The Dark Side Of The Silk Road

at this point in time I'm sure many of you are familiar with the Silk Road or some parts of its history with the rising popularity of cryptocurrency many people are now aware of these dark web marketplaces and just because the Silk Road no longer exists nothing has stopped countless other illegal marketplaces from taking their position wherever there's money to be made there are always people willing to fight or go to extreme lengths to get that reward rarely do we ever get to pull back the curtain and see exactly what goes on on the dark web but today and that's a little bit different today we're gonna be reading through some of the bone-chilling messages sent by the owner of the Silk Road and naturally you might be curious as to what links that person had to go to to keep business running smoothly and these logs will give you a pretty good idea into the paranoia involved with running these operations these message logs are one hell of a read and a disturbing look into the dark side of the internet so with that being said today we're gonna take a look at the Silk Roads hit list now to that stunning arrest of the drug kingpin who goes by the name Dread Pirate Roberts Pierce if cornered the internet drug market his real name is Ross Ulbricht and his web site Silk Road court documents say Silk Road sold 1.2 billion dollars worth of drugs and illegal services in just under three years do you assume or should we assume that the NSA was involved in corroborating or gathering evidence which they might have denied in the actual trial yes yeah okay that's that was easy enough you're the Dread Pirate Roberts admitted with fried but the surprise at the sentencing one of the things that the government contended in its case was that was that he actually solicited the killings of as many as six people to prevent his identity what role do you think that having something Silk Road user threatened to reveal the identities of thousands of others so investigators say ohlbrecht tried to execute him but for hire on that user offering a hundred and fifty thousand dollars at a fair trial no I don't think so the why Ross Ulbricht is the American dream he's an entrepreneur he saw a new market he went free I mean that's why is that any different from the genesis of coca-cola or General Motors or Philip Morris General Motors kill their customers Philip Morris kill their customers coca-cola kill their customers and workers this guy is just an entrepreneur is simply embracing the explicit structure and policies of the United States capitalism there's no difference at all Burroughs difference drugs whose illegal [Music] depending on who you ask Ross Ulbricht is someone who is either regarded as a saint or a dangerous criminal and I don't think this guy is either of those things personally but I do need to give a fair bit of context before we get into the actual messages and want to go over Ross Ulbricht case is widely covered on the Internet so I don't want to act like I'm the first one to mention this but the thing is whenever there is coverage of this topic for some reason these messages are completely left out I'm going to go over Ross's trial at the end of this video so I asked you hold all opinions or what you know previously until you've watched the entirety of this video to begin this story let's go back to 2011 the very first mention of the Silk Road website came from a forum called shrew Marie org dated January 27th 2011 where one user by the name of Altoid started a new thread that read the following I came across this website called Silk Road it's a tor hidden service that claims to allow you to buy and sell anything online anonymously I'm thinking of buying off of it but wanted to see if anyone here had heard of it or could recommend it I found it through Silk Road wordpress.com which if you have a tor browser it redirects you to the real site at this onion link let me know what you think this post got a couple of replies and was later buried but sinces is the first mention of the site anywhere on the internet and the fact that he said let me know what you think at the end of it it was believed that this was some sort of advertising tactic which caused the FBI to look into the username of who Altoid was conveniently the moniker Altoid also had an account on Bitcoin talk the official Bitcoin forum if you look through this forum users post history you'll start to realize that this person had quite a few bitcoins to their name the most notable however was the final post from Altoid that was dated October 11th 2011 and is still up to this day and it reads the following hello sorry if there's another thread for this kind of post but I couldn't find one I'm looking for the best and brightest IT Pro in the Bitcoin community to be the lead developer in a venture backed Bitcoin startup company the ideal candidate would have at least several years of web application development experience having built applications from the ground up a solid understanding of LP and software architecture is a must experience as startup environment is a plus or just being super hardworking self-motivated and creative compensation can be in the form of equity or a salary or somewhere in between if interested please send your answers to the following email this email address in part with the other posts on his forum account ultimately led the FBI to start tracking Ross in an ongoing investigation sometime after this discovery a package of old bricks was intercepted in the mail that contained various fake IDs all with all bricks face on it when he was questioned about the fake IDs at his doorway he stated that they weren't his and that anyone could have bought them online at some place like the Silk Road Ross Albrecht was monitored up through 2013 where undercover agents had tracked him to the San Francisco Public Library by then investigators knew his computer would encrypt itself if it was closed so they had to get him with his computer open due to this proposed dilemma two undercover agents created a diversion by pretending to be a couple fighting nearby this caught Ross off guard which caused him to get off the seat at the library where another agent ran in and snatched his computer while it was still open Ross was caught logged into the mastermind section or dashboard on his computer and inside his computer on top of that was a full diary dedicated to the creation of the Silk Road as written by him now that you have a somewhat general understanding as to how Ross Olbrich was caught by the feds it's time to get to the main point of this video first and foremost let me introduce you to some of the characters that are going to be in this transcript Dread Pirate Roberts is Ross Ulbricht and this is a reference to the movie Princess Bride if you're familiar with the movie The Princess Bride then you'll realize how clever of a name Dread Pirate Roberts actually is because it insinuates that multiple people ran the website but more on that later the next character that I'd like to go over is Lucy drop who was one of the top vendors on the Silk Road Lucy drop became a well known vendor as I said and built up a very very very strong reputation prior to exit scamming if you're not familiar with exit scamming it is essentially when you build up a ton of reputation as a seller and then completely cash out and don't fulfill orders leading up to the messages we're about to read Lucy drop claimed that they were in prison for seven months and that they had a business partner that stole their account go figure if that doesn't sound sketchy enough when Lucy drop returned to the forums they claimed that they were sad because they lost everything and everything was stolen from them and on top of that they claimed they wanted to come back and get their old account frozen and that they would never sell again and that they just wanted to wish everyone a good life there are striking similarities between Lucy drop and another scammer this infamous vendor went by the name Tony 76 they also exit scammed in a very very similar way by building up reputation over a few months and then running a sale both vendors were from a certain part in Canada and both of them sold the exact same type of product on top of all of that both of them shared very similar idiosyncrasies when it came to typing even six years ago that was speculated that they were the same person as a result of being a scammer in the marketplace Tony 76 was not liked by Ross Ulbricht because scamming on his marketplace damaged his brand keep all of this in the back of your mind we get into these messages the next character that is referenced in this log is friendly chemist who was an Avenger but someone who claimed to be a middleman between the Hells Angels and Lucy drop throughout these messages friendly chemist is frantic and he claims that he needs $500,000 or else he's going to release the names of thousands of customers in the Silk Road I'll let most of the messages speak for themself for this character but let's move on to the final character lastly we have red and white and in these messages they are supposedly from the Hells Angels this is the person that friendly chemist is in debt to for about $700,000 now finally with all of that context out of the way let's get into these messages one by one and I'll give analysis as we go along let's get into that [Music] just a side note before we get into these messages this is a long reads so I highly advise that you get comfortable or if you just want to listen that works to where you can find these messages is government exhibit 936 14c are 68 now that you know all the characters let's begin so basically the first message comes from March 13 2013 at 8:50 a.m. from friendly chemist the subject line of this message is very important the message says can you please get Dread Pirate Roberts to message me right away it's very serious it's a matter of life and death and all stress to do with identities of dozens of top vendors and thousands of Silk Road customers it's very important so please give him to me right away friendly chemist says I will not talk to anyone but Dread Pirate Roberts so please do not ask me what is concerning the next morning on March 14th 757 a.m. 2013 Ross Ulbricht then responds to friendly chemist and says what can I do for you friendly chemist then gets back to Ross on March 14th at 11:26 a.m. he says what's going on when are you paying Lucy drop I've been waiting and waiting and he keeps saying he's waiting for you to pay you don't know me but I'm Lucy drop supplier the only reason I lent Lucy dropped so much product is because he showed me the chat logs of you and him talking and how you made him the number one seller on the Silk Road I lent him nine hundred thousand dollars of product and he paid me two hundred K and started avoiding me I see you and him still have listings up so I know for a fact he does not have any product why are you guys scamming people for hard-earned money I stopped by Lucy drops house and he doesn't live there anymore and his phone goes straight to voicemail but I know he's been on Silk Road and he says he's waiting for you what's the deal where's my money why is Lucy drop still selling well I know for a fact he has no product because I supplied him I'm freaking out here that was not my money I'm getting scared my wife said she saw people at my kids school and I'm really getting worried I put a keylogger on Lucy drops computer when he left the room one day when I was there so I could see what he was doing and I see he's still selling when I know he doesn't have product why are you guys pulling a scam why I also have the identities of nine top vendors and 15 smaller vendors in thousands of