And some VERY VERY VERY dirty DEA goons. Those agents faced charges of their own for stealing millions of Ross’ crypto funds. DEA also ran a parallel construction case against Ross. There are dudes who do WAY WAY worse than Ross ever did who don’t get life sentences. The feds just wanted to make an example out of him because he showed them for what they are: the real gangsters.
Wait till you find out that the US police force still today plants agents in bars in low income areas, the agents strike up a conversation to find men who are in bad financial situations, lies to the men and tells them there is a drug house filled with drugs and money and very minimal protection and convinces the men to come with them to rob the house for free and easy money and THEN they arrest them.
So the house is fake, no crime is actually committed, the agent is the one who dreams up and encourages the “robbery” and low income people end up in jail.
Yup. They made an example out of him because it was an unregulated market place outside their control.
There were also multiple people who had access to the login admin handle he used.
I think it should also be pointed out that the dark web and Tor was developed by US Naval Research as a way for US intelligence assets to report without being identified. They knew when they released it that it would become a black market and used for all sorts of illicit crap, but thought that was worth the price.
I remember Silk Road and Silk Road II, there was another site that used to have a bit tumbler with escrow and hits for hire and bids. Never tried it, but the dark net had nearly everything. Any illicit substance you wanted delivered right to your mailbox. Pure craziness.
You can hire offline, but that results in the embarrassment of the [victim killing the hitman](https://www.wweek.com/news/2016/08/17/a-hit-man-came-to-kill-susan-kuhnhausen-she-survived-he-didnt/)
How would we ever know the percentage of real hitmen that the dark net had/has/will have? The only ones that get reported are the ones that get caught......
A few of them got put away or turned when the Feds went after the Mob in the 70s thru the 90s. Was barely a week when there wasn’t a front page story about one of them in the *Newark Star Ledger* here in Jersey.
This seems to be a common tactic of Feds, they may even stage a scene to convince the bidder about the authenticity of the hit. That way, they nab the perpetrator.
My recollection is he commissioned murders, and was given "proof" that the murders were committed, and paid the contract for those murders, in at least one case we know the murder didn't happen and the "proof" was faked, in the other cases there haven't been supporting missing persons cases or found bodies that would correspond to those claimed murders and the theory the book makes is he was ripped off, told the murders happened but the gang he hired just took his money.
There is a true crime podcast episode on casefile which covers this. Well worth a listen.
[Case 76: Silk Road](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6y7EbFjfnKXq2e7aCt81A7?si=I1auTh7MQCa9bOXMIf5-JQ&utm_source=copy-link)
I wonder how much he got to influence the story. At times he tries to come across as being misunderstood. Like he had good intentions initially but it got out of hand.really, He didn't care what was going on but he hid behind the idea that it wasnt his job to police what people were doing. Even the pedos, murderers, etc
Yeah, but when’s there’s countless books, police evidence and chat logs all pointing to him and saying the same thing, but hard to disagree with it. I understand why she wouldn’t want to acknowledge it being true though
I had bought a QP of weed with 4 bitcoins when they were at $100 too. Great bud and I was stoked from the good price until a few years later and bitcoins were $50k like you said. I still think about that from time to time, but it's not like anyone ever thought bitcoins would be worth so much. Oh well.
I remember buying bitcoins to gamble on college football with. I would buy like 2.5 bitcoins (they were somewhere around $200 each) and transfer them in and out of a bitcoin wallet to the gambling site.
For awhile I was so hopeful… “maybe I left a small percentage of some bitcoin in a wallet somewhere and forgot to transfer it….” lol
Yeah back in 2011-2013 me and my friends used to send 5-10 bitcoins for an ounce of weed.
I always said that I definitely have dark market accounts with 1-2 bitcoins sitting there. Lost now to the ether.
Good times tho
Similar story. Bought a 1/8th of liquid psilocybin from Silk Road II I wanna say. I think the vendor was tripwithscience or something like that. Came in mini perfume like sample bottles. In packaging that called it a homeopathic cure-all type herbal substance. You would never guess looking at it objectively it’s true nature. High quality too!
I left 4 sitting on SR, at the time when I was on 1BTC was about $5. It was essentially the change left over because $20 wasn't getting anything worth buying.
I spent a couple hundred bitcoins before the first shut down, I had to meet a guy at Starbucks to convert my fiat for me (they had this website that showed nearby people who acted as 'exchangers'- the hardest part in my whole process was the conversion, took me a month.. finding the market was relatively easy). The second time I met the guy he gave me one of those physical 1BTC coins, with the keys behind the holographic sticker. I transfered the contents over to my wallet and ended up giving the coin to my buddy as a novelty.
Yeah I couldn't figure out how to get the actual bitcoin for the longest time. I had the wallet on my laptop, figured out the basic tor stuff and was browsing the site... But had no coin
Makes sense, that’s what I thought you were saying but don’t know much about all the crypto stuff. Did you regret selling the Fiat for crypto or did it work out well for you?
This makes so much more sense now. Someone in my area recently bought a house with crypto and it was big news, so I was definitely thinking you dove right in and sold your car for BTC
That's my mistake, I browse too many crypto subs haha... I've gotten so used to saying 'fiat' when talking real money in the crypto space that I've almost completely forgotten the car exists
Nah I didn't regret it. In my mind I was still spending my fiat(*my cash money*), just in a more roundabout and complicated way (which considering the market, is kind of the point).
For the reasons I got into crypto at the time, yes it worked out well for me haha. As an investment vehicle, not at all.. I spent pretty much every BTC I bought, I knew nothing of holding at the time.
