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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Apparently the FBI managed to track down the actual server running the site:
During the course of this investigation, the FBI has located a
number of computer servers, both in the United States and in
multiple foreign countries, associated with the operation of Silk
Road. In particular, the FBI has located in a certain foreign
country the server used to host Silk Road's website (the "Silk
Road Web Server"). Pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty
Request, an image of the Silk Road Web Server was made on or
about July 23, 2013 and produced thereafter to the FBI.
This server image seems to have been the source of a lot of the evidence leading to the arrest warrant: the IP logs that matched his location, an account name that matched his StackOverflow account, and of course all the private messages and chat logs regarding his personal location (messages indicating Pacific time), operation of the site (payments to other admins), and the extortion attempt/attempted hit.
What the complaint doesn't specify is how the FBI managed to locate the Silk Road server. It's possible that they already had some suspicion of DPR's identity, and managed to bug his computers or otherwise track his activity well enough to figure out what systems he was logging into. But given how coy the complaint is about this, I wonder if in fact this is the result of a sophisticated analysis of Tor network traffic (possibly in collaboration with the NSA?). If that's the case, it betrays a level of capability that ought to be frightening for the operators of other anonymous Tor services. Anyone with more Tor expertise want to comment on how likely this is?
According to the filing, they found him through a combination of posting his personal @gmail.com address on the bitcointalk forum from the same account used to market Silkroad. Further, they found that his LinkedIn account somewhat corroborated the timeline/interest in what Silkroad is. Page 24 for the juicy details of how they identified him.
Also there is a section about murder-for-hire in Canada. Pretty wild stuff.
Update: Also he posted on Stackoverflow asking questions about Tor with his real name, then later changed his name. Supremely conspicuous.
"All told, the site has generated sales revenue totaling over 9.5 million Bitcoins and collected commissions from these sales totaling over 600,000 Bitcoins. Although the value of Bitcoins has varied significantly during the site's lifetime, these figures are roughly equivalent today to approximately $1.2 billion in sales and approximately $80 million in commissions."
Incidentally exactly how much Walter White made... That's a strange coincidence, or perhaps one of the clerks that gets paid to make up statistics for drug related criminal complaints is a breaking bad fan...
That's a real page-turner. I found this particular item funny on page 30:
"Based on my training and experience, I know that criminals
seeking to hide their identity online will often use
pseudonymous usernames to conceal their identity."
I just read through it. They introduce a lot of evidence from their forensic analysis of the Silk Road servers, but they don't seem to explain how they got access to the servers. Did anyone find that in there?
I thought the name Ross Ulbricht sounded familiar... turns out I had lunch with him a few years ago when he was working on a startup selling books online. I had some experience in the area, and he reached out to me after getting my contact details through a friend. He emailed me from [email protected], we made arrangements, had lunch and discussed selling books. That was the only time we met, and I've never heard from or of him since.
It's known that the FBI and DEA get help from the NSA on high profile investigations, and they sometimes look at people 2 or 3 degrees of separation from their main person of interest.
Given what we've learned in the last few months about the government's intelligence apparatus, it seems I can reasonably assume that my emails, texts, phone call history etc. have all been scrutinized because I was in this guys email history. And it's not unreasonable to wonder if the same can be said of anybody I've ever emailed, or chatted with on facebook etc. because that's only 2 degrees of separation.
While I don't think the government will be scooping me up in a black van or kicking my doors in over this, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if I get special attention from the TSA next time I'm going through an airport because now I'm on some list.
I guess this is what it means to live in a surveillance state. Having to be afraid of what this might mean for myself, and for my friends and family, because I once exchanged a couple of emails with a guy who years later got into some very shady things.
These are not standard parts to the image, based on previous seizures. (though I'll admit those all were clear-web seizures that just took over the DNS and resolved back to a gov controlled IP hosting a image - here the image is hosted on-site).
So there is a chance that this is DPR's "dead-man" script running after DPR was not able to communicate with the site for X hours.
It's hard to tell if the actual site (with it's data) has been taken over or compromised.
There is also the possibility it's only the onion domain-name that has been taken, though I'm not sure how TOR/ONION works (if that's possible without access to the server).
In any way, I hope that none of you used a plain-text (vs a PGP'ed one) home address for your recent orders, nor have any tracking #s lingering in messages from the vendors in your accounts. If I recall correctly, messages are deleted after 30 days. But who knows what type of backups where maintained.
