
The Tax Sleuth Who Took Down a Drug Lord - e15ctr0n
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/business/dealbook/the-unsung-tax-agent-who-put-a-face-on-the-silk-road.html
======
deisner
It's worth comparing this account with Joshuah Bearman's reporting in Wired in
May: [http://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-
road-2/](http://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/). The NYT article describes
a frustrated IRS agent (Alford) who strongly suspects Ulbricht is DPR and
struggles in vain to get anybody on the investigation to listen.

In Wired's version of events, however, Alford's sleuthing had turned up the
email address "rossulbricht@gmailcom", but "[t]he IRS didn’t know what any of
this meant, so that’s where it ended. The info sat in a case file until dumb
luck put Alford in Tarbell’s lab ..."

The NYT's and Wired's depiction of Alford's role in the case seem at odds.

~~~
anonbanker
ssshhhh... you're getting in the way of revisionism. They need to bury the
Parallel Construction somehow.

------
swartkrans
> "Both agents declined to comment for this article, but according to two
> people briefed on the investigation..."

What are the odds the "two people" are "both agents"? That's like the lamest
off the record attribution ever. Also amazing that some random agent using
Google broke the case. Apparently anyone could have figured out who DPR was.

~~~
Nicholas_C
> Apparently anyone could have figured out who DPR was.

I think that's the most interesting part. Obviously not just everyone would
have the knowledge that he would log in as DPR from a coffee shop a few
hundred feet from his apartment, but they could still place him as a strong
suspect based on his posts as altoid that identify himself and mention Silk
Road. Something that even the FBI didn't do.

I tried to use google to find his post as altoid to no avail. Maybe it was
taken down.

~~~
1as
\- Altoid mentions Silk Road:
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175.msg42670#msg4267...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175.msg42670#msg42670)

\- Altoid identifies as Ross Ulbricht:
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47811.msg568744#msg5...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47811.msg568744#msg568744)

(Looks like the NYT got mixed up about which post was deleted)

~~~
XorNot
Also at some point the real IP of the silk road server was emitted via a
lighthttpd config error.

Silk road was always going down, one way or another.

~~~
smokeyj
I thought the config error was debunked by his attorney. I think the question
many people have is if parallel construction was at play and if TOR is
compromised.

~~~
nikcub
I wrote about it here:

[https://www.nikcub.com/posts/analyzing-fbi-explanation-
silk-...](https://www.nikcub.com/posts/analyzing-fbi-explanation-silk-road/)

The FBI argument was 'leaky CAPTCHA'. The defense argument was that the
application was hacked. The most likely scenario is an info leak or debug page
as Ross was known to live edit/debug the application.

This evidence wasn't tested in court on 4th amendment grounds since the
defense didn't demonstrate ownership of the server:

[http://www.wired.com/2014/10/silk-road-judge-
technicality/](http://www.wired.com/2014/10/silk-road-judge-technicality/)

------
generalseven
[http://www.bitcoinwednesday.com/the-legacy-of-silk-road-
part...](http://www.bitcoinwednesday.com/the-legacy-of-silk-road-part-4/)

What kind of "Drug Lord" orders fake IDs to his home or posts his own email
address to an online forum?

------
revelation
This is the NYT making the case against mass data collection and extended
police privileges.

------
jhales
This guy isn't unsung, he's no hero. Heros have just causes.

He's an enthusiastic, misguided, bureacratic cog.

~~~
smadge
Someone's bitter about Silk Road going down...

~~~
jerguismi
Since the downfall of Silk Road, the Deep Web market scene seems to have
exploded. For some odd reason.

[https://www.deepdotweb.com/dark-net-market-comparison-
chart/](https://www.deepdotweb.com/dark-net-market-comparison-chart/)

------
55555
Why is an IRS agent working with the DEA to find the proprietor of an illegal
drug market? It's not like the IRS is going to ask for corporate profit tax on
Silk Road's earnings.

~~~
DanBC
> It's not like the IRS is going to ask for corporate profit tax on Silk
> Road's earnings.

Why not?

IRS doesn't care if the activity is illegal or not. See for example this slate
article describing how sex workers declare income.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2009/09/how_do_prostitutes_pay_their_taxes.html)

~~~
refurb
Exactly! Not sure if the law is still current but some states required a tax
stamp for all marijuana sales (on top of it being illegal). If you sell
marijuana you not only ciolate the drug laws, but the tax laws too!

------
mschuster91
If you can't prove that someone committed a crime, look if his financials
provide evidence of tax evasion.

~~~
Nicholas_C
Except if you read the article it wasn't about tax evasion or even taxes. It
was about an IRS tax agent using Google search and background checks to find a
suspect.

------
Estragon
Classy of him to refrain from pointing out that he probably had trouble
getting people to take his ideas seriously at least partly because he was
black.

~~~
daviddaviddavid
For all we know based on the article, the people who wouldn't take him
seriously were also black. The article puts the blame squarely on
institutional infighting which has apparently been a problem for a very long
time. Maybe that's actually the cause here.

Also - and slighly off topic - it's really amazing just how alive and well the
old one-drop rule is. Alford is described as half-black, half-Filipino. But I
gather most readers come away from the article thinking of him as black. I
doubt anyone would come away from the article just calling him a Filipino. I'm
biracial myself, so I always find this interesting.

~~~
alextgordon
> Alford is described as half-black, half-Filipino

This is one of those cases where "African American" is correct and "black" is
not. Some Filipinos _are_ black:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negrito](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negrito)