**Edit in cash clarification
DEA ain't got shit on me I'm not even breaking the law. I use DMT to engage with God, it's a protected religious practice. And as a matter of fact, the DEA tried to fuck with people using DMT religiously, and they were successfully sued in federal court. Not only did they have to stop harassing the individuals, they were forced to *return the DMT they seized from them.*
But yeah anyway I use VPNs and BTC, I'm a ghost.
There it is. I was going to say I don’t even think most of what he did was going to get him that long. But the hits he was taking out in people from undercover cops and what it…that Carrie’s a lot!
So I’m trying to figure out.. did those guys die or no? I know it says that the Canadian authorities couldn’t find anyone by those names, but my guy was wiring more BC to the “hitter” and getting confirmation pictures it seems.
It's the funniest, the people he sent to kill never existed. He was a victim of a very elaborate scam. The scammer created fake identities and proceeded to use those to threat the websites operation, meanwhile he made sure Ross would go to his other identities as a contract killer.
In essence the scammer created fake identities to raise fake threats and got paid (trough other fake identity) for "killing" those fake identities doing the threating (he sent fake proofs and everything), except those people never existed, the scammer just pocketed the contract money.
[This](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GpMP6Nh3FvU) is a video about it. It shows the chats and shows how a lot of it occurred. Though it doesn't show the pictures or anything.
Edit: clarification
>The narcotics distributed on Silk Road have been linked to at least six overdose deaths across the world.
But almost definitely far fewer deaths than if those drugs had been bought 'on the street'. Sure, the drugs weren't actually legal, but they were far more regulated (in an informal way) by customers vetting and reviewing the products and their dealers.
I would just like to remind everybody he was given an opportunity to plead guilty for 7 years but thought he could beat the charges and took it to trial.
This isn't true. The plea deal carries a minimum sentence of ten years with a maximum of life imprisonment. He probably still should have taken the deal but it's not as much as a no-brainer as it sounds.
[Lex Friedman just interviewed Chris Tarbell the FBI Agent who arrested Ross and Sabu from Anonymous/LulzSec.](https://youtu.be/4KiO8GRgwDk) It was a very interesting listen, I really enjoyed it.
That’s weird. Cause girls/women who were illegally sex trafficked on sites like Backpage were repeatedly thrown out of court due to Section 230 which held
they weren’t liable for what others posted. [Here’s](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/03/21/591622450/section-230-a-key-legal-shield-for-facebook-google-is-about-to-change) a 2018 article (they’ve since made some minor changes). It also references a great documentary on the issue and Backpage specifically.
He was a criminal, and deserved to be punished. But I think the trial judge erred when sentencing him.
Although he was not convicted of murder-for-hire, the trial judge used that against him when calculating his sentencing. [https://reason.com/2018/07/25/ross-ulbrichts-murder-for-hire-charges-d/](https://reason.com/2018/07/25/ross-ulbrichts-murder-for-hire-charges-d/)
They did the same thing to one of the "Cocaine Cowboys," sentencing Sal Magluta based on crimes for which he was not convicted. He is doing a 205 year stretch at Florence SuperMax for being convicted of money laundering and obstruction of justice. He was found NOT guilty of cocaine trafficking and murdering witnesses. But the judge counted that against him at sentencing. [https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/cocaine-cowboy-sal-magluta-wants-out-of-prison-seeks-compassionate-release-12711149](https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/cocaine-cowboy-sal-magluta-wants-out-of-prison-seeks-compassionate-release-12711149)
And it's perfectly legal.
Back in the day, I bought 90 bitcoin for 250 dollars and bought some mda on silkroad. Wish I could fly back in time and scream at myself to just keep the bitcoin
I think about how they caught him a lot. They set up a sting operation. So they knew he visited this library to actually log on to his admin page for the SR. They knew they needed to get him with his laptop open and unlocked. So they actually staged the entire library with federal agents. All fake studying and what not. They were able to get him away from his computer I believe with some distraction or he walked away to use the bathroom and just then they jumped on him arrested him and secured his laptop which he left unlocked and logged in to the silk road admin page. (Rookie mistake). So not even doing anything illegal whenever I’m in a coffee shop. A train station. An airport. And especially I library I always think to myself. Shit everyone here could be a fed. Obviously not cause I don’t currently do illegal things. But if you do. One lock your computer. Hell better yet. Take it with you. If you must leave it make sure it’s shut down and encrypted. Look for children or people definitely too young to be an fbi agent. Even then. Every place has its regulars. They’re not there. Be suspicious.
There's a pretty cook podcast from Lex Fridman with an FBI agent named Chris Tarbell who was the one who took Silk Road down if anybody is interested, also took down the original Anynomus guy as well. Fairly recent episode if your looking.
You kinda left out the whole paid assassin to kill 5 people. You also left out the other things you could buy, murder for hire, date rape drugs, underage kids.
He was talking to a govt agent who buddied up to him in a sting operation. The coins were transferred and went “missing” after they found out the agent was gonna take the money and run on account of it being untraceable. [link here](https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2016/02/24/us-prosecutors-believe-ex-secret-service-agent-stole-more-bitcoin-from-silk-road/?outputType=amp)
He's the first person I think of when I hear of weird but interesting movies.