It will be intresting to see if -
1. There are admins that have access to the data + site that can get it back up and operational.
2. The forums (which are still working) will produce another site.
3. BMR (BlackMarketReloaded) and another one I'm not familiar with called Sheeps Market will continue to operate and/or pick up the majority of SR's business.
...and also if the DEA and FBI will go after the users (and not just the vendors) that they can find enough "conspiracy to commit" evidence on to make a point.
His linkedin page is pretty transparent if you know anything about him
"Now, my goals have shifted. I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and agression amongst mankind. Just as slavery has been abolished most everywhere, I believe violence, coercion and all forms of force by one person over another can come to an end. The most widespread and systemic use of force is amongst institutions and governments, so this is my current point of effort. The best way to change a government is to change the minds of the governed, however. To that end, I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force."
What baffles me is why the FBI would shut it down and let this information out when they could have just sat there and collected information on crime after crime. Was the impetus because of the violence alluded to in communications? I know that if they are watching the mafia and they intercept a message about a homicide they have, in the past, notified the intended target.
Either way, intriguing story. If it's true he's really up shit's creek. And I have no problem with that, if it's true. An old 'hood motto: I'm not the law, break it, I don't care. But when you get caught, remember that I don't care.
I really don't understand, why stay in the US doing that stuff when it's the most controlled place ever? even if he was pretty well hidden just leaving the US would have made his life a lot easier...
I wonder if the timing on this is deliberate. The office that handles FOIA requests is part of the government shutdown, but the three-letter agencies aren't. So the only information that's going to come out on this for the time being is whatever the people running the investigation want to come out...
Maybe it's not deliberate, but keep that in mind. There's going to only one source on this story for a long time.
As I've said for the past few years, he essentially fucked himself.
1) using a low latency onion routing network, rather than a mixnet like an anonymous remailer or other 1990s blacknet, was a big problem. You could maybe get away with throwaway front end nodes as a web interface, stateless, to package up transactions, run by third parties, but for long running anonymity vs traffic analysis or server compromise, low latency bidirectional connections are impossible.
2) repeatedly sticking his dick into the hornet nest by provoking the FBI in the press
3) remaining in the USA while doing all of this
Acting in ways which make him a less sympathetic defendant (connection to assassinations? Really?) doesn't help
Somewhat amusing list of YouTube videos recently liked by this guy: "How to Get Away with Stealing" and "Privacy: A PostMortem" are right on top. http://www.youtube.com/user/ohyeaross
Interesting. He apparently lived in San Francisco in the Mission and rented a room for $1000/month. For someone who should have had $80 million in profit, that seems a bit strange. I suppose cashing out $80 million in bitcoin and then laundering must be incredibly difficult.
Not totally surprising since SR was mentioned before Congress over a year ago, and some leaked documents mentioned ongoing investigation. I've been telling people it's just a matter of time before it's shut down and that you should stockpile now before it's too late.
Let's hope SR hasn't been keeping any real identifying transaction records, or I bet we'll see a spate of high-profile arrests from tech companies.
Now the question is who will step in to fill his shoes. How much of Silk Road's infrastructure is open and reusable? The market has been created, the users exist - they'll be looking for a replacement.
Of course, after this I think most would-be entrepreneurs might be having second thoughts.
Damn, and I was this close to ordering some LSD from SR a few weeks ago. I've never tried it and was thinking about giving it a shot. Guess it's a good thing work sent me out of town, and I decided to wait, then got distracted and never got around to it.
Still, this is disappointing. As a libertarian / ancap / voluntaryist / whatever-you-want-to-call-me, I totally support the Silk Road and other unregulated marketplaces.
The traditional method of catching drug kingpins has been to flip the lower-levels of the organization until you can finally stick something on the leader. Here, the feds were able to go straight to the source.
I'd expect more prosecutions of SR's larger vendors as part of the fallout. If I were one of those vendors, I'd be ordering dust filter for my Hoover MaxExtract PressurePro model 60.
I think the pseudo-anonymity that Tor, Bitcoin, and computers in general can provide gave DPR too much confidence. But like every other ringleader who has been caught, a new one will take over and play the game smarter.
Is anyone else surprised that it took this long to shut it down? With all the surveillance that has been in the news, I assumed Silk Road was entirely operated in a foreign country which didn't have good information exchange relations with the US.