customers of Lucy drops I don't want any trouble but I want my money if you haven't paid Lucy drop pay him if you have to pay him then tell him to pay me I'm scared for my family if you don't believe me here is Lucy's password info here we see the attached password from Lucy drop and the withdraw password which is used to pull money out of the Silk Road and then he says I will not do anything until you message me and tell me what's going on please get him to pay me as soon as possible or pay him ASAP if you haven't this is my life here and I'm scared for my family because of the money I owe so here we have a guy claiming that he put a keylogger on Lucy drops computer and that computer has now been lost because it was stolen by the partner conveniently enough on March 14 2013 at 7:34 p.m. Ross Ulbricht respond and say I'm really sorry for your situation but I never had such a conversation with Lucy drop he / she must have made it up to trick you we have no special deal whatsoever friendly chemists would then respond at 10:54 p.m. and say I find it very hard to believe he showed me chat logs talking to you about you making him the number one seller and being his partner on the product I gave him I would not have given him that much product otherwise especially because you made him the number one seller please don't screw me like this my life is in danger because of this money I owe I also know about the other vendor accounts his friends were using I have access to those customer lists too from when Lucy drop us drop shipping for them I'm not this kind of person but the only card I have left to play is dropping two dozen vendor identities and thousands of customer details in the web and the forums what do you and Lucy drop think will happen if thousands of user names and order amounts addresses all get leaked all those people will leave Silk Road and be scared to use it again those vendors will all be busted and all their customers will be exposed to and never go back to Silk Road I don't want to do that I just want my money for my product my life is in danger and maybe my family those people I borrowed money from are not regular people I can't believe I was so stupid and trusting just get Lucy dropped up pay me my money and get my money as soon as possible and if you haven't paid him yet then pay so he pays me the money he owes please I'm freaking out here a day later on March 15th 2013 at 6:49 a.m. Ross Ulbricht would then respond and say ìlook get in touch with Lucy drop and get back to you send me all of the information you've harvested so I can verify it four minutes later at 6:53 a.m. Dread Pirate Roberts would send a message to Lucy drop with a subject line friendly chemist the message said hi Lucy drop I've been contacted by a member named friendly chemist he claims to know you and have done business with you in real life he's making wild accusations and threats against you and me and other members of my community if you indeed know him could you please provide me with his name and address I'd like to stop him in his tracks by revealing that I know who he is and will retaliate if he does anything stupid any other info you can provide is also welcome thanks and sorry for the trouble DPR PS please don't contact him I'd like to handle him myself this is a really stupid move if Lucy drops computer was actually key logged but under those circumstances I guess he's testing the bluff on March 15th at 9:17 a.m. friendly chemists would then get back to DPR and say I didn't harvest anything Lucy drop kept a log of every single transaction he made on the Silk Road like an idiot there are thousands of thousands of orders and there are over 20 vendor identities from where he did biz with them some with phone numbers to and over 5,000 customer identities he also ran more than one account on here and seems to be still vending on those accounts - and did everything from one computer so I have their info - you already know that I have access to his account and you can see most of his orders are not encrypted so I don't know why you're asking me to send all the info to you now the only reason I could understand this is unless you wanted to warn all those people so you and Lucy drop don't have to pay me his username his password and his withdraw password you say you're not working with him but you still haven't closed his account when you know he is scamming but I will give you the address of some of the customers and you can see he kept logs this whole time here are some of his very first sales when he was selling three tab samples when he first started vending you can contact them to see if it's true clearly Ross was being threatened with real identities and this why the government actually redacted this in the court documents getting back to friendly chemist message it continues as and the law goes like that up till today every day and that's just one of his accounts he has three and he uses each one for a different thing but I'm sure you know this or else why else would you let his account stay open I don't want to do anything with this info and I won't I just want my money I'm scared for my life and you and him are not giving me an answer maybe if I post all the vendor identities publicly and nobody sells in the Silk Road Lucey drop will have no more sales or people to scam on his other account I just want what's owed to me and I will go away I don't know why you people scam like this people work hard for their money and you are playing with people's lives I will wait for your reply from Lucie drop but I don't know how much longer I can wait how can I explain to these people that I don't have their money when I said I would have it on a certain day and now I'm late these are not normal people and they're getting angry with me just get Lucie dropped to resolve this or pay him or he can pay me I did a favor and this is not fair to play with my life like this later that same day DPR would get back to friendly chemist and said I'll let you know when I hear from Lucie drop on March 15th at 8:42 p.m. friendly chemists would once again messaged EPR pleading his case I'll show the message here on screen but I'm not gonna read through it because it's basically the exact same thing he said earlier in that day on March 16th at 5:22 a.m. real Lucie drop would join the Silk Road forums here a real doozy drop would post the following thread do not buy from Lucie drop on Silk Road I can't talk about the specifics for security reasons but I was in jail for more than two months but less than seven I got released very recently Lucie drop on Silk Road is not me do not buy from that account my partner completely me over I went to our spot and there's nothing there and he won't answer my phone calls he took the work computer and everything else he took my entire savings with him that was being used to keep the supply up he took my entire life somebody please get in contact with DPR or vendor support and have the account shut down immediately and freeze all the funds in that account how can I contact DPR I can't find a link to message him I can prove to him that I'm the real Lucy drop but I do not have access to my PGP or any of my logins if you order from me in the past namely a couple of top vendors I can give you details and you can verify / vouch that I am indeed the real Lucy job do not trust anything that is said from the Lucy drop account do not send any funds do not finalize anything I just want to point out that it's very convenient that after Lucy drop exit scammed that this entire story came about as soon as this friendly chemist guy shows up on the scene to blackmail just keep that in mind on March 16 2013 at 2:15 p.m. DPR would send a message to real Lucy drought that said hi there how did the new person gain access to your account 857 that same day real Lucy drop would respond with a message that said it's not a new person who took over the account it was my partner in real life that I started Lucy drop with I was the one that actually handled the Lucy drop account until I got arrested I was picked up on a previous warrants and spent some time in jail my partner took absolutely everything from me in that time he took all the work computers the Bitcoin wallets all of the work product and nearly my entire life savings and scammed a bunch of people in the process friendly chemist was our middleman to one of our Lucy distributors I called him after I got released and he's demanding I pay him some deal he had with my partner when I was in jail and telling me he will do something very stupid if he doesn't get paid how do you know friendly chemists keep in mind at this point Dread Pirate Roberts never once brought up friendly chemist a real Lucy drop he brought it up to the other account regardless the next day at March 17th 448 a.m. Dread Pirate Roberts would respond to real Lucy drop and say I'm so glad you know him he's gathered personal information about many of the customers who work with Lucy drop not sure if you're in control of the count back at the time or not and has some other info on other vendors on Silk Road now he's trying to blackmail me and say that he'll release all of this info if this happened this would be terrible I need his real-world identity so I can threaten him with violence if he were to release any names addresses or anything you have it sounds like he's in a tough spot that your former partner put him in but I can't get involved and I can't release those IDs thank you for any help you can provide Luci drop would then respond at 10:59 p.m. the same day and say I don't know how I feel about that violent solution remember that he also knows my real-world identity and has evidence on me as well I'm sure you are aware of what would happen to me if any of my information was to be released if he had access to that computer there's a lot more damaging stuff on there than just the identities of a bunch of vendors and a bunch of customers of mine there is enough on that computer to put me away for a very long time he's acting really erratic right now understandably because of his given situation but I will set up a meeting with him and try and reason with him it is also in my best interest that he does not release anything as well as in the best interest of this movement we are a part of putting power in people's hands in hate when money does that to people I'm in contact with him and I told him I am talking to you and I'm going to have a meeting with him and try and resolve this problem of ours Ross Ulbricht then responds at 127 a.m. just a few hours later and says ok Lucy do me proud on March 19 2013 at 9:36 a.m. Lucy drop would respond with the following message I went to the meeting with him and he is extremely frightened he told me who he owes money to and I understand it's concerned for his safety because there are not people you want to owe money to he is freaking out then truly believes that his life in his family's life are in serious danger he thinks that you don't take him seriously and he said he was planning on releasing part of the information to show he is serious I convinced him not to and reassured him that things would be ok if that information gets leaked and those vendors get busted I would get busted too I tried not to show him that I was too concerned with his threats but I'm not sure how to deal with him he said he's been doing his research and he said he's discovered a flaw with Silk Road that buyers have never thought about I'm assuming he's referring to the fact that the vendors all have people's addresses and can use it against Silk Road or the buyers themselves to extort money or what-have-you he also kept talking about the shitstorm that would be caused by that much information being leaked