Ex-U.S. agent gets over six years for Bitcoin theft in Silk Road probe
reuters.com
reuters.com
> 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?
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.
Judge strongly believes he ordered at least 5 murder-for-hire (but no bodies have been found), strongly believes that he was aware about all this despite the claim that this was just an experiment and the consequences were not known in advance, and so on.
A description like "ex US Agent" should be applied only to a person whose crimes were committed after their service as an agent and with no connection. It seems like this agent committed their crimes while working as an agent, and it would be more appropriate to describe them as "US Agent".
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.”
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-...
"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... 2. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/politics/04cunningham.html
Which would be relevant if the headline was about the commission of the crime, and not the conviction. He was not an agent at the time of his conviction, and had not been for some time. Reporting on the conviction, "former agent" or "ex-agent" is accurate, and anything else would be inaccurate.
> You wouldn't say Ex-president Obama was impeached, that's just weird.
Well, yeah, because an ex-President can't be impeached (unless they are now in another impeachable office.)
Impeachment happens while you are in office, and doesn't remove you from office (it is the formal initiation of a process which might, with conviction, result in removal from office.)
So, its not really a comparable thing.
Edit: ninja'd by meric
This, on the other hand, is a joke.
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...
He also kept a diary. From the sentencing proceedings at http://motherboard.vice.com/read/unsealed-transcript-shows-h... :
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."
The court has already heard their complaints on that and ruled against them. His lawyer didn't even mention entrapment as a defense, so it's probably waived, but it wouldn't have bought him much anyhow.
There really are no legal defenses available for spending a day or two thinking about having someone killed for threatening to expose your crimes.
But yes, the scumbag agent who committed crimes of his own will get punished for that.
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.
https://popehat.com/2015/10/08/bad-reporting-on-matthew-keys...
Popehat (a group blog run by geek lawyers) is really fantastic for getting into the nuts and bolts of criminal law, and I cannot recommend it to HN readers enough.
Given his abilities and renown he would find a job both despite and because of his would be conviction.
There are plenty of "security experts" that started as hackers/crackers and with time served on their records that don't have issue finding a job.
If you apply to Walmart with a record well GL, but in Tech hmm you've hacked into the DOD? well how about 6 figures + equity if you come work for us...
The guy was part of the RSS working group at what 14 and part of the RDF group at W3C at 15? If he would not have tragically ended his life he would've ended up working for Google or any other tech company he would choose to work for regardless of his conviction.
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.
And no, Aaron was definitely not "threatened" with 50 years. Where are you getting that from?
Force faced a cumulative maximum sentence of sixty years and $750k in fines. He opted to plead guilty. There's no particular reason to believe the plea bargaining process was friendly. He got six years, and the prosecution argued for more.
While I agree with your sentiment, the problem is that Swartz faced charges up to 50 years, not that this crooked cop got convicted of 6.
Wishing this guy 50 years just because "that's what they threatened Aaron for" is the kind of attitude that is going to keep the US prison system as horrendously inhumane as it is today.
On the contrary, if we apply the law equally we might see some push for reform from current groups that consider themselves basically above the law.
Lying is a very questionable way to push your political agenda.
"he just downloaded medical journals from the campus networking closet" isn't very accurate either, he broke into a server cabinet and actively evaded security measures to download medical journals.
Keep in mind that he wasn't even ever sentenced, which makes him a REALLY shitty poster boy for US legal system abuses.
You'd expect for someone who is as ready to criticize the system as OP is to actually sort of understand what he's talking about.
Honestly, I'm just really pissed because statements like that are actually really harmful as they only work to divert attention from the real issues that need fixing. Some kid killing themselves because they were too scared to face court isn't an issue with the legal system, but with the (mental) healthcare system. (Note that at the time Swartz hadn't even been found guilty, much less sentenced.)
I don't think there were any media reports claiming that Swartz was likely to receive anything like the max sentence, only that it was the maximum allowed in the law.
Unsophisticated readers may have falsely concluded that Swartz was likely to receive that sentence, but that's not what any of the media reports I saw said.
> Remember that the 50 year figure was widely reported at the time, often by sources that seemed reliable.
None of the media reports I saw that presented the figure -- as an "up to" figure, invariably -- did so inaccurately, or claimed it was a likely sentence rather than the most extreme theoretically available for the offenses for which he was charged.