Hacker News Reader

Comment by asdfjhaweklfh | Hacker News Reader

> Is this the guy that Ross wanted to kill?

No. The guy he "wanted to kill" was a moderator who didn't even steal from him. A FBI agent (huray, my taxes) pretended to be a drug lord for over 2yrs convincing Ross he should kill some moderator with lies about he wanting to take over silkroad or something, and then staged a mock assassination. All that for no tangible investigative benefit other then strengthen their 2yr old bro-bond.

That agent didn't even contribute to the actual arrest. Go read wired write up of the whole thing. It's better than most fiction books. Pure comedy.

Also, the current silk road is a honeypot set up by the Feds. That's why 1) they screwed up on validating transactions (it's not their money) and 2) they want after the stolen funds.

View on HN

> No. The guy he "wanted to kill" was a moderator who didn't even steal from him.

Ross Ulbricht commissioned 5 murders fully expecting each of them to be carried out.

> All that for no tangible investigative benefit other then strengthen their 2yr old bro-bond.

The murder-for-hire evidence denied him bail. But the prosecutor already had Ulbricht nailed and decided to avoid complicating the case by formally filing the murder-for-hire charges. Would your tax dollars have been better used if Mr. Ulbricht had additional life sentences and decades of prison? No, he is going to die in a prison cell either way.

Ross Ulbricht built his empire, in large part, by profiting off people's suffering. And he exhibited time and time again that he would murder people to protect it. He is nothing short of evil.

A reminder that the murder-for-hire schemes were a predicate of the conspiracy charge in his indictment; he was in part charged for them.

But conspiracy charge depends on overt act(s), so being convicted of conspiracy doesn't necessarily mean he was convicted on the basis that particular overt act occurred. The prosecution never had to prove all the overt acts, including murder-for-hire, were true to convict for the more generalized non-murder conspiracy. Just that some subset of overt acts were true.

> prove

There are different levels of proof. For example, civil court only requires a preponderance of evidence.

It might have been worth them formally filing the murder-for-hire charges just to save us from having to read his supporters repeatedly say they weren't real.

Don't worry, even though he wasn't convicted of them, his sentencing included the alleged activity and punished him for it anyway!

In my opinion the Sackler family has cause a lot more suffering and they see no day in prison. And they're not the only lords who get away with murder. Yet a guy like Ulbricht gets to spend a lifetime in jail... This is a miscarriage of justice unless all monsters are locked up and all would be fair. It could be argued that Ulbricht caused no suffering but alleviated it by providing a service for people to buy their "drugs" by skipping meeting a shady dealer...

That alleged right of criminals to be persecuted in strictly descending order of severity simply does not exist. Finding some bigger wrong does not make a right.

> That alleged right of criminals to be persecuted in strictly descending order of severity simply does not exist.

Exactly. Justice does not exist at that level of wealth, and this is a core problem in western society.

Well pointed out.

> this is a core problem in western society

Are there any societies, historical or current, where the extremely rich and powerful face justice in the way you would like, other than by pissing off other extremely rich and powerful people?

In China they say you can get away with anything as long as nobody dies.

For example, in the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, two people were sentenced to death and three received life sentences.

I did wonder whether I should include 'western' or not. I probably shouldn't have, since, I agree with your point, it's not a area that distinguishes western from non-western.

The arbitrary nature of what's become of "justice" is only magnified as the wealth gap increases.

> In my opinion the Sackler family has cause a lot more suffering and they see no day in prison.

So what? Which is it, are you in favor of a lighter sentence for Ulbricht, or a heavier sentence for the Sackler family?

To be honest I don't know, I just expect justice to do it's bidding and make the world a better place for all of us. What bothers me is that the rich get away with murder while the rest of us are held at a different standard. It also seems to me that the Sacklers' caused a lot more harm while this guy is not as evil as purported to be and doesn't disserve to be locked up for life. Should the justice be harsh for everyone I'd swallow that pill but it's not. I'm just comparing the amount of suffering caused and the received sentence. And there's no what, it's just an ordinary person's opinion, an opinion that does not change anything.

I respect where you're coming from, but here's an opinion, that if adopted, may influence where you choose to stop or continue your thought process.

I see this "comparison" form of objection quite a bit, where someone points out relative injustice without taking a stand on which way to go. Once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere.