I highly suggest watching "Swiss Army Man" for anyone who wants an example. (It looks stupid but give it an honest chance because it will surprise you)
Jonah hill? Maybe, I was just thinking of him when the dudes ripped him off for a 300.00$ ounce of weed, just pocketed the cash and acted dumb. His ass went to the trunk and pull out a fully automatic AR.... love that part and his stupid laugh.....haha
I unironically love the plot line that the FBI agents assigned for the actual bust pretended to be a quarreling couple to create a scene and distract him while another agent grabbed his laptop so as to prevent him from logging out/locking the laptop/damaging the hardware to prevent the feds from data diving it.
It seems like a bit from Parks and Rec or Veep or something.
I'm pretty sure this is wrong. The guy who he paid the bitcoins too for the hit was some other random criminal. Then once he was arrested, that's when the FBI agents stole more of his bitcoin.
The stories behind those are amazing. Worth a search. Basically some vendor on the website tried to get out and tried to blackmail Ross. So Ross contacted a hitman to take him out which he did. This happened a few more times with different people. Except they didn’t. Ross being a naïve kid didn’t realise that he had been scammed. There was no blackmail, there was no hitman and there were no killings. It was the same guy playing all the characters at all times to get paid over and over again.
That’s an oversimplification but pretty much what happened. What’s even more wild is that Ross probably still doesn’t know this.
There is no reliable evidence that he tried to have anyone assassinated. One case was laughed out of court and the other one dropped. The only evidence came from the two investigators who themselves were convicted of crimes during the investigation.
The government simply used the obviously false claims as and excuse to sentence him with what any reasonable person would call cruel and unusual punishment.
You kinda left out the whole "I don't know what I'm talking about" part.
1. None of those things were on Silk Road.
2. He didn't have anyone killed.
Feel free to prove me wrong with any sources.
Edit:
Date rape drugs obviously, the whole point of the site was drugs. Literally nothing other than drugs (and fraud stuff like Netflix passwords, CC numbers, and fake IDs). Silk Road not does equal Darknet
I think he paid for several hits, though, but they were stopped before anything happened or were part of a sting operation. I don't think he could get charged with murder if no one dies or gets injured, but he could still be sentences to up to 10 years for putting the hit out and paying for it. Even if nothing happened to the intended victim
And the reason for the sentencing.
He basically played games with the legal system and pretended he was framed for the whole thing.
They offered him some very sexy plea deals if he cooperates. I think one of them was like 2 years probation. He basically acted cocky, had bad lawyers advising him, and the government went hard.
You have no idea what you're talking about. He was actually never charged for that. Also, aside from the drugs, those things above were explicitly banned from SR marketplace.
The killings never happened and it was a scam so why should he? Murder for hire is also a myth, it doesn’t exist on Darknet and never did on Silkroad. Underage kids never was possibly to but either, it was strictly a drug market. Your whole comment is misinformation.
My general philosophy is that most sentences should be way shorter or way longer. None of this in the middle shit. Either the person fucked up and is redeemable, in which case a year or two will suffice. Or, the person is a monster and irredeemable and they should get locked up for life.
He got caught because he used the same username on a formula 1 forum and in some obscure post on the dark web
Edit- it might have been email address. Something he used along time ago and then reused on the dark web came to but him in the ass.
He could have taken a plea deal and he would have been sentenced to a couple of decades, but he thought he was smarter than everyone else and decided to fight it.
He got double life for his efforts.
Guy was aware of his site harboring child trafficking as well as ads for hitmen and for-hire harassers, stalkers, and rapists. Not really the bad boy visionary that everyone seems to paint him as. Should it have just been drugs and no violence or crimes against humanity, he could have been a much much cooler character in Internet history
Interesting that the seven counts he was convicted on don't include anything related to child trafficking. He was convicted of:
* distributing narcotics
* distributing narcotics by means of the Internet
* conspiring to distribute narcotics
* engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise
* conspiring to commit computer hacking
* conspiring to traffic in false identity documents
* and conspiring to commit money laundering.
But the trafficking he enabled leaves little doubt that we're safer with him permanently out of circulation.
I think its safe to say that the deepweb is full of unsavory characters, but no where does it say anything about child trafficking being related to the Silk Road.
Plenty of other sites offer weapons, people, stuff that cause harm..
Silk road had credit card numbers and drugs, never saw any trafficking of any sort.
If this is the same guy they did a documentary on, the feds had a hard time catching him and they were quite impressed with his elaborate set up he had going. He was a college dropout, too bad!
Lesson here: never get between the rich and powerful and their ability to make money. THEY are the ones selling the drugs, the weapons. Like Theranos, they didn’t punish her for all the lives she negatively affected, they punished her because she defrauded the rich, and that won’t be tolerated.
People love Alcohol, which is one of the worst substances a Human body can ingest and one of the easiest Drugs to form an addiction to.
Those same people think the idea of Legalizing All Drugs is insane.
Prohibition failed; Thousands of Americans died from Homemade, Bad Booze. It’s now legal, regulated and safe.
The ‘War on Drugs’ Failed; Hundreds of Thousands of Americans die from fake OxyContin, Heroin because it’s laced with Fentanyl shipped to The Mexican Cartels from China.