by the media such police picking up on it and starting a mass panic he said if we don't pay him he will release the information and if that does not work he will go straight to the police with all the information and get into the witness protection program the people he borrowed the product from are a big criminal organization in Canada Hells Angels not sure if you're familiar with them and the police have been known to treat witnesses against them very well this is saddening because this guy's not really like this but I guess with the threat to his family's life he's under extreme stress and acting out of character I calmed him down a bit and told him I would find a way to help that was somewhat of a lie on my part because I don't really know how I can help him but I wanted to reassure him that I didn't do anything drastic in the meantime while we find a solution I told him that you'd never really fully trust him to not use the information against him even if you got paid and he said the following I'm recalling this all from memory so excuse me if it's not completely accurate he said regardless of anything he needs to pay the people as soon as possible or he's in grave danger he offered me a deal because as you know selling on Silk Road was my income and he was my connection for Lucy he said he wants to be paid and that he would give me product at his cost so that I could pay you back by selling and giving you the percentage of what he would normally put on top when he was selling it to me he was putting 50% on top of his cost when he gave it to me so he suggested that I start bending again and you take 50% of all sales that way you could be paid back in full I would be able to sell again on Silk Road and the people he borrowed the product from would be paid back and he would be safe I said that was a bad deal because you still have all the vendors information and customers information he said that he'd be willing to give you his identity talk to someone on the phone or verify or give any other identifying information that could be confirmed as collateral so we would never have to be able to use that information again on March 20th 2013 at 5:58 p.m. Dread Pirate Roberts would say you know his real-world identity don't you there is no way I will be handing cash over to a person who is threatening me and my community give me his ID so I can have some leverage in dealing with him you said you don't know what to do now so let me take over and give me all the info you have so I have the best chance of defusing this situation Lucy drop then responds about an hour and a half later basically reiterating what we just read about the 50% deal at 3:29 p.m. that same day Dread Pirate Roberts would respond and say don't bother messaging me again if the message does not contain his personal information I'm not fronting money to anyone and I won't be blackmailed I would also like the contact info such ID of the other Lucy drop that ripped and of his suppliers if possible you don't know how to handle this situation but I do stop showing this guy compassion he's threatening your life and freedom and my livelihood on March 21st 2013 at 12:21 a.m. Lucy drop would respond and say if you really think this is a good idea to deal with him I will give you his personal information you want about his identity please understand why I'm hesitant as it is my freedom we're dealing with I will also have no income since he was my connection for Lucy are there any positions open on Silk Road support or otherwise I could really use some sort of job as my partner completely effed me over let me know how to send the information to you plain text or give me a PGP key to use at 133 a.m. Dread Pirate Roberts would actually send a message to friendly chemist and say have your suppliers contact me here so I can work something out with them do not tell them that I owe you money that is not true and will only complicate matters tell them the truth the person who stole your money sold their product on my site and that you are now blackmailing me to get them their money you should copy and paste this message to them this is a really interesting move by Dread Pirate Roberts or Ross Ulbricht because he's trying to cut out friendly chemist who is a middleman by getting in contact with suppliers he can directly grow the Silk Road and that's the reason he's doing this three minutes later Lucy droplets into public key and the encrypted PGP message that contained the person's personal information at 10:44 p.m. on March 21st he would send a message back to Lucy drop that says please send me the exact address of friendly chemist I might be able to make you a part time mod I'll run it by the staff on March 25th at 10:00 a.m. a new user would pop up by the name of red and white and this is where the negotiating begins I was asked to contact you were the people friendly chemist owes money to he tells us that you owe and money and a long story about some of this and some of that as far as we're concerned we gave him the product where it went and how does not matter we told him he's only responsible for the missing product and money we don't care if you stole it or borrowed it from him or anything it was his responsibility to pay for it he asked me to contact you anyways so what did you want to talk to us about at 6:27 p.m. the next day Ross Ulbricht would get back to them sorry for the delayed response and thank you for getting in touch we've had some technical difficulties over the past 24 hours I've had to deal with just to be clear I do not owe him any money but he has told me his situation and wants my help I'm not entirely sure what the best action is to take but I wanted to be in communication with you to see if we could come to a conclusion that works for everyone friendly chemists aside we should talk about how we can do business obviously you have access to illicit substances in quantity and you are having issues with bad distributors if you don't already sell here on Silk Road I'd like you to consider becoming a vendor many people here purchase in bulk as well as retail quantities being a vendor you'll have the protection that dealing anonymously in Bitcoin provides and you'll have protection against people like friendly chemists ripping you off because all transactions are conducted through my escrow I encourage you to read the wiki and forum links are in the footer and consider becoming a vendor here so if there's anything I can do as an admin here to help you get involved with Silk Road or anything I can do to help with your situation with friendly chemists please let me know at 8:08 p.m. or red-and-white we get back to them and say this is interesting how much is it possible to sell on here if we listed every product far cheaper than everyone else we have a majority hold over most of the movement of products in Western Canada one of the main ports in North America I have researched your site and the concept seems interesting to me as long as it is as anonymous as everyone makes it out to be we produce a lot of things that would get this video D monetized and import a lot of other things that would get this video D monetized in bulk amounts we have a lot of workers who run their own sub distribution networks for the streets but if it's lucrative we're always looking to expand in my partner's eyes all they see is that because of online dealing we are out 700k so I'm not sure if they're gonna go for it friendly chemist refuses to meet up with us because he will fears what will happen people are starting to suspect that he will go to the police which is not a problem because he would never be able to give up anyone of importance since he has only had it contact with low-level people in our group and they always take precautions so that even if someone were to turn informant they would not be able to get any charges to stick it's a shame because he moved a fair amount of product if you can get friendly chemists to meet up with us or pay his debt then I'm sure I would be able to get people in our group to give this online set of business a try as it stands right now there are people looking for him and since he has avoided our group I'm not sure what will happen because he owes us money and is avoiding us I looked around your site and the prices are absolutely absurd I'm assuming most people here are selling three to four tiers below the actual producers and distributors on March 27 2013 at 11:16 p.m. Roswell brick would send another message to Lucy drop who hadn't followed up yet he says why haven't you gotten the address yet bring me friendly chemist address and $1,000 in Bitcoin is yours 22 minutes later then Ross Olbrich would send another message to red-and-white that says in my eyes friendly chemist is a liability and I wouldn't mind if he was executed but then you'd be out 700k I'm not sure how much you already know about the guy but I have the following info and I'm waiting on getting his address Blake Crowe cough lives in apartment near White Rock Beach City White Rock province British Columbia has a wife and three kids let me know if it would be helpful to have his full address in those categories I think you could be doing over 1 million in sales a week within a few months it's hard to estimate because it depends on how much market share you get and also the site as a whole has been constantly growing you will need to become very proficient at stealth shipping and packaging if you aren't already think vacuum sealers and leaving no forensic evidence on your packages you'll also want to ship from multiple drop points so you can't be traced back to your fake return address if you go through with this I would contact some of the top vendors and hire them to consult you ask the grass vendors because he wouldn't be competing with them and their product is very smelly and looked for by the USPS so they have to be on top of their game I would also start out listing smaller amounts so you can get the hang of it before putting up substantial inventory you'll also need to market yourself in the forums a little bit maybe at first maybe send out some samples to critics that is one price of anonymity no one knows you but if your first customer service is good and your product is cheap people will quickly catch on and you wouldn't have to do much hustling regarding prices there are some costs here that you don't otherwise see I three to ten percent depending on the size of the transaction if you had your escrow balance and you should that can cost up to five percent per transaction and then if you need to convert your bitcoins into another currency there are other fees associated with that though not much there are also occasional losses due to packages lost in the mail the rest of the markup I think is due as you say to the fact that most vendors are pretty far down the distribution chain regarding safety and anonymity we've been operating for over two years now and open as a high-profile target and we're still going strong if you take the necessary precautions and use the technology I think you can operate very securely and efficiently here maybe more so than your current operations March 28 2013 9 Oh 1 a.m. red and white goes on to say I already have that information but thank you 1 million a week sounds like it'd be worth selling on here once we know exactly how everything works even if the Commission was 15 percent it wouldn't matter as we lose more than 15 percent on the streets with street level guys getting robbed or arrested and losing product etc also we've kidnapped friendly chemist partners in and we're already on the hunt for friendly chemists I'll keep you updated on the developments so far we are liking what we're seeing from the site and this could