
Ex-U.S. agent gets over six years for Bitcoin theft in Silk Road probe - warunsl
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/19/us-usa-bitcoin-silkroad-idUSKCN0SD2IA20151019
======
Pyxl101
The level of corruption is indeed staggering:

> According to a government document, Force, operating as "Nob," in August
> 2013 convinced Ulbricht to pay him $50,000 in bitcoins by pretending he had
> information on the investigation. While Force reported the discussion to the
> DEA, he falsely claimed no payment had been made but instead diverted the
> bitcoins to a personal account, prosecutors said. Force, also without
> authorities' knowledge, used another online moniker, "French Maid," and
> offered Ulbricht information on the investigation for about $98,000 in
> bitcoins in September 2013, prosecutors said.

The guy was playing both sides. How can his testimony against Ulbricht be
considered trustworthy at this point? I haven't followed the Silk Road case
closely, but from my not-carefully-examined position, it seems like the
government waited to bring charges against Force until after their case
against Ulbricht was well on its way, or had already concluded. I wonder if
the case against Ulbricht would have gone differently had he been able to
challenge the credibility of the witnesses against him based on what we know
today, that they are guilty of these crimes. I also wonder whether Ulbricht's
prosecution knew about Force's crimes at the time, and I wonder whether that
was disclosed to Ulbricht.

Where does this all leave Ulbricht?

~~~
FatalLogic
>How can his testimony against Ulbricht be considered trustworthy at this
point?

It's my understanding that his testimony wasn't used. But despite that, such
rottenness at the heart of the investigation (two agents up to their necks in
corruption) is seriously troubling, because it leaves any reasonable person
wondering what else was going on that we don't know about.

It's also deeply troubling that the unproven (though admittedly plausible)
murder-for-hire allegations could be used to taint Ulbricht's defense,
undermine support for him, and as a reason to increase his sentence, while the
corruption within the investigating team was kept hidden from the public, and
even the jury, throughout the trial. It appears to be a blatant double
standard to me.

------
meric
The title should be _U.S. Agent (now Ex-) gets over six years for Bitcoin
theft in Silk Road probe._. Reuters try to emphasise the agent is not
government to distance the agent from the authorities, but I think we'd be
blind to pretend elsewhere police don't confiscate people's money for their
own pensions or salaries, where dogs get shot for sport, where senators accept
cushy jobs after their tenure in return for having a certain stance,
government paying way too much for screws and toilet seats. This is one rare
case where an agent abused their position actually got caught.

~~~
culturestate
I understand where you're coming from, but accusing Reuters of manipulating
the headline to suit some kind of political agenda is a bit disingenuous.
Remember that news organizations have style guides and (mostly) adhere to them
strictly -- you wouldn't say "MLB player Pete Rose reinstated after 25-year
ban for gambling" because Pete Rose is not an active MLB player, so why would
you do so here?

From the Reuters Handbook [1]:

>ex-

Make sure this prefix is hyphenated to the word it limits. Note the difference
between a Conservative ex-minister and an ex-Conservative minister. Prefer
“former” in written text , e.g., “Former Brazilian finance minister Jorge
Braga was killed on Tuesday when...” “Ex-” may be used for brevity in
headlines, e.g., “Ex-minister killed in Brazil air crash.”

1\.
[http://handbook.reuters.com/?title=E#ex-](http://handbook.reuters.com/?title=E#ex-)

~~~
meric
Is he an Ex-minister because he's dead and no longer a minister?

The agent was still an agent when he performed the crime. It is disgenuous to
say he's an ex-U.S. agent when he lost his title because of the incident.

You wouldn't say Ex-president Obama was impeached, that's just weird.

There are academic papers pointing out Reuters propaganda.
[http://blogs.roosevelt.edu/hsilverman/files/2011/11/Reuters-...](http://blogs.roosevelt.edu/hsilverman/files/2011/11/Reuters-
article-JABR.pdf)

~~~
culturestate
As another reply said, the President cannot be impeached once he's out of
office, but congressmen are convicted of crimes relatively regularly and
receive the same treatment, e.g.:

"Ex-Rep. Jefferson (D-La.) gets 13 years in freezer cash case" by the
Washington Post [1]

"Ex-Congressman Gets 8-Year Term in Bribery Case" by the New York Times [2]

Each of these convictions related to things that happened while they were
still Members of Congress. I'm quite happy that news outlets treat government
officials the same way they'd treat a baseball player -- to do otherwise would
just be a different form of "propaganda."

1\. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/11...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/11/13/AR2009111301266.html) 2\.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/politics/04cunningham.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/politics/04cunningham.html)

------
staunch
The first federal agents to ever have the chance to steal bitcoins did it.
Imagine what that says about how corrupt these organizations are.

------
erhardm
Ex-US agent seems kind of deliberate distancing. He was an agent when he did
the deed and the title should present that accordingly.

Edit: ninja'd by meric

------
loopdoend
This is beyond fucked. Those granted such incredible influence and the trust
to not abuse their position of power should be punished proportionately when
they do so.