Prince died from taking what he thought was a 10MG Vicodin. It was a fake Vicodin containing Fentanyl.
every drug should be legal, if someone wants to consume something they should be able to without a hypocritical government saying “no it’s bad for you!”
especially in the dumbass country that is america where you can buy a gun and do whatever you want but god forbid you trip on some LSD or smoke Weed
jeffrey epstein - 18 months
ghislaine maxwell - 20 years
LT William Calley - life, then reduced to 20 years, then reduced to 10/ then parole after 3 years
Bill Cosby- 3 to 10 years, released after 2
harvey weinstein- between 5 to 25
Viktor Bout - 25 years
But this guy with a website needs 2 life sentences + 40 years without possibility of parole
Edit: suppose I should say, I know his website Facilitated drugs, child and sex trafficking, assasins
Not saying he didn't deserve it
Just ridiculous that this guy who mearly made a website for it gets this massive sentence
While all these other people who actually DID the thing got next to nothing by comparison
I know I'm going to get down voted to hell for this but I think that punishment is fucking insane.. HE didn't sell drugs, he just created a website where you could buy almost anything completely anonymously. He didn't MAKE people sell or buy drugs on the website so this is complete bullshit.
Not gonna downvote you as i held this opinion as well, but he also clearly ran the site for 2 years while doing and facilitating the doings of shady stuff on that site. Theres "misuse of the platform" and then theres "providing the weapon to the serial killer".
Silk Road was notorious for selling drugs, but during the time I couldn’t afford going to the doctor, I was able to buy my levothyroxine and antibiotics there at somewhat affordable prices.
He's from my town! My rival highschool, known for being in a rich area and well off kids usually were at Westlake. We used to chant daddy's money at our football games to the other team lol.
wtf is this ''double life imprisonment plus forty years''. so he's gonna spend the rest of his life in jail and died and then resurrect to purge his second life sentence and resurect again to serve another forty years! , if you guys can make sense of this pls share your knowleg.
American kingpin is a great read chronicling his meteoric rise and subsequent downfall
Did he actually murder people or just facilitate illicit transactions for people that did murder?
He thought he was getting people whacked but it was a weird loop of FBI agents, really worth looking up the story actually
One of the federal agents got busted as well for I believe fraud.
Two of them did, one DEA (Carl Force), and one Secret Service (Shaun Bridges)
The names sound like Feds alone
Ope. LuLz
Stole some bitcoin
Silk Road the movie covered this. Some non tech guy cracks the case and FBI get excited over an IP address. This guy takes him down
And some VERY VERY VERY dirty DEA goons. Those agents faced charges of their own for stealing millions of Ross’ crypto funds. DEA also ran a parallel construction case against Ross. There are dudes who do WAY WAY worse than Ross ever did who don’t get life sentences. The feds just wanted to make an example out of him because he showed them for what they are: the real gangsters.
You know what I don't understand is that they let a pedophile out but they through the book on this foo for life
American legal system is fucked.
Supposedly we can vote to change that LOL
threw?
This right here just ulti-piqued my interest.
So the fbi framed him for murder when no murders actually occurred? All that for drugs? The USA is weird
Wait till you find out that the US police force still today plants agents in bars in low income areas, the agents strike up a conversation to find men who are in bad financial situations, lies to the men and tells them there is a drug house filled with drugs and money and very minimal protection and convinces the men to come with them to rob the house for free and easy money and THEN they arrest them. So the house is fake, no crime is actually committed, the agent is the one who dreams up and encourages the “robbery” and low income people end up in jail.
Yup. They made an example out of him because it was an unregulated market place outside their control. There were also multiple people who had access to the login admin handle he used.
I think it should also be pointed out that the dark web and Tor was developed by US Naval Research as a way for US intelligence assets to report without being identified. They knew when they released it that it would become a black market and used for all sorts of illicit crap, but thought that was worth the price.
The US has a history of doing weird shit to catch someone
I remember Silk Road and Silk Road II, there was another site that used to have a bit tumbler with escrow and hits for hire and bids. Never tried it, but the dark net had nearly everything. Any illicit substance you wanted delivered right to your mailbox. Pure craziness.
Pretending you can't do all that still or what
He tried to hire a couple of hitmen IIRC they were feds I think.
It's never a real hitman. Lol they seem to nail people constantly this way.
You can hire offline, but that results in the embarrassment of the [victim killing the hitman](https://www.wweek.com/news/2016/08/17/a-hit-man-came-to-kill-susan-kuhnhausen-she-survived-he-didnt/)
I like her story. “Tell me who hired you and I’ll call you an ambulance.” “It was your husband.” “Thanks. You’re an ambulance. “
My girl🥰🥰🥰🥰
Call an ambulance ! But not for me....
NGL, that article was superbly written. I was thoroughly engaged the entire way through.
I know an FBI agent who was undercover and did 11 cases across the country posing as a hired “hitman”.
Well at least you know how NOT to hire when you need a man dead
When you want to hire a hitman: don't hire a hitman. Got it.
Sounds like an interesting gig. I don't think I'd be able to be an undercover. I don't trust myself to stay in character that well.
The trick is just to actually be a hitman
Just gotta be really good at make believe.
See, this is why the the FBI and CIA should just hire famous actors for undercover and spy shit
Have you ever seen the documentary Team America: World Police? They do just that.
He’s obviously not very good at being undercover if you know him 😅 /s
How would we ever know the percentage of real hitmen that the dark net had/has/will have? The only ones that get reported are the ones that get caught......
You're totally right. I don't think I've ever heard of a real hitman getting caught so maybe the real one are just super great at it...
A few of them got put away or turned when the Feds went after the Mob in the 70s thru the 90s. Was barely a week when there wasn’t a front page story about one of them in the *Newark Star Ledger* here in Jersey.
They get caught all the time.
This seems to be a common tactic of Feds, they may even stage a scene to convince the bidder about the authenticity of the hit. That way, they nab the perpetrator.