be a good partnership for both of us as far as I can see this site lacks any big-time suppliers it appears that mostly street-level independents are buying small amounts an ounce to a kilo to time and selling on here we have the product of the manpower to do big things here forgive me but it all seems a little too good to be true right now so we need a little bit of time to research this before we make any sort of commitment at 4:59 p.m. the same day DPR would respond and say I understand and that's great news about Zen if I understand the situation he's the one responsible for your loss by the way so this is in character just came out of nowhere but that's supposedly Lucy drops old partner you should definitely take your time and start slowly I would hate for you to make a mistake and be left with a bad experience just let me know if you need anything also you should look into PGP many customers like to encrypt the recieving address so you should know how to decrypt it when you're ready let me know what account you want to sell with and I'll cover the 500 dollar security deposit for you 8:32 p.m. that same day red and white would say we are familiar with PGP as we've been using it for years via email linked to our smart phone it's the only other way we communicate with each other aside from in person since phone calls are not secure there's no loss anymore also we were able to recover all of our missing product when he grabs in after some questioning he admitted he was intending on moving to a different country and setting up a new seller account on this site we don't take kindly to thieves he's gone I appreciate your offer to waive the fee but if we were to sell on here I would pay the same as everyone else very kind of you though I will be in touch so since friendly chemist partner or Lucy drops old partner is now taken out friendly chemist is starting to get panicked on March 29th at 10:23 a.m. friendly chemists would reach out once more after a long hiatus you leave me no choice I want 500k USD in 72 hours or I'm gonna post all the info I have I can't go back to my home I had to move my kids and my wife somewhere and I need the money so I can move my family and start a new life I hate to do this but I need the money or I'm gonna release it all over 5,000 user details and about two dozen vendor identities what's it gonna be at 350 for that same day DPR would respond and say don't do anything foolish the people that you owe money have caught up to Zen and have reclaimed their loss I spoke tanned calm them down they're likely going to be coming vendors here on SR now you can calm down to go back to your normal life and don't get involved with any of this stuff anymore at 7:43 p.m. friendly chemists would then come back and say you don't think I know what they did this in you think I just go on with my life you don't know these people I owed them money and I ran away from them it's over for me I need that money to start over somewhere else with my family I need it I don't want to do this but you still don't give me another choice they're still telling me that I have to meet them and I don't know what will happen I can't let that happen even if they say it's okay I know they will do the same thing to me they say everything is okay but I know what they will do 63 hours please don't force me to post everything 500k is nothing to you but it's life and death for me they told me I have a free pass and that they dealt with it with Zen but I know that they are doing that to make me think it's okay and then they're gonna get me that's how these people operate at 10:47 p.m. he would respond to friendly chemists once more and say do me a favor make it 96 hours I will get back to you on Monday I want to work this out but I have big plans for this weekend and I don't want to have to deal with this March 29th 2013 10:55 p.m. hello gun red-and-white I hate to come with you the problem when we were just starting to get to know one another but Blake friendly chemist is causing me problems are you still looking for him or now or have you found sin have you given up I'd 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 necessities like this do happen from time to time for a person in my position I have others I can turn to but it's always good to have options and you are close to the case right now hopefully this is something you are open to and can be another aspect of our business relationship regards Dread Pirate Roberts March 30th 12:42 a.m. red and white rights to DPR what is the problem we usually tend to stay away from hits as they're bad for business and bring a lot of heat is it a problem that can be resolved or does he really need to be dealt with sternly as of right now we don't care about him because we retrieved more money from Zinn than what he took from us and he also paid for it with his life debt paid in our books as far as rates go we don't have a flat rate for things like that it's on a case by case basis usually we pay our hitter as a percentage of what the person owes plus or minus how much they can retrieve if it's strictly a hit because they don't want the person around anymore it's also different does he owe you money or do you just not want him around anymore I can send a couple of my guys to do recon to find out exactly where he is right now in the meantime I'll wait until I hear back from you at 1:55 a.m. and dpr writes back if you can find his location that may be enough for me to scare him off he's been trying to blackmail me just let me know what you need to make it worth your while 331 a.m. that same night red and white writes if I find his location and you use it against him to scare him there's a chance he will switch locations again speaking from experience it will be a lot more difficult to find him again after that once he knows there are people capable of finding him further the people we use to do recon are the hitter themselves I don't think they'd be interested in continuing to look for him if there was a small sum to be split between them just to find his address if you have your mind just set on finding his location I can talk to them and get them to get it to you for a fee not sure what amount as usually we hunt someone there's more involved after we find them if you want the deal with him the other way we can talk about that too but the price varies in the situation if you want it to look like an accident that's gonna cost a lot more it wouldn't be suspicious he would just leave home one day and not return if you don't care what it looks like it would be cheaper than the accident we use professionals and not street level hoodlums who always end up effing things up how much does he owe you and how much he willing to pay if there are funds retrieved how much would we keep from what he has when we get him if he has anything in response to this dpr rights he doesn't owe me anything but he's threatening to expose the identities of thousands of my clients that he was able to acquire by working with Zinn if I don't pay him off as you don't take kindly to thieves this kind of behavior is unforgivable to me especially here on Silk Road anonymity is sacrosanct it doesn't have to be clean and I don't think there are any funds to be retrieved red and white gets back to him and says price for clean is 300k USD price for non clean one hundred and fifty K to 200k depending on how you want it done these prices pay for two professional hitters including their travel expenses and the work they put in we can use our out-of-town hitters if you want as well but I would not suggest them because they come with an extra cost and you don't seem to care about how he's taken care of when would you like this done on March 31st 2013 8:59 p.m. dpr rights don't want to be a pain here but the prices seem high not long ago I had a clean hit done for 80k or the prices you quoted the best you can do I'd like this done ASAP as he's talking about releasing the info on Monday now what's interesting here is that 80k he's referencing for another hit is actually true for that hit however that was set up by the FBI and they essentially got one of the admins of the site to middleman a deal and in his cooperation with the FBI they faked his own death and torture and sent the photos back to Dread Pirate Roberts or Ross getting back to the messages however we can go back to what red and white has to say I'm sorry we can't do that for that price the best I can do is 150 and even that is pushing it since you need a rush job done usually we would charge even more in the interest of the business relationship to be I could do 150 no lower if 150 does not work for you we're gonna have to pass we use professionals and we pay them a good price always send them out in a team of two plus 75k each for expenses and the job is a fair amount I think we have one of his associates and we're paying him to set him up for us we'll pay that ourselves on our end I'm guessing you're not gonna be able to pay cash so how would your payment work since you need it done before Monday a couple hours later red and white follows up again and says if you want it done by Monday that only leaves today it's Sunday morning here we always seem to miss each other online and so I will leave a Bitcoin address in case you want to pay that way probably the best so we can get used to dealing with bitcoins anyways since we will be selling here more than likely in the next week or two I will check the computer in about ten hours and if I see that you want to go ahead with this and the payment has been sent we'll go ahead and do it today here's the Bitcoin wallet address if you want picture confirmation the job afterwards give me random numbers and I will have them write them beside him and take a picture for you DPR then gets back to him a few hours later and says thank you red and white I've only ever commissioned one other hits so I'm learning this market I have no problem putting my faith in you and I'm sure you'll do a good job the exchange rate is about above 90 right now so $90 Bitcoin so 150,000 dollars USD is gonna go 16 hundred and 70 Bitcoin if the market tanks in the next few days I will send more here's some random numbers for the picture here is the transaction number for 1670 Bitcoin it to this Bitcoin wallet address good luck and be safe if you look up this Bitcoin transaction it was sent on this exact same day right around this time if you use a wallet Explorer you can actually trace back the bitcoins to a wallet that's labeled Silk Road so this is impossible to fake and under these circumstances he did send this money but there's a lot more to this so sit tight March 1st 2013 10:06 p.m. your problem has been taken care of they seized a bunch of stuff he had with him at the time as well they said he had a couple laptops and a bunch of USB sticks is there any of that that belongs to you they questioned him and he spilled everything he knew he said that he and Zinn were actually working together on the scheme to blackmail you and that they were brought in by a third guy who was selling out here for a couple years who was a scam artist apparently he makes selling accounts sells for a while then pulls a big scam and he just keeps on creating new accounts after he does his scams they got that guy's name also I'll give you that free of charge when I meet them to get the picture and the computer hardware they got rest easy though because he won't be blackmailing anyone again ever now at this point if you can guess who that third person is you're gonna start to put everything together in your head I'll spell it out for you at the end but I don't want to spoil it for now on April 2nd at 12:55 a.m. dpr would write back and say excellent work please send any info