Wow, what a complete shitbag (DPR = Dread Pirate Roberts):
DPR sent a message to "redandwhite" stating that "FriendlyChemist"
is "Causing me problems" and adding: "I would like to put a bounty on
his head if it's not too much trouble for you. What would be an
adequate amount to motivate you to find him?"
And then
Later that same day, redandwhite sent DPR a message quoting him a
price of $150,000 or $300,000 "depending on how you want it done" -
"clean" or "non-clean"
DPR responded: "Don't want to be a pain here, but the price seems high.
Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for $80k. Are the prices you
quoted the best you can do? I would like this done ASAP as he is
talking about releasing the info on Monday.
DPR and redandwhite agreed upon a price of 1,670 Bitcoins - approximately
$150k - for the job. In DPR's message confirming the deal, DPR included
a transacation record reflecting the transfer of 1,670 Bitcoins to a
certain Bitcoin address.
Made $80mm in commissions running a drug trafficking network, paying hundreds of thousands to have people executed, mail fraud, money laundering, conspiracy.... He's looking at cartel level prison time.
In case you are wondering why he was out for FriendlyChemist, this claims that user was extorting him for $500k by threatening to release the information of thousands of Silk Road users.
Here's the part I don't understand:
* A user friendlychemist threatens DPR.
* DPR asks friendlychemist to refer his "supplier" to DPR.
* redandwhite says he was "asked to contatct" DPR by friendlychemist and friendlychemist owes redandwhite money
* DPR asks for a hit from redandwhite on friendlychemist
That makes zero sense to me. Why would you assume those two users are not the same person or aren't at least allies?
* BUT DPR was also afraid it'd lead to more extortion
* DPR knew redandwhite was same as friendlychemist or an associate of his
Based on these assumptions, DPR's move to pay redandwhite was really DPR paying friendlychemist while also communicating the length to which he is willing to go to deal with extortionists. So by going the path he went, he paid off friendlychemist and scared him at the same time.
That's crazy. Ulbricht would have to have been the dumbest person in the world to create an electronic record of having ordered and verified the consummation of a hired killing simply to send a message. "LOL JK", he planned to tell the jury?
The guy he tried to have killed could show up and testify on his behalf and a reasonable jury might still find him guilty.
Absurd.
I think we can all see at this point that Ulbricht got played. But that doesn't exculpate him. (Not that it matters yet; he hasn't been charged with the attempted murder).
FC: Give me money so I can pay my debts.
DP: Lemme talk to your creditor.
RW: I'm FC's creditor, whats up.
DP: I don't owe FC money. Rather I want him dead. Can you do this.
RW: Sure. $250k.
DP: I normally pay 80k to kill people. Split the difference?
... uh. wtf? The whole exchange really makes no sense, unless you assume that DPR knew he was talking to the same guy all along and was working on terms that would make the guy not bother him by scaring him off.
Or friendlychemist creates a new account called jerkyboy and rethreatens him with extortion, this time claiming to have evidence that he took out a hit on friendlychemist from his friend redandwhite ... and just keeps the whole cycle going.
Sounds like the guy was a petty criminal who wasn't as smart as he should have been if he wanted to run an underground market for criminal activity.
>>>> So by going the path he went, he paid off friendlychemist and scared him at the same time.
And anybody else who thought they would try and blackmail money out him. It seems completely plausible scenario and kills two birds with one stone. No pun intended.
Or that they would simply split the money and his target would shut up (pretend to die, by disappearing off that monicker). Or if it's the same user, the money doesn't even have to be split for that. Or it's a way to send a message that he's serious.... (in a way the recipient gets).
Although I believe the foregoing exchange demonstrates DPR's intention to solicit
a murder-for-hire, I have spoken with Canadian law enforcement authorities, who
have no record of there being any Canadian resident with the name DPR passed to
redandwhite as the target of the solicited murder-for-hire. Nor do they have any
record of a homicide occurring in White Rock, British Columbia on or about
March 31, 2013.
I formatted your post a bit better so it's readable on mobile devices, but I agree.
32. Although I believe foregoing exchange demonstrates DPR's
intention to solicit a murder-for-hire, I have spoken with
Canadian law enforcement authorities, who have no record of
there being any Canadian resident with the name DPR passed to
redandwhite as the target of the solicited murder-for-hire.
Nor do they have any record of a homicide occurring in White
Rock, British Columbia on or about March 31, 2013"
Since the police couldn't find a record of the alleged murder victim, I'm guessing that "redandwhite" and "friendlychemist" were the same person playing a con on DPR to get some cash.
