
Silk Road: Undercover agent admits stealing Bitcoin - jbrooksuk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33364349
======
Ensorceled
I'm amazed at how often the defence story in these cases, "He had a stellar,
15-year career with the DEA except for this one blip.", is accepted at face
value. I imagine a smart, experienced, undercover DEA agent would be very
difficult to catch breaking the law.

~~~
tedunangst
There are only two kinds of criminals. The "long history of violence and
trouble" type and the "honors student with a lapse in judgement" type.

Same thing whenever somebody goes on a shooting rampage. All the neighbors
either say "I always knew there was something strange with that boy" or they
say "I can't believe it, he was such a sweet kid".

~~~
drcode
Either it will rain today OR it will not rain today.

~~~
stephengillie
Either it will monsoon, or it will be clear skies and low humidity. No chance
of fog, drizzle, or showers.

------
at-fates-hands
He didn't just steal bitcoins either:

 _Among the crimes he confessed to, Force said he had agreed to a contract
with 21st Century Fox last year to help make a film about the Silk Road
investigation, without the permission of his supervisors. That deal called for
him to be paid up to $240,000._

 _Force also invested in a company that brokered Bitcoin and served as its
chief compliance officer while still with the DEA._

 _During his time with the company, Force used his position to seize $300,000
from a customer and transfer it to his private account, authorities said._

This guy was dirty, probably from the get go. It really makes you wonder if
this will give Ulbricht more life in a new trial. I mean, this guy did stuff
that was flat out against the law, and really compromises his integrity with
regards to the trial. There's no telling what other sketchy stuff he did to
get this conviction.

And he's not the only dirty cop who was on the case either:

[http://www.coindesk.com/secret-service-plead-guilty-silk-
roa...](http://www.coindesk.com/secret-service-plead-guilty-silk-road/)

 _US Secret Service special agent Shaun Bridges will plead guilty to charges
of money laundering and wire fraud stemming from the government investigation
into the illicit online black market Silk Road._

This case is rife with corruption

~~~
tptacek
Can you be specific about how this compromises the Ulbricht trial? Start from
the indictment, make a list of the facts that the prosecution had to
establish, and find the places where they relied on Force.

From what I can tell, this case was over as soon as they managed to get
Ulbricht's unlocked laptop.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
In sentencing, prosecutors submitted a number of comments alluding to
Ulbricht's alleged but not proven in trial murder for hire plots. The assumed
motive for these alleged murder plots was the actual theft of bitcoins which
we now learn was perpetrated by government agents and witnesses against
Ulbricht.

~~~
gamblor956
There were _multiple_ criminal cases filed against Ulbricht by separate
jurisdictions for wholly separate crimes. Force was involved in only a single
criminal case (the alleged murder-for-hires), and that case was dropped when
Force and another investigator in that case were arrested.

~~~
tptacek
I think this is also somewhat inaccurate, as Ulbricht was charged for the
murder-for-hire scheme in the indictment that ultimately convicted him. There
is a very popular misconception that he wasn't convicted for the hit-man
scheme, but he was; it just wasn't a murder charge.

~~~
gamblor956
Nope, you're completely wrong. It's not a misconception that Ulbricht wasn't
convicted for the hit-man scheme because that wasn't part of the _New York_
indictment. A person is "charged" with "counts" of specific crimes. The
murder-for-hire is mentioned only as an alleged overt act in pursuance of a
Narcotics Trafficking Conspiracy count with which Ulbricht is charged.

Someone else has already provided the indictment in the _New York_ court case.
[http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/download.html?id=126792875&...](http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/download.html?id=126792875&z=fdea5223)
Nowhere in the _New York_ indictment is Ulbricht charged with attempted murder
or murder-for-hire. The murder-for-hire charge was part of a _Maryland_ court
case in which Force and the other convicted investigator participated and
which was subsequently dropped because of their malfeasance. See Count 2 of
the Superseding Indictment.
[https://ia601904.us.archive.org/1/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.238...](https://ia601904.us.archive.org/1/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.238311/gov.uscourts.mdd.238311.4.0.pdf).

Other commenters have already pointed out your error. Don't compound it by
trying to argue legal semantics you clearly don't understand.

~~~
tptacek
I have no idea why you think a citation to the Maryland case involving Force
is some kind of mic drop. What part of this analysis of the _New York case_
that I wrote a month ago do you disagree with? Can you be as specific as
possible? You've identified yourself in the past as a criminal defense lawyer
(I am not a lawyer), so you should have no trouble knocking it down.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9628102](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9628102)

------
DaveWalk
I had wondered what would happen to the DEA agent mentioned in the big Wired
stories[0][1].