you can get on this third party along with the picture the picture can be uploaded here I have no need for any of his possessions so you can do whatever you want with that stuff thank you again for your assistance DPR April 2nd 2013 at 12:59 p.m. the response from red and white would read the following ok my guys are here now and here's the information they extracted from friendly chemists before the deed they were working with a guy real name Andrew glossary of Surrey apparently this is the guy that turned them on to frauding people on here he said that he started selling on Silk Road a couple years ago and since then he's made a career out of making new seller profiles to sell and then rip people off he told them how to start on here and how to rip people off and ask for a percentage in return he said that he showed them everything about how to sell and how to pull it off and all that stuff he didn't remember all the account names he uses or used and then said that Tony 76 and connect or two of his names that are used on other seller accounts for people he set up or his running himself I also went and looked at all the possessions they seized from him the laptops were empty besides tour and a couple other programs the USB sticks he had were packed full of text files and thousands of addresses from all around the world we destroyed everything we seized from him but I kept a text file that was named blackmail txt that had a ton of addresses in it and other text files since you mentioned that he was trying to blackmail you with all that information I kept that text file in case you needed it if you don't need it then let me know and I'll destroy it I also have the picture with me a question before I send it to you though I'm not extremely good with all this anonymity computer operations but I know pictures stored GPS information and the likes that the police can use as evidence is it safe to send it over here like that we took care of him at one of our safe houses so that worries me a little I trust your judgment so I was wondering if there was a way to delete GPS information from a picture before I send it over the Internet another quick question regarding Bitcoin how do we withdraw them I paid the hitters with my own money until I figure out how the bitcoins worked exactly as I understand it Mountain Cox is the main exchange is it safe to make an account there to withdraw can they link it back to the Silk Road they require verification which bothers me a little so I figured you would know the best way on April 2nd at 8:55 p.m. dpr would respond and say yes you can destroy the info thanks for taking a look first regarding image metadata you can strip all that out in this good practice the upload page is secure but I would still have access to that metadata of course you can trust me but what if I was compromised a decent one can be found for windows here regarding Bitcoin withdrawal I would avoid mount GOx if at all possible especially if you're withdrawing to a USA account there are many other exchanges that don't have so much attention on them you can find them here I am reluctant to give you a specific recommendation but look for ones offshore on that list that will do an international wire transfer for a direct Bitcoin payment Tonie 76 and Canuck were both blights on an otherwise great track record what do you think about going after andrew loss tree this guy has probably ripped off millions of dollars at this point from me and the rest of the Silk Road community here we see that Dread Pirate Roberts wants to take out anyone who's wronged him at this point at this point it's not even in self-preservation he's just trying to grow the Silk Road and build an empire on April 5th 2013 at 4:40 a.m. red and white would write the following I've sent the file I had to make sure I did the information removal properly before I sent it so that I did not send GPS information with the picture in case it was intercepted somehow please delete the picture as soon as you take a look at it as for the name it's Andrea los tree aka Tony 76 ek Canuck aka some other names I don't know from what I got from friendly chemist he has other names on here as well or is working with other vendors on here like I mentioned before as far as your question for going after him I would need to do some asking around to see what kind of information my guys can get on him would you like me to look into it few hours later and dpr would respond and say yes please if you can find him i would like to know as far as the picture that's being uploaded if it's not crystal clear already that's the picture of a friendly chemists body so let's move on at 10:22 am red and white would respond and say did you get the picture let me know so I can delete the rest of the ones I have finding him would be possible I can almost guarantee it but I stopped short of guaranteeing anything unless I'm 100% certain I can get the job done I don't do that so I don't look like an idiot if I can't accomplish something that I said I can we have a huge stake in the trafficking on this side of the country so if he's grabbing product from anyone we would be able to find out who and get to him would you want him dealt with if possible I ask because I don't want to send people to hunt for him and then nothing come of it once they find him also please don't forget to delete that picture I've received the picture and deleted it thank you again for your swift action I would like to go after Andrew though it is important to me that we make sure he is who Blake said he is I would rather miss a chance to take him out than hit an innocent person if he's our man then he likely has substantial assets to be recovered perhaps we can hold him and question him I'd like to connect with you on real-time chat to discuss this further with you it requires downloading the chat client pidgin and the plug-in off the record and some basic configuration to connect if you're open to this idea I'll send you instructions this is how I communicate with my closest people if not we can keep communicating here but it's much slower April 5th 9:48 p.m. red and white writes it was my pleasure I hate thieves almost as much as I hate informants about holding and questioning someone it adds to the risk the longer we have to hold sauce transport a target the safest way to do it is get in do it and get out as soon as possible as far as there being a way to verify that he's the intended target making him speak would not be a problem and of course we would not have him done if he was not the right person we were looking for since you said you'd like to go after him I'll send two of my guys to do some recon right now and find out what I can about him and get back to you immediately we can discuss the price later once we know more as for the real-time chat send the information over and I'll have my tech guy look at it he handles all my security with phones and PGP blackberries so he would probably know better than me how to set everything up on April 6 at 12:57 a.m. dpr would write to red and white and say my gut tells me he's our men but i'd hate to be wrong your men were able to get info from blake but maybe they can do the same thing with andrew he's likely sitting on many thousands of stolen bitcoins perhaps tens of thousands so I'd like to think we'd want to work him over to get those funds back they could be on an encrypted drive only he can unlock taking him out would erase the coins forever in the process of getting him to return the funds I hope we could confirm that he is indeed the one Blake says he is here are the instructions for accessing the chat server from a Windows computer attached in this message is just the instructions I'm gonna go over the domain name and the actual account later on on April 6 12:20 p.m. red and white would finally get back to DPR and say I found out who andrew is exactly and who Lee was packing up his supply from I also talked to a supplier and he said he mainly grabbed a lot of things that would get this video demonetized he said he always goes through phases where he grabs a ton of product and then stops for a couple of weeks and then it starts again sounds consistent with what friendly chemist said about how they run the stealing from buyers on here he said he last heard from Andrew a couple days ago he said he was planning on moving out of the province because things were too hot down here that might be because he found out about the Zin and friendly chemists and now he's scared I also had a chance to actually sit down and talk to my hitters about exactly what happened and how everything went down in detail they said that friendly chemist was pleading with them and offering to give up Andrew and that Andrew was a seller here by the name of Tony and a bunch of other names amongst others he said that when he first turned them on to the idea of doing this big scheme that he would often talk about how he stole so much money and that he once stole 15 thousand online currency coins from one person on the site and how easy stealing money was on here does that ring a bell did he steal 1500 bitcoins from a buyer here that would be an easy way to find out if this Andry person is the same person you think it is do you have his transaction history to see if he actually did steal 15k bitcoins from someone I trust my hitters to do a good job and they are excellent what they do which is take people out or interrogate such scare people and they told me they didn't think he was lying the info I have on him right now is that he works and lives with three other people and they all sell product he is in contact with his supplier who actually through a line of middlemen gets his product from us at the end of the food chain do you want to deal with this Andrew guy or do you want me to put the team on standby at 8:37 p.m. that same night dpr would write back and say i'm confident enough that is him to move forward can we round up all four of them separate them and get them two out each other by giving up their stolen money recovering the funds is going to be tricky if you aren't in direct contact with your team or if your team doesn't know how bitcoins work if you have the other usernames friendly chemist mentioned that will help me piece together things on my end regarding chat there should be a certificate to accept when it connects does that show up a couple hours later red and white gets back and says it won't even connect it's just stuck on connecting and I copy and paste all the information for the login and password etc so it should be good I also checked or to see what port to use won't connect for some reason do I have to fill in any more of the details local alias or anything like that as for getting all four of them it would be possible but we would have to get them all at once so no one gets away I would send for headers instead of two to make sure there was no fuck-ups I'm not sure I'm when they are planning on leaving the province though the guy that has been feeding me information on him says the guy's a degenerate gambler so I don't know how much of the funds he will have on hand he says he owes a ton of people money too my guess is that he's been pulling the scams to fuel his gambling problem like a degenerate it would make sense why he's teaching other people how to scam as well since it has been too profitable for him to keep it to himself probably because he owes some money and then he offers them to show him how to do it as a way of paying back I will have them take whatever they have on hand but I don't want to pay my hitters to be hanging around with them for too long since they're doing for people unfortunately there are no bulk discounts for jobs like this usually the price goes