I'd venture a wild guess that DPR knew the two were the same :) He paid off friendlychemist "indirectly" but also communicated that he wouldn't mind extreme measures to make him disappear shall this occur again.
If you keep reading, the document later details that DPR contacted this "redandwhite" person, who he contracted to kill the other person, regarding false identifications. That seems to add some doubt to your hypothesis, or at least complicates things.
It appears to fit with his persona of being a ruthless pirate, and the language also fits the big talk idea. He was paying for the problem to disappear, and he knew that, but he talked it up for fun.
However, he went too far into his fantasy, and not too smartly, and he'll pay for it.
No worries, the best way I've found to do it is to manually split the lines every 10 words or so.
So a paragraph that would run off the page and break mobile devices in normal circumstances should be broken in several places by a hard 'return' plus more spaces.
Is really just a collection of sentence fragments
that all fit the same formatting. There might be
a better way, but I don't know it!
If you're an emacs user, prefix the line with the desired number of spaces then type M-q, copy back into your browser. That's my solution to formatting block quotes at least. Your long line prexixed with 3 spaces in emacs:
So a paragraph that would run off the page and break mobile
devices in normal circumstances should be broken in several
places by a hard 'return' plus more spaces.
And your split-by-hand block quote:
Is really just a collection of sentence fragments that all
fit the same formatting. There might be a better way, but I
don't know it!
As a Vim newb (well, ok I can use it, but I'm not well-versed in its more arcane elements), how do you select lines? C-<space> in emacs starts region selection, but I've never tried to select anything in Vim.
> 32. Although I believe foregoing exchange demonstrates DPR's intention to solicit a murder-for-hire, I have spoken with Canadian law enforcement authorities, who have no record of there being any Canadian resident with the name DPR passed to redandwhite as the target of the solicited murder-for-hire. Nor do they have any record of a homicide occurring in White Rock, British Columbia on or about March 31, 2013"
Or an angle bracket, with an opening and closing asterisk.
> 32. Although I believe foregoing exchange demonstrates DPR's intention to solicit a murder-for-hire, I have spoken with Canadian law enforcement authorities, who have no record of there being any Canadian resident with the name DPR passed to redandwhite as the target of the solicited murder-for-hire. Nor do they have any record of a homicide occurring in White Rock, British Columbia on or about March 31, 2013"
This means you don't need to include any line breaks.
I've added (another) comment to the HN feature requests post asking for a real quote function, so that offtopic discussions like this can come to an end.
If it was a 'clean' hit, why would there be record of a homicide? From what I've read, it sounds like a clean hit could/would be made to look like an accident.
The US gov produced a document a while back about assassinating people - though for the life of my I can't find my copy so it's possible there wasn't anything novel enough in there to be worth keeping it. I believe they recommended causing someone to fall from a high place. I'd imagine by grasping their ankles and then tipping them over the edge; though the precise methodology for the tripping was redacted in the version I saw.
He asked the other account a few months later to make him a fake ID. Why would you be contacting and want to be involved with somebody who extorted you to the tune of $150k just a few months back? Not to mention he would then have to give up his physical address to have the docs sent, to someone who just a few months previous threatened to release the physical addresses of users on the site?
There's no evidence of that. This theory just comes from the Bitcoin community's desire to make DPR into a martyr. Its not as if he was particularly sophisticated in covering his tracks in the first place (a lot of the things he did were facepalm worthy). Occam's razor -- he meant to take out a hit, and was just stupid.
Did I miss something in the article? Where did you get that information? Here's the complete text of the linked article:
Oct 2 (Reuters) - U.S. law enforcement authorities raided
an Internet site that served as a marketplace for illegal
drugs, including heroin and cocaine, and arrested its
owner, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Wednesday.
The FBI arrested Ross William Ulbricht, known as "Dread
Pirate Roberts," in San Francisco on Tuesday, according to
court filings. Federal prosecutors charged Ulbricht with
one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy,
computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering
conspiracy, according to a court filing.
It's not entrapment unless the police induce the crime to be committed. Nobody forced him to "order a hit." Attempting a murder-for-hire is not something you can be tricked into doing.
I think one could be entrapped into a murder-for-hire.
Certain government authorities know you're acquainted with someone who's previously been fingered for murder-for-hire but never convicted.
The "authorities" call you and threaten to murder your family; you naturally seek back-up from your erstwhile acquaintance. The police ensure they give you just enough information to track their threat back to a "person" of their construction.
Boom. You're up on a rap of "conspiracy to commit first degree murder" (or whatever it's actually called in your jurisdiction).
