Notorious dark web administrator ordered to hand over more than £490k
nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk
nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk
> unemployed
> university drop-out
> White paid £10,700 up front to rent his plush apartment on Liverpool’s city water front.
..that's cheap. And he was employed - albeit running an 'illegal' website - and no-one refers to Zuckerberg et al as a university drop-out.
How on earth does someone take a look at what happened to Ulbricht and think "I fancy doing that". Honestly, the lengths that they went to find Ulbricht were ridiculous and the consequences for him were essentially life-ending.
I'm actually astonished hearing about this now how short a sentence White got. Ulbricht is serving 2 life sentences without parole. White is serving 5 years - despite some extremely bad charges (child porn, drug trafficking etc)
This sounds so deeply out of touch. Has the writer never visited London? There are thousands of students fitting this description, often paying much more.
Ouch, but yes, I agree. He wasn't a kingpin, he was a idealistic youngman trying to leave his mark on the World with a Market place.
But his horrible OPSEC coupled with his openess with Media (which should have been a 0 tolerance policy) was his downfall; they even made a Nerdcore song about DPR [0]. The Kangaroo court was just a predictable outcome, like most freedom fighting it will never be a fair trail, and it was used to serve as a deterrent: but the Internet works on the hydra model so clearly a guy like White would take the mantle.
Then again they took down Variety Jones in Thailand, which is where Ross was for a while, too.
In the end DNMs are still alive and well in 2021, too. So ultimately their are more people wanting to run them.
"White took a hefty commission on purchases, ranging between 1% and 5% on each sale. According to investigators, approximately $96 million (£73 million) was spent on the site."
So, his total commission was somewhere between £730k and £3.65M, and they noted "lavish spending" in many articles.
Edit: Kind of funny that 1-5% is characterized as "hefty", compared to what legitimate marketplaces charge.
... but legitimate marketplaces pay taxes ... hem, no, wait, bad argument ...