up the more difficult it is since you're easy to work with I would be able to offer you the same rate as last time times for if that works for you let me know if it doesn't please also let me know as soon as you can so I can call my guys off they've been doing info gathering this whole time on Andrew and his whole crew DPR would later write back and say okay let's just hit Andrew and leave it at that try to recover the funds but if not then not how much do you need for this on April 8th 7 11 a.m. red and white would get back and respond and say if you want to hit Andrew only I can have it done for 150 just like last time we wouldn't be able to do it at their place though because there's always at least a few of them there from what I'm told since it's their home slash office so we wouldn't be able to recover any of his things it's up to you what you want done but we can send hitters into their home slash office if they're only doing one of them do you not need the people he's working with dealt with also if they're working with him it means they're doing the same thing as him it would also be easier for the hitters to get to them and there so that they have a chance for covering anything if he has anything there it would also be better because it wouldn't be a public hit we just take Andrew there's nothing to say that the other three ones start up somewhere else with a new selling ID it is of course up to you what you want done in-house since you're the client I was pretty certain you would want them all taken care of so I had an associates send me a couple of his out-of-town hitters to accompany our local hitters it is not a problem as I can just send them back and cover their travel expenses but I obviously would like for them to not go back empty-handed my mistake for not confirming what you wanted before I had the extra hitter sent down but it's not really a problem if you don't want the others dealt with I had a hard time connecting to the Silk Road for the last 24 hours or I would have asked before having them sent down so if you'd like to do the others as well I would be able to have it done for 500k if you do not want all of them and just want Andrew it would be 150k I would prefer to do all four as it would be better than having to get Andrew somewhere else and have no chance of recovering any potential product slash money that he may have if you are certain he has that much product slash money I think would make sense to do it at their home slash office it's up to you though just let me know what to do as soon as you can since I do not know when they're leaving the province and if they do leave the province the price would go up exponentially if you would just like to get Andrew done send 150k to the same address you sent the other funds to if you'd like all four of them done and the product slash money recovered from there send 500k USD to the same address you sent the other funds to in the morning I'll check the Bitcoin wallet first thing and I will know what you want me to do based on how much you sent and I will have it done as soon as possible speak to you soon at 6:50 p.m. on April 8th DPR would write back and say hmmm ok I'll defer to your better judgment and hope we can recover some assets from them 500k in BTC or 3,000 Bitcoin at 166 dollars a Bitcoin has been sent to your address and here is the transaction number once again we can check this transaction number and it was in fact sent from the Silk Road on April 11 2013 10 49 p.m. red and white would finally get back and say our hitters have been watching their house and we have a one week window to do it but I wanted to ask you a couple questions before giving them the green light the price of bitcoins is trading at 61 dollars right now how is this going to work because you mentioned that you would take care of price fluctuations we haven't withdrawn any of the bitcoins DPR would later write back and say regarding the 3k coins I sent get the best price you can for them and let me know if you are short and I'll send you more to cover it regarding chat I made a mistake you should add me at dread at this onion link now this was the exact same handle that Ross was caught logged into into his chat service when the FBI caught him so keep that in mind to summarize the last bit of messages long story short the hit goes through they don't really recover much money and then Ross sends an extra 2500 bitcoins to make up for the price now let's do a final analysis on these messages as interesting as these messages are to read there's something I haven't told you what we just read through is exactly how someone went about scamming 7225 Bitcoin off Dread Pirate Roberts at the time that this Bitcoin was sent it was actually worth about 1 million dollars give or take but today it's worth over 60 million all of these hits were paid for but Blake kerkoff as in Andrew and all the people involved with these hits aren't actually real people because there's absolutely no proof of any of these guys ever going missing or ever existing in the first place it took a while for Ross's investigation to pick up on this but this is in fact what happened and even in the court documents they say he got hit with an elaborate scam keep in mind though that in DPRs mind these people were a hundred percent real and he was completely willing to pay to have people taken out we're gonna talk about Ross's trial in a bit but up until 2018 nobody knew who red and white was here's the reality though DPR got played by one person and that one person is alleged to be James Ellingson in a later investigation Bitcoin was traced from red and whites accounts on the Silk Road to another seller on the Silk Road named Mary Jane is my muse and both of them were registered on a Canadian Bitcoin exchange that had James's driver's license on it as a result James trying to cash out ultimately ended up getting him caught he's currently out on bail and waiting trial since Toni 76 is likely Lucy drop this makes this guy one of the most prolific scammers on the Silk Road it appears that James initially sought out to blackmail Ross is friendly chemist with $500,000 but ended up thinking quick on his feet and ended up getting double the amount as cool as it is to see someone get worked over like this heaven forbid Ross Ulbricht actually got his hands on a real hit man to this day a lot of people still deny the fact that Ross actually ordered these hits and they believe it's completely fake and I'm gonna be debunking that later on in this video but for now let's get into the trial [Music] now let's take a step back and look at the trial and conviction of Ross Ulbricht keep in mind my goal here is to cover this in a somewhat objective manner because both parties involved seem to be potentially stretching the truth Ross pleaded not guilty despite being caught red-handed logged into the web site so it made me really curious as to what his defense actually was in this case I went through countless pages on this actual court case and what they plan on using as a legal defense I honestly don't know how they ever expected to win I'm paraphrasing here but Ross's legal defense went with the story that Ross created the Silk Road not to make money but it's a social experiment then they claimed at some point Ross sold the web site in 2011 and thereafter he bought it back just in time to get caught red-handed or supposedly someone basically air-dropped the diary onto his computer to frame him this defense never provided any physical evidence of Ross actually selling or buying back the web site but they still win with the story remember what I said about Dread Pirate Roberts being a very clever name and it was actually given to him by his mentor variety Jones someone who helped out Ross very closely he actually suggested the name Dread Pirate Roberts if he ever got caught so that way he could say he was just a fall guy variety Jones also taught Ross a wide variety of other things he was basically just his right-hand man the defense essentially claimed that the Dread Pirate Roberts form account was shared by multiple people which I find very hard to believe but more on that later this was to explain away the message as we read regarding the hits as the defense claimed they weren't sent by Ross but some other Dread Pirate Roberts that they never actually named on top of that the defense argued that the real Dread Pirate Roberts couldn't be Ross because DPR was a criminal mastermind however one thing I will say is that the Dread Pirate Roberts in those chat logs is not a criminal mastermind because he got scammed for almost a million dollars if anything that guy is pretty naive the amount of assumptions you'd have to make to believe this story is honestly insane but I will say lawyers have a good way of getting out of things so I am NOT surprised on the other side of things where I believe the government is potentially shifting the narrative is how they actually tracked down the Silk Road website something I haven't mentioned yet is that 2012 the FBI managed to infiltrate where the Silk Road website was hosted in Iceland part of tracking down Ross and catching him red-handed was getting access to the backend of the site because that way they could use it to find when Ross was actually logged in if the government used some form of illegal spying tactic then this would have potentially infringed on Ross's Fourth Amendment right and could have easily nullified some of the charges against him it is speculated the NSA has some involvement with their method but to this day the government claims they used a legal method I should also note that there were two agents that were caught stealing Bitcoin that were both involved with this investigation these people were Shaun bridges and Carl force both went to jail for quite a while and the money was recovered as far as their role in anything else in this case I would say that's not very substantial despite what the defense argued these two instances of corrupt individuals were not actually allowed to be involved with Ross's case however they were both later tried separately something to consider about this case is that it was setting a precedent for any future darknet marketplaces Ross's legal team should have expected that the government would try and make an example of them and set precedent so in my opinion fighting this case was probably a bad idea to prove my point Ross received a double life sentence plus 40 years without the possibility for parole which definitely seems excessive and almost like a slap in the face to the legal team defending him free Rosburg claims that he wasn't given a plea deal but if you actually read what they have to say it seems to contradict that I'm reading this word-for-word off their website and it says Ross was arrested on nonviolent conspiracy charges that carried ten years to life the prosecutor told him that if he didn't plead guilty they would add the kingpin charge which would raise the mandatory minimum to 20 years I'm not saying Ross wouldn't gotten life in prison either way but this logic seems to contradict itself Ross was convicted of computer hacking conspiracy to traffic narcotics and money laundering at first the government had also attempted to hit him with a murder-for-hire charge I will say there is definitely substantial evidence to say that Dread Pirate Roberts paid for hits considering the chat logs included well-known vendors it had redacted customer information and Bitcoin transactions that are impossible to tamper with the fact that these hits were all a part of an incredibly elaborate scam and that the people he had ordered hits on never existed makes it a hell of a lot harder to convince a jury there's not really much legal