No matter what the precautions someone takes, my bet is that they will eventually get caught if they engage in illegal activity online.
[+] [-] mikeyouse|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jere|12 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] TheLegace|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clarkm|12 years ago|reply
http://blockchain.info/en/tx/4a0a5b6036c0da84c3eb9c2a884b6ad...
[+] [-] pkfrank|12 years ago|reply
Almost an analog for "Walter White," who also made $80mm on his calamitous journey from "honest" meth-cooker to kingpin.
[+] [-] Sheepshow|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moeadham|12 years ago|reply
1. Canadian spies set up "FriendlyChemist", hack into another vendor and get extortion material on DPR
2. "FriendlyChemist" tells "RedandWhite" (obviously the same person/agency) to contact DPR
3. "RedAndWhite" extorts American based DPR to pay for a murder that mysteriously does not happen in Canada
4. DPR then (stupidly?) pays "RedAndWhite" for fake ID documents from Canada, which mysteriously get stopped at the border
5. US agency arrests DPR on delivery of Fake ID's
6. There is no chance of entrapment since:
- Based on the Nature of TOR, we can never prove that "FriendlyChemist/RedAndWhite" are a police force (karma)
- They are most likely not a domestic force, but were working covertly with US agencies (cannot be subpoenaed). </pre>
[+] [-] chrissnell|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Touche|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandieman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malandrew|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] untog|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jliptzin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsullivan01|12 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] b6|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davmre|12 years ago|reply
What the complaint doesn't specify is how the FBI managed to locate the Silk Road server. It's possible that they already had some suspicion of DPR's identity, and managed to bug his computers or otherwise track his activity well enough to figure out what systems he was logging into. But given how coy the complaint is about this, I wonder if in fact this is the result of a sophisticated analysis of Tor network traffic (possibly in collaboration with the NSA?). If that's the case, it betrays a level of capability that ought to be frightening for the operators of other anonymous Tor services. Anyone with more Tor expertise want to comment on how likely this is?
Edit: the excerpt quoted is from the (now unsealed) FBI complaint, first linked elsewhere in this thread: http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Ulbric.... The whole thing is pretty interesting reading.
[+] [-] shazow|12 years ago|reply
http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Ulbric... / Mirror: http://www.scribd.com/doc/172773407/Ulbricht-Criminal-Compla...
According to the filing, they found him through a combination of posting his personal @gmail.com address on the bitcointalk forum from the same account used to market Silkroad. Further, they found that his LinkedIn account somewhat corroborated the timeline/interest in what Silkroad is. Page 24 for the juicy details of how they identified him.
Also there is a section about murder-for-hire in Canada. Pretty wild stuff.
Update: Also he posted on Stackoverflow asking questions about Tor with his real name, then later changed his name. Supremely conspicuous.
[+] [-] dave_sullivan|12 years ago|reply
Incidentally exactly how much Walter White made... That's a strange coincidence, or perhaps one of the clerks that gets paid to make up statistics for drug related criminal complaints is a breaking bad fan...
[+] [-] gdubs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samcrawford|12 years ago|reply
Interestingly, the FBI agent that wrote that document and requested his arrest warrant is the same one cited as tracking down Sabu of LulzSec: http://nymag.com/news/features/lulzsec-sabu-2012-6/index3.ht...
[+] [-] haxxorfreak|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheez|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makmanalp|12 years ago|reply
EDIT: But interestingly looks like canadian police can't confirm.
[+] [-] LaSombra|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teebs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jstalin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xSwag|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mkv138|12 years ago|reply
It's known that the FBI and DEA get help from the NSA on high profile investigations, and they sometimes look at people 2 or 3 degrees of separation from their main person of interest.
Given what we've learned in the last few months about the government's intelligence apparatus, it seems I can reasonably assume that my emails, texts, phone call history etc. have all been scrutinized because I was in this guys email history. And it's not unreasonable to wonder if the same can be said of anybody I've ever emailed, or chatted with on facebook etc. because that's only 2 degrees of separation.
While I don't think the government will be scooping me up in a black van or kicking my doors in over this, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if I get special attention from the TSA next time I'm going through an airport because now I'm on some list.
I guess this is what it means to live in a surveillance state. Having to be afraid of what this might mean for myself, and for my friends and family, because I once exchanged a couple of emails with a guy who years later got into some very shady things.
