
My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord - Thevet
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/my-roommate-the-darknet-drug-lord
======
api
"I felt relieved: gone was the posturing so obvious in the previous
candidates. They worked in advertising, at startups—Twitter employees who
talked about how much money they made and the exotic locales where they took
their vacations. Ross was a techie, but he didn't act like one. He seemed
eloquent, optimistic, down-to-earth. He seemed trustworthy."

As an aside, that's a sad little bit of commentary on the tech scene these
days.

~~~
rottencupcakes
What an absurd statement by the author.

These people were interviewing for an apartment in a notoriously tough housing
market - they were probably just "posturing" (mentioning their good jobs and
money) because they thought it would help them get the apartment.

He sounds like an outlier of a landlord who prefers a sketchy semi-employed
roommate to one with a guaranteed salary.

~~~
untog
He's not really a landlord if he's looking for a roommate. I mean, technically
he is, obviously, but it's not a traditional landlord - tenant relationship
when you're living in the apartment together.

And I'm not sure in what world talking up how much money you make or the
vacations you take would endear you to a potential roommate - it'll just make
you sound pompous.

~~~
calbear81
In a world where roommates don't always pay their rent on time and in turn
screw you because now you have to cover since they're not on the lease.
Vetting a roommates's ability to pay rent is not unreasonable.

~~~
untog
If you're in SF and the person says they are a techie, they can pay rent. You
don't need to go into boastful details about it.

(in any case, you should really be signing a sublease agreement)

~~~
ethanbond
Yeah I've totally _never_ run into someone who "owns a startup" and was
"actually broke."

------
amyjess
So, I went to college with Ross. He was a year ahead of me.

I didn't know him personally, but several of my friends did. I had a few
friends in college (some of whom I still talk to) who were good friends with
him. When he got arrested, I looked up his Facebook page, and I found we have
5 mutual friends listed (and I know a couple of others who knew him but didn't
have him on FB). Also, when he was arrested, my then-officemate looked him up,
and it turns out he met Ross at a party once and had a conversation with him
(though they didn't know each other beyond that). Small world.

That stunned me, but what stunned me more was when I found out Richard Bates
did most of the technical work. I knew Richard. We were in a few of the same
clubs, we had a class or two, we hung out in the same friend groups, and we
were almost friends for a while. Richard was a... peculiar person. He had no
people skills whatsoever, and he managed to be both shy and condescending at
the same time. He treated people horribly. I ended up having a falling out
with him in my senior year after he cut me out of his life for trying to patch
things up between him and one of my best friends, who he suddenly cut out of
his life with no explanation whatsoever (that is, Richard cut my friend out of
his life). IMO, he wasn't a good person. Certain... nicknames for him based on
his name began floating around as people got fed up with how he treated them.
I'm still absolutely gobsmacked that this guy I personally knew and disliked
built the Silk Road of all things. It's still hard for me to believe (and,
yes, I know for a fact that this is the same Richard Bates because his email
address was published in the trial, and I recognize it as his).

UTD was a special place.

(For the record, I changed my name last year, and I seriously doubt Richard
knows my new name. I have to wonder if he'll read this and think "who the hell
is this person?", because there's nothing about my username here, which is
based off my new name IRL, that he'll recognize.)

~~~
pavel_lishin
I knew them vaguely as well, sharing some friends. (I'd wager we've probably
met in real life at UTD a few times.)

Was Richard the guy who went as a flasher at a Halloween party? Because every
time I read about him testifying in court, I'm imagining him doing so in that
costume, which was ... graphic.

~~~
abawany
I never knew UTD had such goings-on, probably because I was just an evening
student who attended business classes there :) (FYI: I have been a developer
most of my life - just wanted to broaden my horizons re. business.)

I think I also know a Richard Bates from UTD, as a co-worker (but I am not
real sure that it is the same person so I won't be too specific as to company
and etc.). I found this Richard Bates to be a hard worker who was detail
oriented and focused on doing the right thing.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Yeah, there was a fair amount of stuff happening at UTD when I was there - it
was easy to miss if you didn't live on campus, or if you only attended in the
evenings. Sorry you missed out on the fun!

Although, to be fair, some of that 'fun" was actually pretty regrettable in
hindsight. But them's part of learnin'.

I didn't know Richard well, but nothing I learned about him made him seem like
he would be a bad employee, except I guess the possible personality clash,
which can be true of anyone.

------
robbyking
This is a bit of an aside, but this line really stung:

>> _Ross was a techie, but he didn 't act like one. He seemed eloquent,
optimistic, down-to-earth._

One of the main reasons I got into software development in the 90's was the
fact that software engineers were (largely) eloquent, optimistic, and down-to-
earth.

It's sad that a vocal minority has sullied the image of an entire industry.

