Trump is a demon, but this was a good call. His sentence was wildly disproportionate to what he did.
Didn’t he try to hire a hitman?
No. The evidence against him was fabricated because they didn’t have any evidence.
I somehpw doubt that considering some if the evidence used to convict him was used to convict his DEA mole later
The judicial system in America is obviously not about what is written in their legal statutes or the veracity of the evidence presented. Otherwise war criminals, fraudsters and rapists like Bush, Cheney, Trump and Clinton would be in prison. It is about advancing an agenda for a white male US hegemony and that explains most of the outcomes, e.g. black people being enslaved in prison. Ulbricht thumbed his nose at the establishment and they got pissy. Assange and Snowden revealed their crimes and they hunted them to the ends of the earth. The CIA and their stooges, the Swedes, fabricated a rape allegation against Assange that was quietly dismissed, unfulfilled, seven years later. This establishment will stop at nothing to assert their authority and you wonder about evidence in the Ulbricht case?
No I don’t wonder because again that evidence was used to convict the DEA agents that stole from Silk Road. You are linking a bunch of things that have nothing to do with each other. The pattern you are seeing is an illusion
Nonetheless, he was not convicted on those charges.
it was to kill competition who were threatening to kill him. id say if the law won’t protect you, you are free to protect yourself
Edit: I wrote a whole comment about this and the corrupt DEA agents involved in pushing him into a murder-for-hire scheme who were also working as moderators for the Silk Road, and later went to prison for crimes surrounding the ordeal.
But I decided against it, because the fact remains that it is likely he did attempt to have people killed. It was due to threats of exposing him, not threats on his life. And the fact is that him likely being entrapped is a good legal defense but not a good moral one.
If we ignore everything involving the possible contract murder deals, I say that his release is wonderful. Considering he was never convicted of any of the murder for hire stuff, his sentence was draconian, and marked a real shift in the freedom of the internet. As to Trump, even a broken clock is right twice every 78 years.
But this release is not so sweet knowing what Ross may have and likely tried to do in order to hang onto his crumbling empire.
Could prosecutors still charge him with murder for hire, ultimately forcing Trump to double down?
I really don’t know, but I doubt they would. It’s possible for the original 5 instances he was accused of, as he was never tried but the district court conceded he probably did it.
The 6th, later and more famous instance? Probably not. He was actually indicted for that in Maryland, but it was a weak case that was dropped once he was convicted of his other drug and financial crimes. In the later incident, the hitman who he purportedly hired was Carl Force; the corrupt DEA agent. At best, Force’s action constituted entrapment. At worst, the whole story is unreliable. Either way, I can’t see any government agency thrilled about dragging the details of that situation out of obscurity.
even a broken clock is right twice a day…
this was probably timed to distract from the whole, nazi salute controversy.
Why though?
I mean, who is looking at this and calling it an injustice?
Side note: does he get his bitcoin wallet back?
It was an injustice. He deserved time in prison for hiring fake hitmen in an attempt to get back at people, but he sure as hell didn’t deserve life in prison for it. And nobody should be in jail for selling drugs.
Ross is an idiot, but his punishment was the government making an example of him, and was way out of proportion to his crimes. The definition of injustice.
Side note: does he get his bitcoin wallet back?
Dude was deep into Bitcoin back when it was less than a dollar. If he diversified and stashed just a fraction of his holdings, he might now be one of the richest people on the planet.
Who says crime doesn’t pay? :/
Prison = forced hodling
He got more time than actual gang bangers without committing any violent crime. His sentence was way longer than it should have been.
I think the pot sales were probably not a huge deal, and some of the other recreational drugs too (I don’t think anyone should do those drugs, but I’m not going to restrict everyone else).
The hitman services listed and other illegal stuff was definitely an issue he deserved time for.
He was never criminally tried for those charges. That means just selling drugs have him two lifetimes in prison plus 40 years without possibility of parole
Interesting, I didn’t know that, though I didn’t follow the case too closely, but the arrest was big news
Don’t know or care about this guy but all drugs should be legal.