As a Bitcoin novice, I was left wondering: is it a common misconception that
Bitcoin is anonymous? Or rather, just how easy is it to trace someone's
transactions if you know their wallet ID?

[0] [http://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-
road-1/](http://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/) [1]
[http://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/](http://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-
road-2/)

~~~
joering2
This entire story was very weird, if you give Wired 100% credibility.

It felt to me like Feds wanted to do everything in their power to put him down
for lifetime, and I wouldn't be surprise if more skeletons come to the light.

Namely, the part about him hiring a hit man was very fishy. First it was his
coworker that agreed to helped Feds to play dead, but then you had some bikers
performing multiple hits (supposedly all successful) on people Ross wanted
dead. Uhm, so basically a motorbike gang agreed to play along with Feds, plus
many "victims" agreed to disappear and play dead for months so that Ross is
convinced all that money he paid the gang were for successful hits. Maybe in a
Grisham book, but in real life things like that don't line up this good.

Then Feds didn't hesitate to tell judge about all this, but then they decided
not to use "evidence" of Ross ordering hits, and focus only on his drug
business.

So basically you have a judge that looks at a person that supposedly order
multiple hits, who also created website to exchange some drugs. No wonder he
got lifetime behind bars.

I don't think drug dealers go to jail for lifetime.

Another thing that struck me was allowing testimony of parents of a teen that
drug himself to dead. Seriously? Sure, had not SR, he probably would have
never found access to drugs somewhere else.. NOT. How about looking into the
quality of their parenthood? Environment he lived in? His school and friends
problems? etc etc. But no! Just exactly when was the last time you seen a
family trying to shut down Ford car company and put the CEO behind bars
because their two young children burnt to death in a car accident caused by a
Ford vehicle??

EDIT: my point about Ford was that when did you see last time a car company
CEO being found guilty and put in jail for lifetime because his company's
vehicles are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, including young
children.

(never)

~~~
tptacek
It is simply not true that the DOJ declined to use evidence of the murder-for-
hire scheme in their case. Not only did they do that, but they built a whole
leg of their case on it. Ulbricht was charged with attempting a murder-for-
hire scheme. That scheme was one of the explicit actions used as the basis for
his conspiracy charge. It was presented to the court as something that
Ulbricht's defense could (and was obligated to) refute.

This notion that the DOJ tainted the case by telling the judge about a murder-
for-hire scheme without charging it is a meme that simply will not die. By
repeating it, you're essentially broadcasting that you didn't even bother to
read the Ulbricht indictment.

------
B4CKlash
This is a slight exaggeration but....

I've always secretly wanted the death penalty ( _insert other serve
punishment_ ) for cases like these. This type of corruption & abuse of power
systematically reduces our overall faith in the government and should be
treated as a high crime (i.e. Treason). We commonly use deterrence as a means
to justify strict punishments when convicting drug crimes, but politicians\law
enforcement\etc seem to avoid these dragnets. Why can't we hold them to a
higher standard? I mean... there's something 'bone chillingly' wrong about an
oath-taking public servant poisoning the well.

/rant

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Agree with the sentiment but I think the death penalty is increasingly
problematic when it concerns government corruption (like have your political
opponents executed problematic).

>Why can't we hold them to a higher standard?

Because we trust them to police themselves, their peers.

~~~
CodeCube
the age old question of, who watches the watchers

------
deadmik3
I will say that I'd like to see a movie about the investigation, if it's done
well. I'm a sucker for all these new tech-bio-pic movies.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
They could get the folks who did Zero Dark Thirty to make it!

------
sarciszewski
Elephant in the room question:

Is anyone really surprised by this turn of events? I thought it was common
knowledge that the DOJ is irredeemably corrupt, that they don't care about the
rights of their citizens (let alone human rights outside our borders) and that
they cannot be trusted with anything.

I always thought everyone knew that neither the FBI/NSA with their massive
domestic spying campaigns, the DEA with its fallacious war on drugs, nor local
police with their rampant violence (esp. towards minorities) can or should
ever be trusted.

Did people really not expect this outcome?

Civil forfeiture really should have made the case that law enforcement is
nothing but crooks and scoundrels.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks)

[http://www.copblock.org/](http://www.copblock.org/)

~~~
rhino369
>I thought it was common knowledge that the DOJ is irredeemably corrupt,

That is essentially the opposite of the common knowledge of the DOJ. In the
legal world, they are seen as very good lawyers who only take on cases they
can win. They are also civicly minded because they could make WAY more money
in private practice.