~~~
runjake
Virtually every niche of society considers others of their kind as eloquent,
optimistic, and down-to-earth. This is a common perception in a group of
people with shared passions. From artists, techies, to politicians and even
Nazi Germany.

~~~
karl_gluck
Wow, Godwin's law struck hard and fast. Was that reference _really_ necessary?

~~~
Zikes
Can't a person make a point that just happens to involve Nazis without someone
invoking "Godwin's Law"?

It's like just because someone slapped a label on a thing we're not allowed to
do the thing anymore. We need an "Anti-Godwin's Law" that states no mention of
Nazis or Hitler can be made on the internet without someone inevitably
invoking Godwin's Law.

~~~
bduerst
Zike's Law: Whenever Nazi's are mentioned on the internet, someone inevitably
mentions Godwin's Law.

~~~
kurotetsuka
Is there a law for mentioning Zike's law? (kinda serious)

~~~
spinlock
I believe that's Kurotetsuka's law.

------
chatmasta
"Sure, we wanted Ross to go free. We wanted him to be innocent, to be a hero:
the poster boy for privacy in the Information Age."

That may be partially true, but Ross polluted much of the goodwill the
Internet community had for him when he decided to "order a hitman." I doubt he
was ever _that_ serious about hiring one. If you read the chats he had, he
sounds completely out of his league, and probably never would have been
capable of it if the FBI did not sort-of-entrap him with a murder-for-hire
plot. Unfortunately, he really screwed himself by going down that road.

The best argument in defense of silk road and Ross, from a moral/philosophical
standpoint, is that it represents a victimless crime. Indeed, by moving
transactions into the online world, it may have actually facilitated a drop in
real crime. Ross must have known that if the FBI ever caught up to him, he
could defend himself with this moral reasoning, and at least stand a chance of
acquittal in a jury trial. It's a shame that he had to completely ruin that
chance by also trying to hire a hitman. He should have kept things simple and
never strayed out of the territory of libertarian economic experiment.

~~~
q7
Oh c'mon, he ordered a hitman inside a play the FBI fully staged for him.
There was never any harm done to anybody.

Pure entrapment. Create a fake simulated decision dilemma he never had to
decide in real life, put a lot of emotional pressure on him, and then when he
made a bad decision inside this simulation that harmed nobody, try to condemn
him for it.

He hasn't lost my goodwill yet.

~~~
mbillie1
> Oh c'mon, he ordered a hitman inside a play the FBI fully staged for him.
> There was never any harm done to anybody.

I'm not sure this line of reasoning makes a lot of difference. We judge
criminal intent, not simply outcome, and it's pretty clear that the intent in
hiring a hitman is to have someone killed - staged or not. It's surely
different from pulling the trigger yourself, but I think it's quite fair to
expect a gut-check moment when one decides not to pay for murder, and to hold
someone criminally accountable for ignoring that gut-check and deciding to go
ahead with the hit anyway.

(edited for grammatical clarity)

~~~
pakled_engineer
He hired CIs posing as hitmen a few times. His diary/movie script/fictional
book on his laptop they found claimed he tried to kill an employee who had
potential to snitch, and a scammer in Canada that ripped off many users.

He also agreed to a higher price for the "hit" in Canada, as it was claimed by
the CI the target lived with 3 other people and if they were to collect all
his assets as ordered then everybody would have to die. Ross was totally cool
with that and paid.

I also don't think this is why his fanbase on SR dumped him, they seemed more
pissed that his security practices were so terribad awful it put everybody
else in jeopardy. It's almost as if he read his own forum's security base and
then did the opposite of what everybody said not to do like "Never order fake
ID to where you live" and "Don't sit in a cafe ordering drugs off this site"
(don't sit in a cafe/library and run the site either).