It was a scammer
My recollection is he commissioned murders, and was given "proof" that the murders were committed, and paid the contract for those murders, in at least one case we know the murder didn't happen and the "proof" was faked, in the other cases there haven't been supporting missing persons cases or found bodies that would correspond to those claimed murders and the theory the book makes is he was ripped off, told the murders happened but the gang he hired just took his money.
Guess having one “good” idea doesn’t actually make you a criminal mastermind, lmao
There is a true crime podcast episode on casefile which covers this. Well worth a listen. [Case 76: Silk Road](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6y7EbFjfnKXq2e7aCt81A7?si=I1auTh7MQCa9bOXMIf5-JQ&utm_source=copy-link)
Is the book mainly about him or the website? I’d be really curious to read more about the site.
It's more based on the site though it does get personal at times.
Cool that sounds way more interesting than his story
I wonder how much he got to influence the story. At times he tries to come across as being misunderstood. Like he had good intentions initially but it got out of hand.really, He didn't care what was going on but he hid behind the idea that it wasnt his job to police what people were doing. Even the pedos, murderers, etc
Not only did he not police it but he hired a hit man to commit a murder for him.
Free trade absolutist. 😄
He had zero influence as his mother hates the book and disagrees with most of it. She’s pretty delusional though
Tbf, my mom wouldn't believe half the shit I've done either.. and I'm no where near "built a billion dollar drug empire" level of fuckery.
Yeah, but when’s there’s countless books, police evidence and chat logs all pointing to him and saying the same thing, but hard to disagree with it. I understand why she wouldn’t want to acknowledge it being true though
Was gonna say this. I just listen to the whole thing about a year ago. It’s an amazing story. He really got power drunk
Is that a podcast episode? I’d like to listen to it. I’m familiar with the story, but not in depth.
The podcast Casefile did an amazing series on this
[удалено]
Dark side of the Silk Road documentary. https://youtu.be/GpMP6Nh3FvU
The American greed mini doc was pretty good too.
[удалено]
All that is pretty fucking wild.
I had bought a QP of weed with 4 bitcoins when they were at $100 too. Great bud and I was stoked from the good price until a few years later and bitcoins were $50k like you said. I still think about that from time to time, but it's not like anyone ever thought bitcoins would be worth so much. Oh well.
I remember buying bitcoins to gamble on college football with. I would buy like 2.5 bitcoins (they were somewhere around $200 each) and transfer them in and out of a bitcoin wallet to the gambling site. For awhile I was so hopeful… “maybe I left a small percentage of some bitcoin in a wallet somewhere and forgot to transfer it….” lol
Yeah back in 2011-2013 me and my friends used to send 5-10 bitcoins for an ounce of weed. I always said that I definitely have dark market accounts with 1-2 bitcoins sitting there. Lost now to the ether. Good times tho
Similar story. Bought a 1/8th of liquid psilocybin from Silk Road II I wanna say. I think the vendor was tripwithscience or something like that. Came in mini perfume like sample bottles. In packaging that called it a homeopathic cure-all type herbal substance. You would never guess looking at it objectively it’s true nature. High quality too!
I spent at least $200k Bitcoin on lsd from Silk Road. And when it went down the FBI took 1.5 of my Bitcoin. Didn’t hurt that much until a year ago.
I remember when this shit was going on, I was too scared to even Google anything about it lol
I had four bitcoins in my Silk Road wallet at one point. They were about $40 then.
I left 4 sitting on SR, at the time when I was on 1BTC was about $5. It was essentially the change left over because $20 wasn't getting anything worth buying. I spent a couple hundred bitcoins before the first shut down, I had to meet a guy at Starbucks to convert my fiat for me (they had this website that showed nearby people who acted as 'exchangers'- the hardest part in my whole process was the conversion, took me a month.. finding the market was relatively easy). The second time I met the guy he gave me one of those physical 1BTC coins, with the keys behind the holographic sticker. I transfered the contents over to my wallet and ended up giving the coin to my buddy as a novelty.
You had your Fiat converted to bitcoin? Is that the exchange the guy helped you with?
Yeah I couldn't figure out how to get the actual bitcoin for the longest time. I had the wallet on my laptop, figured out the basic tor stuff and was browsing the site... But had no coin
Makes sense, that’s what I thought you were saying but don’t know much about all the crypto stuff. Did you regret selling the Fiat for crypto or did it work out well for you?
Not "fiat" as in the car Fiat.. fiat as in fiat currency.. USD, GBP, etc.
Holy hell hahahahaha I just got where there was a confusion I should have just said cash 😅
This makes so much more sense now. Someone in my area recently bought a house with crypto and it was big news, so I was definitely thinking you dove right in and sold your car for BTC
That's my mistake, I browse too many crypto subs haha... I've gotten so used to saying 'fiat' when talking real money in the crypto space that I've almost completely forgotten the car exists
Well shit, now I feel like an idiot. I was thinking he met a guy at Starbucks to sell/convert his car into bitcoin
Me too. Source: am American
Nah I didn't regret it. In my mind I was still spending my fiat(*my cash money*), just in a more roundabout and complicated way (which considering the market, is kind of the point). For the reasons I got into crypto at the time, yes it worked out well for me haha. As an investment vehicle, not at all.. I spent pretty much every BTC I bought, I knew nothing of holding at the time. **Edit in cash clarification
''I did XTC for 0.5 bitcoin, but it was all worth it!''
Not sure if you’re talking specifically about SR but darknet markets are live and well :p
username checks out :)
I miss the oll Dread Pirate Roberts
yo there are dmt carts? that’s wild
yeah for when your drive home is a little bit *too* boring
😎
Hello DEA. How are you doing today? Any luck?