precedent on ordering a hit on a person that was never alive you could argue that including this charge a weakens the prosecution's case overall keep in mind they didn't even know the real identity of red and white until 2018 if you don't know who the hit man was and you don't know who the victims were it's very hard to convict someone if you take a look at how punishments are weighed particularly in the charge of conspiracy to traffic narcotics it is to a certain extent based on the quantity of substances move and seeing his raza site moved 1.2 billion dollars worth of substance this charge alone was enough to put him away for a very long time it definitely seems like they never needed the murder-for-hire charges to begin with and the fact that they included them does seem like they could have used it to smear him in the media and push this court case through quickly I will say so all in all let me summarize do I think Ross got a perfectly fair trial no do I think Ross got an over-the-top punishment yes but do I think Ross was perfectly innocent no and this leads me to the next section of this video [Music] when I first started researching this topic I wanted to fully defend Ross and point out the injustice of a sentencing but there's a ton of misinformation floating around I initially heard about this from the Deep Web documentary and the free ross org side of things but the more I looked into this topic the more I realized that this organization is in straight-up denial of what Ross actually did you guys do not believe that that Ross that he saw this through that he was responsible for for more than kind of the creation of Silk Road correct not for a minute they say they've traced lots of money back to Ross what do you think Ross's role was I have no idea I'd like to see the evidence unsold I mean what do you think should be a punishment for him if any we would like to see Ross acquitted on all charges to clarify I personally don't have much of a problem with Ross creating something like the Silk Road just because the Silk Road went down it will never stop other marketplaces from popping up and doing the exact same thing until some laws change if there's something we've learned from Prohibition supply will always meet demand where I personally draw the line with all this however is wind Dread Pirate Roberts attempted violence in Ross's mind the people he was ordering hits on were absolutely real people and when he received those photos to confirm what he had done from red and white he still continued to do it it was literally only a matter of time before the guy got his hands on a real hit man and he would have had an unlimited supply of money to potentially take out anyone he wanted to this day some people say because Ross Olbrich was never charged with violence therefore he could never been violent this is a logical fallacy by that same logic you could say that Oh Jay Simpson is innocent ever since his trial Ross's parents have been campaigning for him to be released from prison and I honestly think they are right to do so but where I have a problem is when you mislead people to further your agenda it's a hell of a lot harder to convince people to sign a petition if the person you're advocating for was potentially violent so let's go through some of free Ross or exclaims a perfect example I'd like to start with comes from the common misconception page of the free Ross org website here they claim that Ross Ulbricht didn't create the Silk Road for financial gain this is honestly laughable because it takes two seconds to realize that's not true prior to creating the Silk Road Ross had multiple business attempts that completely failed Ross had also applied for multiple citizenships prior to getting caught if you're applying for a citizenship in Dominican Republic you're probably trying to launder money out of the country free Ross org claims that because Ross lived frugally he wasn't in it for the money but the moment you bring more than ten thousand dollars cash to any bank they're gonna start asking a lot of questions on top of that if you look through his Altoid account post history the guy's obsessed with money and even says how he's not a millionaire yet nobody starts a darknet marketplace just for the sport of it on free ross org they claim that the purpose of the site was not to sell illegal substances but to be a free-market economic experiment where people could basically buy whatever they want but then they go on to have a list of rules of items that they're not allowed to sell they claim that some of the reason of these rules is so that other people wouldn't harm or defraud others but if that were true why did Ross Ulbricht buy nine fake IDs off of his own website these are just a couple of examples of easy bits to disprove but I'd like to focus on something much more substantial and it's the free roster works claimed that there was multiple Dread Pirate Roberts on the same form account in the situation I'd like to go through their supposed evidence and show how it can pretty much be disproven the first piece of evidence of the organization claims for the existence of multiple the Dread Pirate Roberts comes from the fact that Ross couldn't have created the web site by himself this is true but doesn't prove the point that Court was looking for Ross hired people to work for him and his staff was on payroll all of them had their own separate forum account Ross knew none of his admins personally so it makes absolutely no sense that Ross would share the same account at any given point in time Ross was a bright guy and he also asked multiple questions under the handle frosty when it came to initially setting up the site regardless this doesn't support the claim that there were multiple Dread Pirate Roberts acting under one forum account over a different period of time the next piece of evidence of a list is that Ross told his friend that he sold the web site in 2011 I believe this to be true but if you take a look at the court documents and see the context then you'll see how this is actually the twisting of the truth it appears that Ross's friend told someone a little bit too much about Ross's involvement with the Silk Road that person later commented on his Facebook wall and Ross his friend was concerned and urged him to shut down the site as a result I believe Ross consoled his friend by saying I can't because I already sold it to someone I believe this was to get his friend it's not worrying about him there's absolutely no physical evidence to suggest a transaction involving the site if this were true Ross wouldn't continue to operate the site up until 2013 and it would have been as simple as providing a Bitcoin transaction to prove the sale went through there's absolutely no other way that this guy could have accepted payment other than Bitcoin here it makes absolutely no sense that Ross would have to rely on his friends testimony instead of just providing evidence moving on the next piece of evidence from this website states that someone logged into the Dread Pirate Roberts forum account after Ross was taken into custody once again this is twisting the truth by the time Ross was arrested the feds had access to the backend of the website and the investigation was still ongoing the fact that we have access to those messages we read over shows that the FBI directly had access to Ross's account as well there is no doubt in my mind that the person who logged in to Ross's account after he was in custody was a federal agent once again it makes absolutely no sense that Ross would ever share an account next up in terms of their false evidence is the claim that Dread Pirate Roberts failed a digital handshake a handshake or a digital handshake is a set question to make sure you're talking with a real person on the other end of the computer basically if I told you beforehand that you could identify me by asking a question like how sociable are you and I told you the correct answer was barely you could then ask me that question in a public chat room to figure out if I was the real person behind the computer so in this instance free rasta or claims that one of the admins failed a handshake in a chat room prior to Ross getting arrested if you take two seconds to read through the full reference they provided he later completed the handshake on another personal question that only DPR would have known even though this isn't really evidence to prove it someone else is behind the computer this was the pigeon chat room not the place where DPR ordered the hits on the forum account all right now let's move on to the claim that mark Karp Ellis was Dread Pirate Roberts this is a smartest piece of false evidence for this entire case if you don't know who mark Karp Ellis is he's basically a super villain in the cryptocurrency community free Ross ordered claims that the real Dread Pirate Roberts was mark Karp Ellis and references multiple emails from the special agent working on this investigation long story short mark Karp Ellis was the first target of this investigation and was the first suspect because they hadn't found the Altoid lead yet he was the best person they could go with mark Karp Ellis owned the Bitcoin exchange mount GOx and at the time it would make the most financial sense that he would be running the Silk Road the special agent working on this case ended up getting a search warrant for his email addresses long story short they searched through his email and they didn't find anything tying him to the Silk Road but they did find him guilty on charge of 1960 charge 1960 is running an unlicensed money business it appears that mark carp Ellis worked out some kind of deal where he would aid in the investigation of the Silk Road in exchange to be released on the charge of 1960 to save you from reading through hundreds and hundreds of pages of legal documents long story short there's no physical evidence tying mark up Ellis to the Silk Road now you might be wondering why I went through all this trouble to cover all these seemingly false claims even though I agree Ross didn't get a fair trial in my opinion a path to redemption starts with you actually admitting you did something wrong and I don't see that happening here to me it's obvious that Ross's mom and this organization is just trying to do and say anything to get her son freed but I can't help but feel like she's accepting donations based on people not knowing the full story if you look at their home page you'll see just how much support this cause has gotten on the basis of seemingly deceiving the public I don't think all of these politicians and such would have endorsed her had they known the full story let alone all the people that pledged monthly what this organization is doing is playing the political game at this point it's not even about the facts anymore it's just about trying to influence people and win power to get Ross pardoned only lost New Hampshire by a few thousand votes I'm not mistaken if basically if Trump pardons Ross Ulbricht it's very likely that a lot of a single-issue voters here in New Hampshire will vote for Trump who wouldn't otherwise so I think that Trump could win New Hampshire by by pardoning Ross Albrecht and he could piss off a lot of his enemies like I can see a wide variety of arguments being made for any outcome of this case some people might think he deserves his license for ordering hits on people some people might think he's not guilty at all I can also see this just as a case of the mother doing anything to get her son back there's definitely gonna be a wide variety of opinions here so I'm gonna leave it up to you this is barely sociable have a good night [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Barely Sociable