Sounds like you are treating people who disagree with you on some issues as
irredeemably evil.

~~~
tedunangst
They may have meant the various agencies under DOJ (DEA, FBI, ATF, etc.) and
not the US Attorney's office, but then again HN often finds plea bargaining
irredeemably evil too.

~~~
rhino369
Even if you meant DEA, FBI, etc. etc, it's beyond naive to think of the
average workers as cartoonish villains plotting to destroy people's lives.

You might as well say anyone who works for Google or Facebook deserves to hang
for spying.

Even if you strongly disagree with their views and actions it isn't
corruption.

~~~
wfo
Anyone in law enforcement is in the business of destroying lives. They don't
protect people (you can't really, in a free society), they punish people after
the fact in an attempt to reduce antisocial/immoral/"impure" behavior. Doing
their jobs correctly and with moral forthrightness is making absolutely sure
the lives they destroy are lives that deserve to be destroyed. But as it turns
out they are human and want to keep their jobs so they inevitably focus on
"winning" cases -- that is, not failing to destroy lives, rather than being
appropriately cautious with the power they are given.

Cartoonish villians? No. It's more the opposite; they think of themselves as
cartoonish superheroes and have a hard-on for "punishing the wicked", and
often forget that the wicked aren't always so wicked and maybe the extreme and
brutal punishment associated with even being touched by the US justice system
isn't appropriate -- but why give up a case you can win and tank your career?
The guy in the cubicle next door is happy to get the commendation and
promotion if you won't take it.

------
nkurz
I want to remind international readers that confessions by a defendant in an
American often have little to do with truth, but with calculated odds. One
should not assume that just because a defendant "admits" to having done any
particular act, that they actually did so. While the confession provides some
evidence that the defendant is guilty of something (to the extent that this
makes them more likely to be found guilty by a jury of a particular set of
charges) the exact details of a confession should be trusted less than the
details that result from a full trial.

The confession is a charade, usually coordinated in advance with the
prosecution. Almost never is the confession made because the defendant
suddenly realizes that wrongness of their actions, and simply wants to avoid
burdening everyone with the effort of a lengthy trial. Instead, the defendant
is threatened with a terrible punishment, and told that unless they cooperate
the chances are high (regardless of their actual guilt) that this punishment
will occur. They are offered (or offer on their own) a "plea bargain", where
if they confess to a subset of the crimes with which they are charged, they
can willingly accept a smaller (though often substantial) punishment.

The contents of the admission are a negotiation between the defendant and the
prosecutor. If the prosecutor demands that you confess to being a witch, and
that if you don't confess to being a witch there is a high likelihood that you
will spend the rest of your life in jail being raped by unpleasant men, you
don't quibble about whether or not you are actually a witch. You weigh the
chances of a potentially unjust conviction with a horrible outcome against the
chances that your lawyer will convince a jury that the charges are false, and
if the odds are against you, you confess to being a witch in all the detail
the prosecutor requests.

The harsher the punishment the defendant willingly accepts in the "plea
bargain", the more likely the admission was made under the duress of an even
more severe punishment. The accuracy of the details of the confession are
equivalent to a confession under torture. In torture, the punishment begins
and in agony you are willing to confess to anything in hope that the
punishment will stop. In the plea bargaining system, you are threatened with a
terrible punishment and confess to anything in hopes that the punishment will
not start. In neither case should the details of the confession be treated as
true.

So while I presume this agent did lots of bad things, and probably stole the
bitcoins in question, realize that the details of the admission are a just a
plausible story written by someone wielding great power, signed under duress
by a defendant justifiably scared of this power. In the absence of outside
evidence, the exact details should no more be treated as "true" than the dying
confessions of a man broken on the wheel.

------
tiatia
I am not a lawyer but I wonder about the legal basis behind it. Bitcoins are
not a legal currency. If you copy a software it is also not "stealing" but has
to do with copyright and special laws (in the codified law systems) had to be
made up for this.

I am curious if we have a lawyer here who can comment on this from a legal
perspective. Again, Common Law and codified law may be very different here.

~~~
ikeboy
If I social engineer you to transfer money from your bank account to mine, did
I do anything illegal? Only bits moved around in the bank database.

Same here.

~~~
tiatia
You obviously know nothing about law, at least codified law.

