30% plus bump in health/life insurance. At those rates Heroin may actually be cheaper.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried opium once in university. It was soooooooooooooo good that it was terrifying. Never touched it again, because I could see how people get addicted to it.

But when someday I'm an old man ready for the grave... Yeah, bring on the opium!

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Zontar The Mindless]

He must think he's Keith Richards.

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering how many people die from street drug use - the dealers are mass murderers and deserve to be drawn and quartered and their remains strung up from a bridge, like in ye good olde days.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Zontar The Mindless]

How many of those "ads" were placed by the Feds??

That's irrelevant.

Relevant question: "Who accepted those ads and the money paid to run them?"

In the real world, if someone walks up to you and offers to kill one of your enemies for a fee, and you accept the proposal, you've just engaged in conspiracy to commit murder. It matters not a single damned bit whether the someone making the offer was a Federal agent or the guy who runs the fry station at the local Burgers-R-Us. You're still going down.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Zontar The Mindless]

Please spare us the misguided attempt to defend Ulbricht & crew. (Yeah, we're on to you—see whataboutism.)

Thanks!

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what I meant.
Heroin will kill you even if you neve overdose.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

Your pro-drug stance explains -all- of your insane prior posting history.

I no longer think of you as uneducated narcissistic idiot. I pity you as the drug addict you are.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Highdude702]

So will living.

Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[fafalone]

Portugal decriminalized personal use quantities of heroin. Addiction went down. The number of people deterred by illegality is very, very small and more than offset by other factors.

Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally'

[Anonymous Coward]

> if someone walks up to you and offers to kill one of your enemies for a fee, and you accept the proposal, you've just engaged in conspiracy to commit murder.
> It matters not a single damned bit whether the someone making the offer was a Federal agent

Actually it does matter as that agent or his cohorts can then possibly plant evidence that you did accept when you did no such thing.

Also to be quite annoyingly pentantic about it this is what soldiers are often paid to do. Kill someones enemy for a fee. And isnt a USA soldier basically a Federal agent?

Posting as AC as I have never made a /. account and not starting it now.

FREE ROSS

[Anonymous Coward]

!!!

Don't mess with the feds

[Anonymous Coward]

> despite alleged attempts to operate under the radar, he was never out of our reach.

Yeah and the rest of you, don't even bother because we own you too.

Love, the feds.

Re: Don't mess with the feds

[Bing Tsher E]

Who is this 'we' you refer to? The government represents us. Unless you are an interloper who refuses to participate in civilized society, the 'we' includes you. So, we own ourselves.

That just doesn't sound so scary.

Dubya tea eff

[TimMD909]

Neither should have faced more than a fine. Dealing drugs should be as criminal as Apple removing the audio jack. When will this endless war on drugs end so that we may finally deal with things properly? (Properly in this context is handling it as a severe mental health issue)

Re:Dubya tea eff

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you also cool with hiring hackers and exploits, purchasing credit card lists, and hiring assassins?
Silk Road was about a lot more than drugs. It was a full black market for illegal activity.

Re:He'll do far less time than Donald Trump will t

[HornWumpus]

I can think of no better reason for voting for Trump's second term. Vermin will live without my vote next time.

AC don't be a pussy. Lie down on a _low_ speed rail, train track, lengthwise, so the train splits you, crotch first, at below 2 mph. Super glue the junk to the rail, to prevent last second bails.

Plural of mongoose?

[Okian Warrior]

Plural of mongoose? Now my OCD is acting up again.

Mongooses?

Mongeese?

Re:Plural of mongoose?

[BankRobberMBA]

Mongoosen?

Mongi?

Re:Plural of mongoose?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plural of mongoose? Now my OCD is acting up again.

Mongooses?

Mongeese?

Yes, exactly.

goose => geese
mongoose => mongeese
moose => meese

Re:Plural of mongoose?

[rmdingler]

Not sure about an infinite number of the little cobra-killers, but if 1=mongoose then perhaps 2=digoose...

Re:Plural of mongoose?

[twistnatz]

It's actually just mongoose.

Not charged but referenced

[BankRobberMBA]

So, I am not saying that this is what happened in this instance, because I could not bear to RTFA, but in the Federal system, this is allowed.

When a federal defendant is convicted of (or pleads guilty to) a felony, the judge is allowed to also sentence him/her to additional time/conditions for unindicted crimes, so long as the additional crimes are considered relevant to the original criminal conduct (thus the term: "relevant conduct"). Problematically, relevant conduct charges do not have to be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, merely on the 'preponderance of evidence'. This just means 'most likely he did it'. Also, this determination is not made by the jury (assuming it was a trial case), it is decided by the judge.

One problem this causes is that it puts the defense counsel in an awkward position. How much energy does he put into figuring out what prosecutorial assertions will be used at sentencing, and how much energy should he put into refuting them? Remember that the prosecutor has WAY more resources to put into each case than the defense does.

Another problem is the resulting radical disparities in sentences. I was locked up with a guy who went to trial on a (large) drug case. He beat the government on 11 out of 12 charges, the remaining charge should have carried a little over 10 years. Instead, the judge was offended that he fought so hard, so she enhanced his sentence with almost every single casual allegation of the prosecutor. He wound up with 365 months (yeah, over 30 years) for a single charge, first time offender, non-violent drug offense.

Technically, sure. As long as you object to the sentence AT TIME OF SENTENCING, you have a right to appeal. However, if the judge details why the sentence is appropriate to the crime and circumstance, there is very little likelihood of having an appeal heard.

This is further complicated by the effect of the Pre-Sentencing Report or Pre-Sentencing Investigation (PSR, or PSI). This is the report of an investigation completed by the US Probation office that details the offense and relevant statutes. It's a whole other kettle of fish, to big to go into here.

Re: You sound old & irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

BIGLY so.

Re: He'll do far less time than Donald Trump will

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, suicide is nothing to encourage or joke about.

Meanwhile...

[hyades1]

...Your basic cop who guns down a black kid holding a cell phone gets a pat on the back and six months of stress leave.

Re: Meanwhile...

[Bing Tsher E]

Citation needed.

Hitman

[Anonymous Coward]

So... are they ever going to actually charge him with the alleged hit he ordered? His trial was a travesty of justice. The war on drugs is a crime against humanity.

Re:He'll do far less time than Donald Trump will t

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with OP, there is no better reason to vote for Trump.
I see no way this case has anything to do with Trump, but I simply can't think of why else someone might vote for the man.

Re: He'll do far less time than Donald Trump will

[Bing Tsher E]

Agreed. It is serious business, like visiting the dentist regularly, paying your bills on time, and trimming your fingernails. Not something to joke about.

Silk road dark web drug bazaar was small potatoes

[najajomo]

"The ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia .. smuggles 70 percent of the cocaine in Europe. It runs arms all around the world. It embezzles tens of billions from the European Union and the Italian government. All that activity requires a secondary industry of money laundering. So good has it become at money laundering, and its penetration of the financial market, that other major organized crime groups ask the ’Ndrangheta to wash their cash as well." ref

Re: He'll do far less time than Donald Trump will

[Anonymous Coward]

have to disagree with part of that - there are some out there who should be encouraged.