I said this in the last DPR story (the interview): my bet is that he will go down for tax evasion. It's hard to prove murder, conspiracy, drug trafficking, etc., but it's easy to prove that this guy made a bunch of money and didn't pay taxes on it. He'll get federal prison time for it.
I would imagine a 'clean hit' is one made to look like an accident and a 'non-clean' one doesn't take the same precautions?
The police couldn't find a record of the alleged murder victim, so I'm guessing that "redandwhite" and "friendlychemist" were the same person, just playing a con on DPR to get some cash.
If Person A has known motive to kill Person B, in a "non-clean" hit Person A will immediately come under suspicion. If the hit is "clean", anything could have happened and it's a lot harder to establish it as a murder and therefore Person A has a much lower risk of being brought into the case.
Depends how they did it. Shoot someone with an unregistered or stolen rifle from long distance, capture your brass, destroy the rifle and brass. Obviously a murder, if it were done that way. Very little effort involved, and what've the cops really got then?
You'd probably create more evidence trying to make it look like an accident than you'd clear up just by doing it some easier way.
It really depends on where you are. There are vast rural areas in USA, for instance, in which there are many rifles the theft of which wouldn't even be noticed for weeks. Just don't take them during the month before deer season.
My guess is that "clean" includes disposal of the body and other evidence. Like in movies where people call up the "cleaner" after a murder to make the bodies disappear (e.g., "Victor the Cleaner" in Point of No Return).
I understand the psychology behind being shocked at this and everything thinking he deserves jail time, but given the War on Drugs and the way the US Justice System works with respect to drug charges, I would imagine that that one violent crime charge is likely to be a drop in the bucket in comparison to all the victimless crime charges for drugs.
However, what I am surprised by is the fact that there wasn't really any focus on his facilitation of arms trafficking. I would imagine that those activities are more likely to cause actual harm to society that we should be worried about.
Yeah, this is absolutely stunning stuff. No doubt plenty will immediately cry foul and say that he's been set up, but let's wait and see what the investigation shows.
s/Libertarian ideals/Stereotypical Libertarian ideals in the general sense, as characterized by an emphasis on individual rights, and a decrease in power or control of the state or societal systems over individual financial or personal actions or rights./
Made $80mm in commissions running a drug trafficking network, paying hundreds of thousands to have people executed, mail fraud, money laundering, conspiracy.... He's looking at cartel level prison time.
He paid someone to kill an extortionist that had threatened to release incriminating info on a lot of users. As far as the law goes it's the same as him killing his child's first grade teacher over a bad grade but when you extort someone operating a drug dealing network, what do you expect?
If DPR actually paid to have someone killed, it would surprise everyone who knew anything about him. He's thought to be a libertarian and totally against the use of force.
That hypocrisy grabbed me too. The complaint, when talking about his background makes special note of this;
After going to Penn St for a grad degree in materials science,
"Ulbrecht states that his 'goals' subsequently 'shifted'. Ulbricht
elaborates, obliquely, that he has since focused on "creating an
"economic simulation" designed to "give people a first-hand experience
of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of
force" by "institutions and governments."
The monopoly on the use of force by Government agents keeps private actors (or at least it attempts to) from employing violence on their own terms. Absent that monopoly, private agents will fill the void.
You wouldn't be able to build up the necessary military force without expending massive amounts of money and drawing negative attention to yourself. Investors would not want to be involved with a company creating a PR nightmare and wasting their money on evil. Customers would boycott, the company's stock price would drop, and they wouldn't be able to carry out their plans anyway.
You seem to be assuming that the allegations are true. The understanding that most people have had is that DPR is a pure freedom fighter. If you take away those allegations, all that's left are fake "crimes" that aren't really crimes at all, just things that government doesn't like.
Edit: but I'm waiting and reading with an open mind.
I think it's reasonable to believe that he started out a pure (ish) freedom fighter and got corrupted by the fact that he had made 10's of millions of dollars off his little experiment.
I'd guess that he might be willing to kill people in the case that there are threats to his personal security. He also had aspirations for his site to bring about a libertarian revolution and may have thought that threats to the integrity of the site were worth killing for.
A lot of libertarian writing on force starts from a more general "non-aggression principle", and derives the wrongness of state violence as just one special case.
The "non-aggression principle" is basically a propaganda con by libertarians, though.
The way this works is that they take their own favorite definition of personal property, and then re-define the word "aggression" as: "anything that violates my definition of personal property, and nothing else".
So, when a land owner shoots somebody who mis-stepped onto his land without warning, that is not aggression according to libertarians - if you really take them seriously.