The money he paid to kill non existent people was way more than what they
caused him to lose through scamming, he could have paid back the losses out of
pocket with his huge stash of bitcoins instead of seeking vengeance. He acted
exactly like a boss of a gangster dial a dope operation that orders the hit of
one of their drivers they think is ripping them off.

~~~
tripzilch
Got a link for the claims in those first two paragraphs for us? Because if
that _is_ true, it changes a whole bunch of things, including the argument
about entrapment I made in a sibling thread.

It's a rather different thing if they entrap him with a tough moral dilemma
than entrapping him with simply ordering a hit on people when it's not the
only alternative to a whole bunch of other people having their lives
destroyed, including targeting 3 people that just happen to live there.

------
arca_vorago
The main thing I would like to know is why did he hire the lawyer he did? His
defense basically sold him up the river, as can be seen from the scathing
comments from the judge. Is it still a fair trial if your lawyer is
incompetent?

~~~
simplicio
It's possible to get a re-trial on the grounds of incompetent defence, but the
bar is really high. And since Ulbricht is still using the same lawyer for his
appeals, it doesn't look like he's trying that route.

His defense did seem pretty poor, but given the amount of evidence against
him, its not really clear what a "good defense" would've looked like.

~~~
dbbolton
From the Ars op-ed, it sounded like his best chance would have been to file a
legal declaration of interest in the Iceland server and proceed to challenge
its discovery- a course of action that the judge hinted at but that his
attorney refused.

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/op-ed-ross-
ulbric...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/op-ed-ross-ulbricht-got-
a-fair-trial-but-not-a-fair-investigation/)

~~~
simplicio
It's not particularly clear they could have had it thrown out in anycase. And
even if they did, there was more than enough information just on the laptop to
tie him conclusively to Silk Road. So his lawyer threw a Hail Mary and decided
to try and deny Ross owned the server at all. It didn't work, but going the
other route wouldn't have either.

I suspect a lot of the people who were pressing for Ross to challenge the
seizure of the server are doing so because they're interested in the legal
questions involved, rather than maximizing the chances of an innocence
verdict.

But in anycase, you generally can't get a re-trial based on incompetent
counsel based just on strategic decisions, even if those decisions were poor
ones. You need to show your lawyer was really asleep at the switch on a basic
level, like giving the client factually wrong information, or going off to
Cancun for a couple weeks instead of preparing a defence.

------
d23
> How could someone intelligent enough to graduate with a master’s from Penn
> State be dumb enough to use his own personal email to advertise an illegal
> bazaar on a message board as basic as Shroomery.org?

Does anyone honestly believe this is how he was caught? Or is it just parallel
construction[1]? I wouldn't be surprised if Tor is completely compromised by
the United States Government, and this fact is just being hidden.

[1] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction)

~~~
xorcist
Does it matter? The fact of the matter he did make that post, and several
others, with his personal email clearly visible on Archive.org. Even if they
caught on to him some other way, not much work is required to follow those
traces right to him.

~~~
d23
So what? My personal email is probably in a lot of random places on the
internet. If I commit the crime of public urination and the authorities are
able to catch me because they have video cameras in my bathroom, is it a good
thing that they can then google around for my email and say "Hey look, we
found this guy because his email was registered on this public urination
forum! That's how we caught him!"

------
titanomachy
On the last line of the FBI seizure form [1], does it say "Filastine
currency"? What do you think they meant by that? AFAIK the Palestinian
territories use Israeli currency, so that's probably not it...

[1]: [http://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-
images/contentima...](http://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-
images/contentimage/19835/1426102571747985.png)

~~~
eli
First hit on google
[http://filastine.com/log/l00t/](http://filastine.com/log/l00t/)

------
driverdan
Back in my days of credit card fraud and identity theft no one knew what I was
doing. I simply refused to talk about what I did to earn money with friends.
It was kind of fun to make it like a game.

It was a little sketchy but I never seemed like a sketchy guy so maybe they
suspected porn or something like that. It's not hard to have an online life
that's different from the real world, that you hide from everyone.

------
usaphp
How come he says "he did not own a cellphone" but in a fbi report it clearly
says "Samsung smartphone"?

------
belowsanity
Definitely checking this out later. I've been in a VICE documentary binge
lately and this will add to my collection!