[+] [-] powertower|12 years ago|reply
Notice:
1. The SilkRoad Camel image in the background.
2. "THIS HIDDEN SITE HAS BEEN SEIZED" text.
These are not standard parts to the image, based on previous seizures. (though I'll admit those all were clear-web seizures that just took over the DNS and resolved back to a gov controlled IP hosting a image - here the image is hosted on-site).
So there is a chance that this is DPR's "dead-man" script running after DPR was not able to communicate with the site for X hours.
It's hard to tell if the actual site (with it's data) has been taken over or compromised.
There is also the possibility it's only the onion domain-name that has been taken, though I'm not sure how TOR/ONION works (if that's possible without access to the server).
In any way, I hope that none of you used a plain-text (vs a PGP'ed one) home address for your recent orders, nor have any tracking #s lingering in messages from the vendors in your accounts. If I recall correctly, messages are deleted after 30 days. But who knows what type of backups where maintained.
It will be intresting to see if -
1. There are admins that have access to the data + site that can get it back up and operational.
2. The forums (which are still working) will produce another site.
3. BMR (BlackMarketReloaded) and another one I'm not familiar with called Sheeps Market will continue to operate and/or pick up the majority of SR's business.
...and also if the DEA and FBI will go after the users (and not just the vendors) that they can find enough "conspiracy to commit" evidence on to make a point.
[+] [-] llamataboot|12 years ago|reply
"Now, my goals have shifted. I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and agression amongst mankind. Just as slavery has been abolished most everywhere, I believe violence, coercion and all forms of force by one person over another can come to an end. The most widespread and systemic use of force is amongst institutions and governments, so this is my current point of effort. The best way to change a government is to change the minds of the governed, however. To that end, I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force."
[+] [-] ianstallings|12 years ago|reply
Either way, intriguing story. If it's true he's really up shit's creek. And I have no problem with that, if it's true. An old 'hood motto: I'm not the law, break it, I don't care. But when you get caught, remember that I don't care.
[+] [-] duiker101|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patmcguire|12 years ago|reply
Maybe it's not deliberate, but keep that in mind. There's going to only one source on this story for a long time.
[+] [-] rdl|12 years ago|reply
1) using a low latency onion routing network, rather than a mixnet like an anonymous remailer or other 1990s blacknet, was a big problem. You could maybe get away with throwaway front end nodes as a web interface, stateless, to package up transactions, run by third parties, but for long running anonymity vs traffic analysis or server compromise, low latency bidirectional connections are impossible.
2) repeatedly sticking his dick into the hornet nest by provoking the FBI in the press
3) remaining in the USA while doing all of this
Acting in ways which make him a less sympathetic defendant (connection to assassinations? Really?) doesn't help
[+] [-] lizzard|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aloisius|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moepstar|12 years ago|reply
http://krebsonsecurity.com.nyud.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/...
[+] [-] nether|12 years ago|reply
Let's hope SR hasn't been keeping any real identifying transaction records, or I bet we'll see a spate of high-profile arrests from tech companies.
[+] [-] Pxtl|12 years ago|reply
Of course, after this I think most would-be entrepreneurs might be having second thoughts.
[+] [-] mindcrime|12 years ago|reply
Still, this is disappointing. As a libertarian / ancap / voluntaryist / whatever-you-want-to-call-me, I totally support the Silk Road and other unregulated marketplaces.
[+] [-] topbanana|12 years ago|reply
Bizarrely I'm actually more annoyed that he didn't accept an answer on StackOverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15445285/how-can-i-connec...
[+] [-] ssharp|12 years ago|reply
The traditional method of catching drug kingpins has been to flip the lower-levels of the organization until you can finally stick something on the leader. Here, the feds were able to go straight to the source.
I'd expect more prosecutions of SR's larger vendors as part of the fallout. If I were one of those vendors, I'd be ordering dust filter for my Hoover MaxExtract PressurePro model 60.
I think the pseudo-anonymity that Tor, Bitcoin, and computers in general can provide gave DPR too much confidence. But like every other ringleader who has been caught, a new one will take over and play the game smarter.
[+] [-] thekevan|12 years ago|reply
No matter what the precautions someone takes, my bet is that they will eventually get caught if they engage in illegal activity online.
[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|12 years ago|reply
(browse logged-out to see the full thing. If you're logged in and not connected to him, you won't see anything.)