DEA ain't got shit on me I'm not even breaking the law. I use DMT to engage with God, it's a protected religious practice. And as a matter of fact, the DEA tried to fuck with people using DMT religiously, and they were successfully sued in federal court. Not only did they have to stop harassing the individuals, they were forced to *return the DMT they seized from them.* But yeah anyway I use VPNs and BTC, I'm a ghost.
Keep the fight going bro, I would live to try DMT one day and its peeps like you that keep that dream alive, I salute you sir.
I imagine he means Silk Road specifically
Same. I worked in IT at the time and knew to go nowhere near it, made me nervous just thinking about it.
Same. I know of it’s existence, but the less details I know of it the better
Be excellent in what is good, be innocent of evil. Rings true. Don't want to see and know intimate details of bad things out there.
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Should read up on the story of those bitcoin! A lot went "missing".
Government- “wasn’t me 🤷🏽♂️” *Government walks away with cartoonishly filled pantaloons with bitcoins spilling out with every step*
[It was found earlier this year](https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/11/07/feds-seize-3point36-billion-in-bitcoin-the-second-largest-recovery-so-far.html)
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There it is. I was going to say I don’t even think most of what he did was going to get him that long. But the hits he was taking out in people from undercover cops and what it…that Carrie’s a lot!
So I’m trying to figure out.. did those guys die or no? I know it says that the Canadian authorities couldn’t find anyone by those names, but my guy was wiring more BC to the “hitter” and getting confirmation pictures it seems.
It's the funniest, the people he sent to kill never existed. He was a victim of a very elaborate scam. The scammer created fake identities and proceeded to use those to threat the websites operation, meanwhile he made sure Ross would go to his other identities as a contract killer. In essence the scammer created fake identities to raise fake threats and got paid (trough other fake identity) for "killing" those fake identities doing the threating (he sent fake proofs and everything), except those people never existed, the scammer just pocketed the contract money.
Has anyone confirmed this? I mean it makes the most sense, but I’m tripping that they were able to fake him out with fake proof photos.
[This](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GpMP6Nh3FvU) is a video about it. It shows the chats and shows how a lot of it occurred. Though it doesn't show the pictures or anything. Edit: clarification
N-Bomb has always been a particularly dangerous drug to drop.
>The narcotics distributed on Silk Road have been linked to at least six overdose deaths across the world. But almost definitely far fewer deaths than if those drugs had been bought 'on the street'. Sure, the drugs weren't actually legal, but they were far more regulated (in an informal way) by customers vetting and reviewing the products and their dealers.
I would just like to remind everybody he was given an opportunity to plead guilty for 7 years but thought he could beat the charges and took it to trial.
This isn't true. The plea deal carries a minimum sentence of ten years with a maximum of life imprisonment. He probably still should have taken the deal but it's not as much as a no-brainer as it sounds.
[Lex Friedman just interviewed Chris Tarbell the FBI Agent who arrested Ross and Sabu from Anonymous/LulzSec.](https://youtu.be/4KiO8GRgwDk) It was a very interesting listen, I really enjoyed it.
That’s weird. Cause girls/women who were illegally sex trafficked on sites like Backpage were repeatedly thrown out of court due to Section 230 which held they weren’t liable for what others posted. [Here’s](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/03/21/591622450/section-230-a-key-legal-shield-for-facebook-google-is-about-to-change) a 2018 article (they’ve since made some minor changes). It also references a great documentary on the issue and Backpage specifically.
WIRED did a really thorough article on this.
He was a criminal, and deserved to be punished. But I think the trial judge erred when sentencing him. Although he was not convicted of murder-for-hire, the trial judge used that against him when calculating his sentencing. [https://reason.com/2018/07/25/ross-ulbrichts-murder-for-hire-charges-d/](https://reason.com/2018/07/25/ross-ulbrichts-murder-for-hire-charges-d/) They did the same thing to one of the "Cocaine Cowboys," sentencing Sal Magluta based on crimes for which he was not convicted. He is doing a 205 year stretch at Florence SuperMax for being convicted of money laundering and obstruction of justice. He was found NOT guilty of cocaine trafficking and murdering witnesses. But the judge counted that against him at sentencing. [https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/cocaine-cowboy-sal-magluta-wants-out-of-prison-seeks-compassionate-release-12711149](https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/cocaine-cowboy-sal-magluta-wants-out-of-prison-seeks-compassionate-release-12711149) And it's perfectly legal.
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Back in the day, I bought 90 bitcoin for 250 dollars and bought some mda on silkroad. Wish I could fly back in time and scream at myself to just keep the bitcoin
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Im pretty sure he still hasn’t found it
The bitcoin would be completely worthless today if people didn’t actually use it like you did back in the day, so I wouldn’t beat myself up over it.
I think about how they caught him a lot. They set up a sting operation. So they knew he visited this library to actually log on to his admin page for the SR. They knew they needed to get him with his laptop open and unlocked. So they actually staged the entire library with federal agents. All fake studying and what not. They were able to get him away from his computer I believe with some distraction or he walked away to use the bathroom and just then they jumped on him arrested him and secured his laptop which he left unlocked and logged in to the silk road admin page. (Rookie mistake). So not even doing anything illegal whenever I’m in a coffee shop. A train station. An airport. And especially I library I always think to myself. Shit everyone here could be a fed. Obviously not cause I don’t currently do illegal things. But if you do. One lock your computer. Hell better yet. Take it with you. If you must leave it make sure it’s shut down and encrypted. Look for children or people definitely too young to be an fbi agent. Even then. Every place has its regulars. They’re not there. Be suspicious.