Then you should probably care about him. He gave people around the world access to medicine that was illegal
Silk Road wasn’t the first darknet market ya know. I helped launch the first couple that were .onion prior to Ross, but the movement has been about since the 90s at least and would’ve happened without any of us. We were working on a decentralised version that would’ve been unstoppable but people moved on and got other priorities when SR took all the media attention and spotlight. I’m guessing it’ll emerge out crypto soon now the tech has caught up with the theory.
I’m kind of curious to hear about this decentralized solution…
I lost touch with the guy who was working on it, but this was before smart contracts even came on the scene.
The original text that radicalised me; https://anarplex.sirion.io/hosted/files/Toward_A_Private_Digital_Economy/index.html
There was OpenBazaar, but flopped for obvious reasons.
Didn’t Donald the Jester say something about fighting crime before the election? And then he drops thousands of hard criminals back on the street?
Tough on drugs… For people who aren’t white
Someone should really convince him to legalise all drugs to stick it to the cartels.
Imagine having millions of dollars worth of bitcoin in 2013 and then being imprisoned until 2024.
I hope he made a good backup of at least a few thousand coins.
His coins were all seized by the government. Or what was left of them. You see, Ross was not a very smart person, and what he didn’t give to fake hitmen to knock off people he didn’t like, got pillaged by hackers because he wasn’t a programmer and the Silk Road was held together with spit and a whole lot of optimism. He got caught because he posted his personal email in a public forum while advertising the Silk Road, and his email address contained his real name.
He’s an absolute idiot, and half the people in this thread could have run the site better than him.
You’re making assumptions.
Also, he wasn’t an idiot. He just didn’t have any prior experience or training as a Dev or in opsec.
Glen geeenwald is not an idiot and he was just as ignorant when Snowden tried to contact him.
no, Glen Greenwald is an idiot
Listen, if you think being the admin of a darknet drug marketplace and using your real name in public forums doesn’t make you an idiot, then you’re an idiot too.
Also, Glen Greenwald is absolutely an idiot.
I remember this guy being a fucking idiot that paid for several fake assassinations of fake rivals. It was pretty funny.
It is funny in hindsight, knowing the assassinations were a scam. But he thought they were real, he talked in great detail about them and payed for them. This is missing from the article, I believe it was part of his indictment.
Oh yeah, he’s a piece of shit for sure. I just think it’s funny that he’s also a moron. What kind of drug lord gets a message saying “Hey, I heard of a guy who wants to take you down, wire me a cool mil and I’ll kill him for you, k?” and just… sends the money? More than once?! He definitely tried to rescue an overthrown Nigerian prince as a kid.
Yeah, when I watched a synopsis of the story, multiple alarm bells rang in my head midway through watching it. He’s so gullible for how rich he fucking was
So the twist that was that they were all the same person, didn’t even surprise me, you could see that it was a scam a mile away if you were paying attention
The scammer was pretty good, though, I will give them that. Too bad the scammer was also pretty dumb about how the handle the money after the fact, and got caught lmao.
Don’t forget, he was caught because he posted his email in a public forum while advertising the Silk Road. That email address contained his real name.
lol I totally forgot about that. He should be used as evidence that meritocracy isn’t real.
Honestly, the only reason he’s famous at all is because the Silk Road was used to drum up shock by the media, so the government used him as an example to those who would make them look bad. Otherwise, he would have faded into obscurity like every other idiot criminal who stumbled into short term riches.
Don’t forget, he was caught because he posted his email in a public forum while advertising the Silk Road
Even better, he asked a question on StackOverflow lol
Don’t you know? All the best darknet marketplaces are cobbled together from code strangers gave you on SO.
“The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me.”
He called Ulbricht’s prison sentence “ridiculous.”
I clearly recall Trump being president from 2016-2020, Ulbricht was sentenced to life without parole in 2015.
If it was so ridiculous, why didn’t he pardon him on his first term? What changed to make it such an immediate priority now?
Trump doesn’t need to think about re-election this time around so he has more political freedom.