Views: 4,445,966

Rating: 4.9263101 out of 5

Keywords: silk road, documentary, silk road documentary, deep web, the silk road

Id: GpMP6Nh3FvU

Length: 74min 45sec (4485 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Vendor_BBMC]

Interesting video. Thanks for posting this.

I was a vendor on SilkRoad for the last 6 weeks of it's life ("RedBook", selling BBMC meth), and by that time it "felt" like the end of something. A real baptism by fire for me.

It's forum was a fucking awful, filthy, incestuous corrupt place, the moderators were utter dicks. One of those two corrupt feds kept setting my account to auto-withdraw my takings to their own wallets before I could login. Page refreshes took minutes.

SilkRoad was important, though. First of all, it was bitcoin's killer app. As for Mark Karpeles, I consider SR and MTGOX to essentially be one site. The escrow wallet of SR (and Silk Road 2.0 after it) were actually MTGOX wallets. I discovered this in Dec 2013 when SR2 claimed to have "lost" their escrow wallet, so I "found" it for them using reverse taint analysis on blockchain.info. Lo and behold, it began working again.

MTGOX was "robbed" on Feb 6 2014, and - surprise surprise - SR2 claimed to have lost the escrow on Feb 13. So I tracked it down and found that it was amongst 1.2 million stolen MTGOX bitcoins in 120 wallets. That's another story, because I believe that MTGOX was actually defrauded to fund Satoshi's (Hal Finney's) medical treatment, care for his widow, and fund ALCOR who cryopreserved his body. https://www.wired.com/2014/08/hal-finney/

The "Silk Road model" is based on four pillars - TOR, bitcoin, escrow, and feedback. Every DNM since has adheared to this model very closely, but the REASON for markets is to ELIMINATE DEALERS AND DRUG "MIDDLEMEN" and all the nonsense that they bring with them. In a perfect world, it would be drug manufacturers / producers / growers selling direct to end users.

Drug dealers don't add value. They just add expense, violence, and cutting agents. Drugs don't owe anybody a living, except people who make them. In my opinion, a tech geek who was trying to eliminate them shouldn't get dragged in to their stupid world. The trouble is, when you stare at a screen for too long you get caught up and think it's real, but it's just people typing on laptops. Ross should have turned it off and sat in the garden more often.

Markets are like daipers. They should be changed frequently. And for the same reason. When agora marketplace started up, I chatted frequently to it's owner (I first spoke to him when he worked for bitcoinfog). In those early days, we discussed how a marketplace has a limited life, and how an owner should know when, and how, to retire with grace. I was very happy to see him do that a couple of years later, giving everybody their bitcoin back and removing that toxic server for all time.

Wherever Agora's owner is now, I wish you well. He may even be here, who knows? Do you remember me? I was the guy who gave you a hard time after I cracked bitcoinfog's tumbling algorithm by following 59,000 stolen sheepmarketplace bitcoin through it? You explained that you don't make moral judgement about where the bitcoin comes from, you just tumble it. I was just angry because bitcoinfog didn't charge anybody a fee that day, as if Sheepmarketplace's owner had reserved it and paid upfront.

Yes, that was me. I was u/sheeproadreloaded2 back then. Let me see if I can still remember my password....

[u/NegativeSpeech]

Honestly amazing Silk Road lasted as long as it did. Ross just didn't have even basic street smarts. How do you get tricked into thinking the Hells angels would do a hit for you online?

[u/OzFreelancer]

That was a really well done video and expresses many of the same thoughts I have on the matter myself (and believe me, there was nobody more pro-Silk Road than me).

I'm madly curious about what's happening with Ellingson and would love to attend that trial!

Disappointing that they didn't go into the chats happening behind the scenes between DPR and Variety Jones as the whole saga unfolded

[u/Tes_Fallout]

Fuck scammers

[u/GenSul559]

Anyone here ever buy from 03welle? That guy's stealth was the shit and his quality was insane. Good old days, haven't bought in a couple years now.

[u/TeleHamete]

lol wish I knew about dark net back then anyways this soooo fake he was retarded

[u/[deleted]]

I'll tell you about the dark side and how the goobermint took it down before I could even get my Silk Road commemorative honey pots with the camel logo made for the misc section to sell to all the ppl.

EDIT: rolls her eyes

[u/[deleted]]

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