The Tax Sleuth Who Took Down a Drug Lord | Hacker News Reader

The Tax Sleuth Who Took Down a Drug Lord

nytimes.com

92 pointse15ctr0n28 comments

It's worth comparing this account with Joshuah Bearman's reporting in Wired in May: 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.

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

> "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.

> 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.

- Altoid mentions Silk Road: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175.msg42670#msg4267...

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

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

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.

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.

I wrote about it here:

https://www.nikcub.com/posts/analyzing-fbi-explanation-silk-...

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/

buttcoin.com reported on the leaked ip when it happened, long before it was brought up in court. buttcoin.com was bought by butterfly labs and shut down when they had their assets frozen but dailydot reported on it here: http://www.dailydot.com/news/silk-road-ip-address-leak-drug-...

I notice Ulbricht uses two spaces to separate sentences there. Was this pattern also observed in DPR's posts?

citizen sleuths could figure out. But there is little motivation for ordinary folk to. Unlike the government which has a money interest.

http://www.bitcoinwednesday.com/the-legacy-of-silk-road-part...

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

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

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

He's an enthusiastic, misguided, bureacratic cog.

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

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/

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.

> 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...

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

> 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

> For all we know based on the article, the people who wouldn't take him seriously were also black.

Five to one says Serrin Turner is white.

So the proper way to address racist workplace discrimination is to not say anything?

I'm not saying there was discrimination, I'm just pointing out that in the world according to your comment, someone confronted with discrimination has two options:

1. Silently endure it, and hope the world becomes a better place(it wont) 2. Point it out and then endure criticism that you are being classless or not respectable

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