This, on the other hand, is a joke.

------
fit2rule
If you can't get rich from theft, at least get famous for being the poster
child case for blockchain forensics...

------
vonklaus
Ulbricht got life partly based on Force's testimony. Scumbag.

~~~
Natsu
They have plenty of evidence besides that, not the least of which was the
correspondence regarding the murder he plotted.

~~~
vonklaus
Well one of the murders he "plotted", was documented in a chat log by...Carl
Force. Which is sort of suboptimal if you are hanging an attempted murder
charge based strictly on anonymous torchat logs and the testimony of a
convicted dirty federal agent.

In the 21-page IM chat log, which occurred over the anonymous IM service
Torchat, the Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts carries out conversations with
his staffer Inigo, a supposed drug-dealing associate named Nob (who we now
know was actually undercover DEA agent Carl Force), and a figure named Cimon,
also known as Variety Jones, whom Ulbricht had described in his journal as his
“mentor” and advisor. [0]

[0][http://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-boss-first-murder-
att...](http://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-boss-first-murder-attempt-
mentors-idea/)

~~~
tveita
The chat logs were stored by Ross Ulbricht on his personal encrypted laptop
and were also used as evidence against Carl Force.

~~~
vonklaus
I didn't know that, interesting. Still though, those conversations may not
have happened had Force not been trying to extort him. I haven't looked at the
case in a while so thanks for bringing that up. I still think being a crooked
gov. agent makes you a scumbag. I don't know enough about the law to know if
an appeal is possible, but if the "murder plot" evidence was mostly based on
conversations with Force and the evidence he provided _to_ Ulbricht about a
threat, it does seem a bit dodgy. If he tells RU that he is being targeted,
tries to extort him, and otherwise introduces those elements into the equation
it seems like it is self-serving for his extortion attempt. Also, if you have
a source I am interested. Why would you keep unencrypted chat logs discussing
murder on your PC?

~~~
tveita
He kept _encrypted_ chat logs, presumably because he thought the encryption
would keep it safe from the police.

He also kept a diary. From the sentencing proceedings at
[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/unsealed-transcript-
shows-h...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/unsealed-transcript-shows-how-a-
judge-justified-ross-ulbrichts-life-sentence) :

Then, in Government Exhibit 241, March 2014, you wrote a journal of short
snippets of your day and you write -- and each of these snippets is going to
be one after another, they're just tiny snippets with a period in between:

March 28: "Being blackmailed with user info. Talking with large distributor,
(hell's angels)."

Then, March 29th: "Commissioned hit on blackmailer with angels."

April 1: "Got word that blackmailer was executed. Created file upload script."
So, you went back to the technical work right after getting word that the
blackmailer had been executed. "Started to fix problem with bond refunds."

Government Exhibit 936 details communications relating to that hit further.
Apparently you were sent a photo of the hit. The photo was no longer in
existence, you acknowledge receiving the photo and deleting it.

A short time later you wrote, on April 6: "Make sure backup crons are working.
Gave angels go ahead to find tony76." Who was the subject of the next hit.
"Cleaned up unused libraries on server."

Two days later on April 8 you write: "Sent payments to angel for hit on Tony76
and his three associates. setting up hecho as standby" \-- I have no idea what
that is -- "refactored main and category pages to be more efficient."

------
mc_hammer
just to point out they were threatening aaron schwartz with 50+ years when he
killed himself. he just downloaded medical journals from the campus networking
closet.

these guys were corrupt officials engaging in, hacking, conspiracy (RICO
laws), theft, destruction of evidence and probably blackmail and money
laundering and tax evasion.

6 years.

schwartz was a political activist, these guys were just dirty special agents.
thats how the book is thrown.

~~~
mikeyouse
It's Aaron _Swartz_ and he in no way was facing "50+ years". The cumulative
max sentence is in no way representative of what the potential or likely
sentence will look like. He was likely facing ~6 months based on the charges
against him. Here's a good article about why this is the case;

[https://popehat.com/2015/10/08/bad-reporting-on-matthew-
keys...](https://popehat.com/2015/10/08/bad-reporting-on-matthew-keys-
possible-sentence-conceals-prosecutorial-power/)

~~~
loopdoend
It doesn't matter. They threatened him with it. They didn't threaten this DEA
goon with it. His union lawyers or whatever made sure of it. It was real to
Aaron.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It doesn't matter. They threatened him with it. They didn't threaten this
> DEA goon with it.

Even if that's true (for which no evidence is presented), the DEA agent, being
a federal law enforcement professional, probably understands federal
sentencing, so probably wouldn't be susceptible to threats that can only work
on someone who doesn't understand that.

> His union lawyers or whatever made sure of it.

I am sure that any competent criminal defense lawyer makes both the
theoretical maximum and the likely real sentences clear to their clients, yes.
That's actually a good thing, I would say. Not, of course, that information on
this is particularly hard to find even for reasonably intelligent laypersons
with access to public information.

------
brunorsini
...and an honorary Darwin Award.