Obviously, when you point that out to a libertarian, an endless game of shifting definition starts, much like how many discussions about the existence of god go with theists.
You are spreading FUD and misinformation. Shame on you. The non-aggression principle does not work like the laws of physics, so just because someone steps on your land, it does not give you the right to shoot them. You are arguing from absurdity. The non-aggression principle is about not committing force, fraud or coercion against another human being. It's really that simple. You may use force when someone is directly threatening your life. That's how it's been discussed in the forums and videos I've been exposed to. Stop holding principles regarding morality to the same standard as the laws of physics.
I certainly wouldn't endorse it, just pointing to it as an attempt to avoid the circularity of defining violence as "what the state does" and then defining "a state" as "the organization with a monopoly on violence".
I do think it nonetheless ends up pretty entangled in the ideas invented by the modern centralized state, especially the ideas of "property ownership" and "a contract", which are supposed to exist in a sort of ethereal global-variable state separate from any facts in the physical world or local interactions. The modern state enables that fiction by maintaining a central property register backed by a cadastral survey, and a set of courts that enforce the abstract idea of a contract. Minarchists are perhaps more open about this dependence than anarcho-capitalists are, by just directly asserting that the state should exist solely to operate and enforce a property register and contract law.
You're probably right, there's definitely a spectrum of libertarianism.
And it's not as if libertarians are entirely crazy. It's healthy to have some baseline skepticism towards authority. But it's also healthy to have some baseline skepticism towards market solutions. As usual, the best answer(s) are somewhere in compromise and in the middle.
I guess that ideas like the "non-aggression principle" are so alluring to some because they have a sort of superficial "intellectual purity" which that kind of compromising answer lacks.
I should point out that you're conflating anarcho-libertarians with old-school statist libertarians. Most people who self-identify as libertarian believe in a state to protect property, prosecute crime, etc.
Even the self-described anarcho-capitalist libertarians of my acquaintance usually see the use of force as legitimate, as long as it's a non-governmental actor such as a private police force, mutual defense pact, enforcer of contracts, publicly traded corporation, etc. The people who take on the somewhat more difficult task of imagining a society without the organized use of force at all tend to call themselves anarchists, in my experience.
I'm not sure this proposed hit was unjustified. Threatening to do something which would end up with 1000's of people caged for years seems like a valid reason to respond with force.
I think it is an arbitrary comparison. Possibly 10,000+ years in jail and who knows how many shankings vs maybe 50 of no existence for one person. You are right that, in a basic scenario, killing is a disproportionate response to a lesser crime, but this is an active threat versus a past event and who knows what jail would bring for these hundreds of people who could be convicted.
I'm not sure of the details of this situation but just following libertarian legal reasoning there may be another way to justify it. The logically consistent libertarian position on abortion is neither pro-choice nor pro-life. Block's theory of evictionism is basically that a mother's right to remove a fetus is stronger than the fetus' right to be in the womb, yet the mother is not permitted to kill the fetus straight off exactly.
If there was developed some technology such as a pig fetus used to carry the child to term then that technology would have to be employed. Would there be some other reliably effective means to stop this snitch besides killing him?
> I think it is an arbitrary comparison. Possibly 10,000+ years in jail and who knows how many shankings vs maybe 50 of no existence for one person. You are right that, in a basic scenario, killing is a disproportionate response to a lesser crime, but this is an active threat versus a past event and who knows what jail would bring for these hundreds of people who could be convicted.
If you are simply arguing the most utilitarian point of view for the sum of the actors involved, surely paying him off is the most moral thing to do. $300K to prevent 10,000+ years of jail and shankings versus killing someone. $300k is much less than the life of one person.
You think the most moral outcome is one person who threatens a thousand with years of caging getting $300K? Are there any situations where you don't think one should be rewarded for making massive threats?...
It's more moral than killing someone over a threat based on the pure conjecture that carrying out the threat will result in a punishment by a 3rd party.
Isn't the real threat the 3rd party that would be doing the jailing? Why is freely communicating what some people did a grounds for murder? He's not the one that is doing the locking people up -- it just so happens to be more convenient to murder him then to take on the justice system. Convenience does not make it the moral course of action.
> Block's theory of evictionism is basically that a mother's right to remove a fetus is stronger than the fetus' right to be in the womb, yet the mother is not permitted to kill the fetus straight off exactly
I adore libertarians, I really do, for all the energy and earnestness they bring to their theory of government. But I can't take them very seriously, and this sort of thing is exactly why.
I know that people who cling to government and democracy mean well, but when they eschew logic and waste my time with non-arguments like this it is terribly annoying.
