Ross Ulbricht, sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for creating the Silk Road darknet marketplace, is free.
Ulbricht is a freedom fighter to some and a dangerous criminal to others. The former know Ulbricht as described in Forbes, “a principled libertarian and cypherpunk in the same vein as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.”
Ulbricht had a theory: Violent drug cartels would have no chance of sustaining themselves in a free-market environment where the state did not control the use of substances, because nonviolent operations would simply outnumber violent ones based on demand.
Most who believe the latter, however, often base their opinion on claims that Ulbricht attempted to hire a hitman against a former Silk Road administrator accused of embezzling bitcoin from the site. While Ulbricht’s supporters celebrate, critics ask: Why would an online community so vehemently defend an attempted murder?
The controversies and outright corruption surrounding Ulbricht’s judicial proceedings should therefore not be forgotten.
The charges against Ulbricht
On February 5, 2015, a Southern District of New York jury found Ulbricht guilty of exclusively nonviolent crimes, including several counts of distribution of narcotics, computer hacking, conspiracy to operate a criminal enterprise, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The judge sentenced Ulbricht to two life sentences plus forty years without the possibility of parole – nearly double the sentence of violent Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The alleged murder-for-retribution case arose from a different case, filed in May 2013 in Maryland. The indictment alleged that, based on chat logs obtained from the Silk Road site, Ulbricht attempted to kill Curtis Green for stealing bitcoin from the project.
According to prosecutors’ chat logs, Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR), Ulbricht’s alias, wrote to another Silk Road user, who he believed to be a drug kingpin capable of giving orders to a hitman:
“I would like to beat him, [sic] then forced to send back the bitcoins he had stolen. [sic] like sitting him down in front of his computer and making him do it.”
The following day, the indictment states, DPR changed his mind, writing: “Can you change the execution order instead of the torture order?”
According to the prosecution, the DPR stated that Green “has been inside for a while, and now that he has been arrested, I fear that he will give information”, adding that “he had never killed a man before, but this is the right move in this case.”
A few days later, $40,000 was transferred to the hitman’s account, and DPR asked for “proof of death” via video or images to send the rest of the payment.
On February 21, 2013, the boss informed DPR that Green was dead: “they killed him this weekend,” he wrote, telling him that he died of asphyxiation and that the body had been completely destroyed to eliminate evidence.
Except the boss wasn’t a boss. He was DEA agent Carl Force who, as it would later turn out, liked to engage in a small-time criminal enterprise himself when given the opportunity.
A real theft and a fake murder
Throughout the investigation, Green cooperated with law enforcement, allowing DEA Agent Carl Force and Secret Service Agent Shaun Bridges access to the Silk Road site.
During one of Silk Road’s law enforcement sessions, a series of “substantial thefts” occurred on the site, which would later be traced back to Bridges, who pleaded guilty to stealing $350,000 in bitcoin at the time of the theft, or $800,000 at the time of the theft. time of his guilty plea.
The account in question, managed by Bridges and in consultation with Force, had received “no less than 20,000 bitcoins,” according to the complaint. La Force, posing as drug kingpin “Nob”, then orchestrated the fake hit and, together with Bridges, faked Green’s death.
La Force created the false identity “Death from Above” to extort $250,000 from DPR, stating: “I know you have something to do with [Green’s] disappearance and death. I just wanted to let you know I’m coming to get you. […] You’re a dead man. Don’t think you can escape me.”
Bridges was sentenced to 24 months in prison to be served consecutively to the 71-month sentence he received for a similar crime in 2015, while Force was sentenced to 78 months in prison. The information about the corrupt agents was never made available to be used in Ulbricht’s defense.
Who is Dread Pirate Roberts
Dread Pirate Roberts, the pseudonym attributed to Ulbricht, is based on the 1973 novel “The Princess Bride” by William Goldman, depicting an identity assumed by multiple characters. The identity of Dread Pirate Roberts, as written by Goldman, is shared among pirates to intimidate opponents and passed on in secret.
During the public proceedings of the case, evidence emerged that the Silk Road DPR was not operated solely by Ulbricht. In a conversation with former friend Richard Bates, who helped Ulbricht create the Silk Road site, Ulbricht responded “I’m glad it’s not my problem anymore” when informed of news coverage regarding the site.
During the trial, prosecutors attempted to prevent the defense from questioning another law enforcement officer, Special Agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan of the Department of Homeland Security, who believed DPR was actually Mark Kapeles, the former CEO of Mt. Gox, who was later convicted. for falsifying Mt. Gox records and inflating the exchange’s offering by tens of millions.
Der-Yeghiayan had referenced an exclusive interview with DPR in Forbes, in which the pseudonymous Silk Road operator had stated that he “had not actually created Silk Road, but had instead befriended its creator and later acquired the site from him”.
According to Der-Yeghiayan, DPR’s writing closely resembled that of his suspect, Mark Kapeles – and Der-Yeghiayan is not the only one to claim that DPR sounded like someone else. As former Dark Wallet developer Amir Taaki said:
“Years ago, when I messaged Silk Road, I had a conversation with the DPR – a very personal conversation in which it was [talking] how one day he hopes to be out fighting for freedom together. You know, not having to hide his identity. One year [or] two years later when I texted that guy, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the same guy. The tone was completely different. He did not remember the events that had happened before, and his attitude towards me was in stark contrast to the exuberant and long-winded DPR of the first days.
This argument was further supported by a pseudonymous Silk Road seller, who stated that “there were ‘at least two other people, if not three’, administering Silk Road.” Der-Yeghiayan confirms this belief in an email ten days before Ulbricht’s arrest, stating that “we helped make the other two administrators escape.”
Silk Road employee Andrew Jones, who had established a “secret handshake” with Ulbricht to confirm his identity in 2012, also did not believe the deceased DPR was Ulbricht.
According to court documents, Jones allegedly asked DPR for a book recommendation, to which the correct response was “anything by Rothbard” — an answer DPR did not provide when asked a year later.
To add intellectual insult to operational injury, someone had accessed the DPR account six weeks after the arrest of Ulbricht, who was in federal custody at the time – and it may have been the corrupt agents, who had administrative access to the site, or another DPR. Together.
As stated by Green himself: “and for all those who say ‘there were more DPR’, absolutely there was – I was DPR once. So if I was, who else was?”
Regarding the murder-for-hire charges, Green said he did not believe Ulbricht would have ordered him killed. As Green stated in 2017:
“Ross Ulbricht had a bad deal. There’s a lot more to the story of Silk Road than people know, and I can’t talk about it yet. I don’t think Ross is dangerous or that it’s in his character to order a hit on anyone. He should never have received that horrible sentence.”
To cut to the chase: Yes, Ross Ulbricht ran Silk Road. No, Ross Ulbricht probably wasn’t the only person with access to the DPR account. Ross Ulbricht was never convicted of the murder-for-hire charge. The case was dismissed in 2018 with prejudice, meaning it could never be filed again.
As far as we know, we’re all Dread Pirate Roberts.