~~~
ikeboy
In case it wasn't clear, I think that is illegal, and that it disproves the
argument "bits therefore legal".

------
im3w1l
He has been charged with money laundering. Is using a bitcoin tumbler illegal?

~~~
yuncun
It's the laundering money part that's illegal. Like toothpicks aren't
inherently illegal but if you use one to kill someone, then that's illegal.

------
fredgrott
you guys are missing the point..

Should the US prosecutor be allowed to withhold evidence of this crime when
the SilkRoad founder was tried and sentenced..I say no as oges towards the
idea of entrapment, etcf

~~~
meepmorp
Can you expand on how this would relate to entrapment? The story doesn't seem
to indicate that the scam induced DPR to commit a crime he otherwise might not
have engaged in.

~~~
Zigurd
He was enticed into a the murder for hire scheme by the agent who was stealing
from the evidence, by pinning the theft on the object of the murder for hire
plot. Doesn't get much dirtier than that.

~~~
meepmorp
Is there any evidence for that?

~~~
Zigurd
Yes. In the case against Mark Force.

------
fnordfnordfnord
Is this grounds to give Ulbricht a new trial?

~~~
gamblor956
No. Ulbricht was charged in multiple jurisdictions for multiple crimes. Force
was not involved in the trial in which Ulbricht was convicted, and the murder-
for-hire charges were not brought up during the trial.

The murder-for-hire charges were brought up during the _sentencing_ phase
(after guilt was adjudicated). Normally, judges generally use the Federal
Sentencing Guidelines to determine the length of a federal prison sentence, so
that sentences are "normalized" across crimes and defendants. (The Guidelines
are no longer mandatory, after the 2005 _Booker_ case.) Judges will also
consider evidence calling for a reduced (or extended) sentence than the
Guidelines would impose.

In this case, the Guidelines called for life imprisonment. The murder-for-hire
charges were introduced at the sentencing hearings to counter evidence
provided of Ulbricht's good character. Even if the murder-for-hire charges had
not been brought up at sentencing, Ulbricht still faced life in prison.
Bringing them up in sentencing merely sealed his fate.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
>No. Ulbricht was charged in multiple jurisdictions for multiple crimes.

So you keep saying.

>The murder-for-hire charges were brought up during the sentencing phase
(after guilt was adjudicated).

Guilt of crimes which according to you are not related.

>The murder-for-hire charges were introduced at the sentencing hearings to
counter evidence provided of Ulbricht's good character.

Maybe they affected sentencing then? And since the testimony has been reduced
from "let's convict Ulbricht of murder for hire" to "character witness hearsay
from disgraced and corrupt federal agents who themselves provoked the alleged
crimes by stealing many hundreds of thousands of dollars from Ulbricht"; can
sentencing be revisited by the court, or is a new trial required?

~~~
gamblor956
_> No. Ulbricht was charged in multiple jurisdictions for multiple crimes.

So you keep saying._

I'm not sure what you're arguing here. You agree in other threads that
Ulbricht was charged of separate crimes in New York and Maryland courts.

Guilt of crimes which according to you are not related.*

I'm not saying the crimes were unrelated at all. I'm saying that the
sentencing phase of a trial is different from the guilt phase. In sentencing
hearings, the normal rules of evidence are relaxed, so evidence that was
excluded from trial can be considered.

 _Maybe they affected sentencing then?_

That's exactly what I'm saying, and that's the reason those allegations and
underlying evidence were introduced at the sentencing hearing: to show that
Ulbricht deserves to be locked up for a long time.

 _And since the testimony has been reduced from "let's convict Ulbricht of
murder for hire" to "character witness hearsay from disgraced and corrupt
federal agents who themselves provoked the alleged crimes by stealing many
hundreds of thousands of dollars from Ulbricht"; can sentencing be revisited
by the court, or is a new trial required?_

Separate case. Ulbricht was convicted of several counts, each of which by
themselves would justify a 20+ year sentence or life sentence. It wasn't even
necessary to bring up the murder-for-hire allegations. The prosecution only
did that because Ulbricht's lawyer tried to argue that he was really just a
good guy.

The sentencing can be appealed, but there's a 0% chance that he would succeed
at reducing the sentence given that it's well within the established
guidelines for crimes of this nature. It's also possible to appeal the
underlying conviction, but there's almost 0% chance of that as well, since the
murder-for-hire allegations and the acts of the corrupt Maryland federal
agents were not relevant to the New York convictions.