Back then he thought Bitcoin was bad and a scam. This time someone showed him how to make money by creating a scam coin and doing a pump and dump, so now he’s pro Bitcoin. So pro he’ll get rid of all regulation so pump and dump scams are completely legal.
Imagine how many times he was asked:
“Why don’t you have your own “Bitcoin” coin yet, Mr. President?”
Because he needed the libertarian vote this time in order to win. Its a very cheap promise that guarantees votes and doesnt alienate anyone that doesnt care. Honestly, the fact that he followed through suprises me.
“But why didnt he need the libertarian vote in 16?”
Because he never intended to win the first time. The first run was a fluke. He wanted to play victim and run the media circuit for profit.
Based?
Trump said he had called Ulbricht’s mother to tell her he would pardon her son “in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly”.
Wildy transactional.
So… does “full and unconditional” mean he’s also pardoned for the murders-for-hire? Or just for being a drug lord and America’s Next Top Website Boy?
Yeah, it’s insane that he’s just openly being like, “I promise to use the powers of my office to solely benefit myself,” and the Supreme Court’s just like, “Get it, grrrrrl”
Although, to be fair, it did also benefit a guy who tried to murder five people.
He was never convicted on murders for hire, charges were dropped
I’m actually kind of impressed he kept his word. That’s unexpected
His part is signing a piece of paper with a Sharpie that one of his handlers puts in front of him. That phone call had to be horrible, Trump trying to explain to a mom he is setting her son that he knows nothing about, free because he once said he would to a large group of people he wants to grift.
Because 0% he knows the guy’s name, who he was, or why he was in prison.
Edit - autocorrect =(
I mean, I’m just going to go with the most obvious grift. Ulbricht is going to go right back to operating a crypto street pharmacy. Hell, he’ll do it on the open web now. He’ll call it “The New Silk Road” or similar.
And then there’s an agreement for the feds to not go after them. In exchange, Ulbricht uses a good portion of his earnings to become the largest single investor in Trumpcoin ever. If asked, the feds can either ignore the question or hide behind some fig leaf excuse they come up with.
It’s not like Trump didn’t run blatant undeniable cons in the last administration.
Having something like that as a government honeypot is also a great way to get kompromat on people.
Wow, holy fuck, I never thought it’d happen. Even a broken clock is right twice a day I guess.
This dude is about to have a very lucrative career.
You’re saying it’s the right move to release a man convicted of (I believe) several counts of attempted murder?
Absolutely, free Ross.
I’m not a trump fan
The dude’s a clown. Get better role models.
He wasn’t charged with any of that.
Because instead of paying a hitman, he was paying a scammer thinking he was a hitman. He’s still an asshole though.
We don’t actually know as those charges were dropped. In this country you’re innocent until proven guilty, therefore he’s innocent.
I’m not making any statements on his personality or character, just that he’s not guilty.
Absolutely, he is legally innocent of this, as the charges were indeed dropped.
However, it’s all publicly documented. You can read the DMs where all of this occurred if you’d like. It includes the transaction IDs and wallets in which this all occurred. The paper trail is all there. This happened, whether legally recognized or not. I do completely agree with you that he is legally innocent, but the evidence that this happened is overwhelming.
The reason he wasn’t found guilty of this specifically is because the prosecution, in the case in which he was found guilty, didn’t even include this in his charges, but instead used it as an example of his character in relation to the charges he did receive. Considering there was no actual murder that took place, they probably felt they had significantly better odds with other charges that they could easily get a guilty verdict (and significant sentence) with. This isn’t uncommon procedure.
Meanwhile, the Maryland case in which he was being charged in relation to this, was dropped once he’d already been found guilty in NY and sentenced to two life sentences.
Yay drugs!
This was one of the biggest requests of the Libertarian Party and Trump followed through with it. Could you imagine the Democratic Party agreeing to any demand from the Green Party in an attempt to get votes?
I can imagine them agreeing to all sorts of things!<br>
Snowden next?
He will have him executed.
Lol explain the logic here… Russian asset gonna execute another Russian asset cuZ?
Putler does it all the time
Asset doesn’t mean Russia has full power over them, only that they’re acting to their advantage
Lol, fat chance