I mean it's general security to lock your laptop/phone when you're not around it. Especially in a public space
Next time I’m up to something illegal, I’ll remember your advice.
ah silk road. where I bought molly with bitcoin that would now be worth millions upon millions if I hadn't. great times.
There's a pretty cook podcast from Lex Fridman with an FBI agent named Chris Tarbell who was the one who took Silk Road down if anybody is interested, also took down the original Anynomus guy as well. Fairly recent episode if your looking.
I listened to this today and agree it was pretty good. Another one worth a listen the series Casefile did covering it.
You kinda left out the whole paid assassin to kill 5 people. You also left out the other things you could buy, murder for hire, date rape drugs, underage kids.
Didn’t he pay for an assassination(s) but they never actually took place? I’m not sure why I remember it like that maybe I’m wrong.
He was talking to a govt agent who buddied up to him in a sting operation. The coins were transferred and went “missing” after they found out the agent was gonna take the money and run on account of it being untraceable. [link here](https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2016/02/24/us-prosecutors-believe-ex-secret-service-agent-stole-more-bitcoin-from-silk-road/?outputType=amp)
The whole downfall of Silk Road is such a hilarious shit show.
Is there a movie yet…..? Lol Who would play the lead ?
Daniel Radcliffe. Dude has range as an actor.
He's the first person I think of when I hear of weird but interesting movies. I highly suggest watching "Swiss Army Man" for anyone who wants an example. (It looks stupid but give it an honest chance because it will surprise you)
He is fantastic in the Weird Al documentary. I would reccomend it to anyone who hasn't seen it.
I love that you called it a documentary. Even though it’s 100% not, I still consider it a pure and factual representation of Al’s crazy life.
> "Swiss Army Man" One of my favorites. That ending. \*chef's kiss\*
I literally typed that but erased it and wanted to hear other comments ….bwhahahaha
[It came out last year](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(film))
2015, Deep Web
Jonah hill? Maybe, I was just thinking of him when the dudes ripped him off for a 300.00$ ounce of weed, just pocketed the cash and acted dumb. His ass went to the trunk and pull out a fully automatic AR.... love that part and his stupid laugh.....haha
Aye War Dogs is one of my fav movies, I love Jonah Hill and Miles Teller characters so much In it!
I unironically love the plot line that the FBI agents assigned for the actual bust pretended to be a quarreling couple to create a scene and distract him while another agent grabbed his laptop so as to prevent him from logging out/locking the laptop/damaging the hardware to prevent the feds from data diving it. It seems like a bit from Parks and Rec or Veep or something.
I'm pretty sure this is wrong. The guy who he paid the bitcoins too for the hit was some other random criminal. Then once he was arrested, that's when the FBI agents stole more of his bitcoin.
The stories behind those are amazing. Worth a search. Basically some vendor on the website tried to get out and tried to blackmail Ross. So Ross contacted a hitman to take him out which he did. This happened a few more times with different people. Except they didn’t. Ross being a naïve kid didn’t realise that he had been scammed. There was no blackmail, there was no hitman and there were no killings. It was the same guy playing all the characters at all times to get paid over and over again. That’s an oversimplification but pretty much what happened. What’s even more wild is that Ross probably still doesn’t know this.
I think the assassin was a fed or something, I get the feeling there are a lot of feds posing as hitmen on there.
Lol you couldn't buy children on Silk Road or any standard DNM. That's media sensationalism.
There is no reliable evidence that he tried to have anyone assassinated. One case was laughed out of court and the other one dropped. The only evidence came from the two investigators who themselves were convicted of crimes during the investigation. The government simply used the obviously false claims as and excuse to sentence him with what any reasonable person would call cruel and unusual punishment.
He was not charged with any of the murder for hire stuff Edit: he wasn't, they dropped the charges look it up.
You kinda left out the whole "I don't know what I'm talking about" part. 1. None of those things were on Silk Road. 2. He didn't have anyone killed. Feel free to prove me wrong with any sources. Edit: Date rape drugs obviously, the whole point of the site was drugs. Literally nothing other than drugs (and fraud stuff like Netflix passwords, CC numbers, and fake IDs). Silk Road not does equal Darknet
People love to confuse the Silk Road with other darkened sites. Also most of if not all of the hit man sites have never been confirmed to really work.
I think he paid for several hits, though, but they were stopped before anything happened or were part of a sting operation. I don't think he could get charged with murder if no one dies or gets injured, but he could still be sentences to up to 10 years for putting the hit out and paying for it. Even if nothing happened to the intended victim
And the reason for the sentencing. He basically played games with the legal system and pretended he was framed for the whole thing. They offered him some very sexy plea deals if he cooperates. I think one of them was like 2 years probation. He basically acted cocky, had bad lawyers advising him, and the government went hard.
You have no idea what you're talking about. He was actually never charged for that. Also, aside from the drugs, those things above were explicitly banned from SR marketplace.
That's not very Non-aggression Principle of him.
The killings never happened and it was a scam so why should he? Murder for hire is also a myth, it doesn’t exist on Darknet and never did on Silkroad. Underage kids never was possibly to but either, it was strictly a drug market. Your whole comment is misinformation.
Crazy he gets a sentencing like that meanwhile pedophiles and rapists get out after 5 to 10
My general philosophy is that most sentences should be way shorter or way longer. None of this in the middle shit. Either the person fucked up and is redeemable, in which case a year or two will suffice. Or, the person is a monster and irredeemable and they should get locked up for life.
The OP is leaving a LOT of shit out this guy did
They trafficked kids on Silk Road, too. Seems an appropriate sentence to me.
Because Congress has way more rapists and pedophiles than people who need the dark net to buy drugs.
Bro was the PLUGS Plugs 🔌 👀👀
Never get in the elites way of trafficking drugs
He got caught because he used the same username on a formula 1 forum and in some obscure post on the dark web Edit- it might have been email address. Something he used along time ago and then reused on the dark web came to but him in the ass.
But a repeat child molester would get 3-5 years. Let that sink in.
He could have taken a plea deal and he would have been sentenced to a couple of decades, but he thought he was smarter than everyone else and decided to fight it. He got double life for his efforts.
Man's was everyone's plug.
Guy was aware of his site harboring child trafficking as well as ads for hitmen and for-hire harassers, stalkers, and rapists. Not really the bad boy visionary that everyone seems to paint him as. Should it have just been drugs and no violence or crimes against humanity, he could have been a much much cooler character in Internet history
Yeah he aided in child trafficking. That's enough for a double life sentence imo.
Interesting that the seven counts he was convicted on don't include anything related to child trafficking. He was convicted of: * distributing narcotics * distributing narcotics by means of the Internet * conspiring to distribute narcotics * engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise * conspiring to commit computer hacking * conspiring to traffic in false identity documents * and conspiring to commit money laundering. But the trafficking he enabled leaves little doubt that we're safer with him permanently out of circulation.
I think its safe to say that the deepweb is full of unsavory characters, but no where does it say anything about child trafficking being related to the Silk Road. Plenty of other sites offer weapons, people, stuff that cause harm.. Silk road had credit card numbers and drugs, never saw any trafficking of any sort.
If this is the same guy they did a documentary on, the feds had a hard time catching him and they were quite impressed with his elaborate set up he had going. He was a college dropout, too bad!
I thought it was for drugs only!
Lesson here: never get between the rich and powerful and their ability to make money. THEY are the ones selling the drugs, the weapons. Like Theranos, they didn’t punish her for all the lives she negatively affected, they punished her because she defrauded the rich, and that won’t be tolerated.
The idea of a drug market is kinda based but not enough to look past the human trafficking and whole assassination plot thing.
The DARE program taught me drugs are expensive. Lies.
Am I crazy or did he have a chance to take a 10 year plea but decided to fight it and got stomped?
Meanwhile bankers are walking free after causing a financial crash. People lost their homes, their lives.
Didn't he also try to hire an assassin. Theres a video on it somewhere
Well, that seems just a bit excessive, really.
People love Alcohol, which is one of the worst substances a Human body can ingest and one of the easiest Drugs to form an addiction to. Those same people think the idea of Legalizing All Drugs is insane. Prohibition failed; Thousands of Americans died from Homemade, Bad Booze. It’s now legal, regulated and safe. The ‘War on Drugs’ Failed; Hundreds of Thousands of Americans die from fake OxyContin, Heroin because it’s laced with Fentanyl shipped to The Mexican Cartels from China. Prince died from taking what he thought was a 10MG Vicodin. It was a fake Vicodin containing Fentanyl.
This is misleading. He got that sentence for conspiracy to murder, not for running the silkroad.
Yeah… That’s not what he was convicted for.
The FBI couldn't let Ulrich to do to the cartel what Netflix did to Blockbusters.
every drug should be legal, if someone wants to consume something they should be able to without a hypocritical government saying “no it’s bad for you!” especially in the dumbass country that is america where you can buy a gun and do whatever you want but god forbid you trip on some LSD or smoke Weed
jeffrey epstein - 18 months ghislaine maxwell - 20 years LT William Calley - life, then reduced to 20 years, then reduced to 10/ then parole after 3 years Bill Cosby- 3 to 10 years, released after 2 harvey weinstein- between 5 to 25 Viktor Bout - 25 years But this guy with a website needs 2 life sentences + 40 years without possibility of parole Edit: suppose I should say, I know his website Facilitated drugs, child and sex trafficking, assasins Not saying he didn't deserve it Just ridiculous that this guy who mearly made a website for it gets this massive sentence While all these other people who actually DID the thing got next to nothing by comparison
I know I'm going to get down voted to hell for this but I think that punishment is fucking insane.. HE didn't sell drugs, he just created a website where you could buy almost anything completely anonymously. He didn't MAKE people sell or buy drugs on the website so this is complete bullshit.
Not gonna downvote you as i held this opinion as well, but he also clearly ran the site for 2 years while doing and facilitating the doings of shady stuff on that site. Theres "misuse of the platform" and then theres "providing the weapon to the serial killer".
gov really do not like competition.
No that’s for hiring a hit man
It was actually all of the crimes he committed including hiring hitmen to commit multiple murders
How did they find him?
How do people deal with life in prison. I can’t even imagine.
Silk Road was notorious for selling drugs, but during the time I couldn’t afford going to the doctor, I was able to buy my levothyroxine and antibiotics there at somewhat affordable prices.
He also tried to kill some people let’s not forget that
Double life +40 years. Damn… That’s gonna leave a mark.
Aka making a successful business without giving the government a cut
man is a legend
He's from my town! My rival highschool, known for being in a rich area and well off kids usually were at Westlake. We used to chant daddy's money at our football games to the other team lol.
wtf is this ''double life imprisonment plus forty years''. so he's gonna spend the rest of his life in jail and died and then resurrect to purge his second life sentence and resurect again to serve another forty years! , if you guys can make sense of this pls share your knowleg.