In terms of conversation, it almost always seems to have a muting effect, of freezing the momentum towards figuring out what should be done. Desiring consistency is honorable, but these sorts of scenarios further ask us which way we want to apply that consistency. While each individual case probably wouldn't make a difference, I think when we refuse to answer those questions as a society, it makes it more likely for these imbalances to occur. So I think it's worthwhile to try and think it through, take a stand, and voice a stand.

The Sackler's had their name stripped from museum exhibits, campuses, etc, which I'm sure hurts at the end of the day.

The US government really should have went the extra mile and stripped the Sackler family of every penny they had.. to the point that they were forced to beg for spare change on the side of the road e.g. Mortimer & Randolph Duke style.

> The bankruptcy judge acknowledged that the Sacklers had moved money to offshore accounts to protect it from claims, and he said he wished the settlement had been higher

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/health/purdue-sacklers-op...

> Ross Ulbricht built his empire, in large part, by profiting off people's suffering.

He built Silk Road, which allowed people to sell drugs to one another.

If the 'people's suffering' you are referencing is the use of drugs, I hope you have this same ire for the pharmaceutical companies and physicians prescribing opioids linked to over 500k deaths in the US over the past two decades[1]. I hope you feel the same ire for the CIA who facilitated and supported the Nicaraguan Contra groups' smuggling of crack into the US to finance their coup attempt[2].

I would hope the "nothing short of evil" rhetoric isn't exclusively saved for the kid who built an onion site and then was entrapped by FBI agents into a murder-for-hire scheme of their creation.

[1]https://www.npr.org/2022/11/02/1133523740/cvs-health-agrees-... [2]https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/north06.pdf

>> Ross Ulbricht built his empire, in large part, by profiting off people's suffering.

> He built Silk Road, which allowed people to sell drugs to one another.

Actually, that's the tiniest part. [1]

  The Silk Road was an online black market where buyers and sellers of illegal or
  unethical items could transact anonymously. Utilizing privacy techniques such
  as the Tor network and cryptocurrency transactions, people were able to
  transact in drugs, hacked passwords, illegal data, and other contraband.

Or, you could look at how he used Silk Road, to contract killers. [2]

  MANY OF THE ideological supporters of the Silk Road have described its
  sprawling online black market for drugs as an experiment in victimless crime
  and a nonviolent alternative to the bloody turf wars of the streets. But
  prosecutors in the trial of Ross Ulbricht, the 30-year-old accused of running
  that anonymous bazaar, have pointed to one conversation they say shows the
  contrary: That the Silk Road's boss was willing to resort to the drug trade's
  most violent measures when it suited his needs.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/silk-road.asp

[2] https://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-bos...

Literally fake news. Don't believe everything you read, especially if the source is a prosecutor.

> built his empire, in large part, by profiting off people's suffering.

LOL. Wow. You clearly have no sense for nuance whatsoever.

https://www.wired.com/2014/06/silk-road-study/

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/did-s...

Silk Road reduced deaths in a black market that was always there and would always continue to be there regardless of the presence of Silk Road. Period. Given that black markets are going to continue to exist, since anti-drug laws are dumb (just like Prohibition was; regulation of an irrepressible market is always superior to "illegalization" in a vain attempt to suppress it), it is at least less bad if there are fewer killings.

Entrapment is unethical precisely because you can use it to enforce a law regardless of the ethical justification of the law. If it was a capital offense to have sex before marriage in 2040 in the United Christian Dictatorship of America, and another Ross Ulbricht type came along and made it possible for teens to seek and meet in secret online, and a christo-fascist cop pretended to be a hot girl on said system while pretending to threaten to take the whole thing down unless a ransom was paid, and ANOTHER christo-fascist cop (or the same one pretending to be someone else) offered a "solution" to this by "getting rid of" the "problem"... Do you see where I'm going with this? Future Ross Ulbricht just wanted people to be able to find physical love before committing to wed!! Certainly not guilty enough to do life in prison, because no actual murders ever actually occurred.

> Also, the current silk road is a honeypot set up by the Feds. That's why 1) they screwed up on validating transactions (it's not their money) and 2) they want after the stolen funds.

The DOJ release says these transactions were from 2012

this bitcoin theft happened in September 2012, before Ross Ulbricht got arrested (in 2013) so when Silk Road was active and not a Feds' honeypot like you describe.

Part I of an account of the wild story can be found here; it’s really quite interesting, at the least!

https://web.archive.org/web/20220112152207/https://www.wired...

Has the concept of "Entrapment" not made its way across the pond yet? This seem highly unethical on the part of the FBI.

FBI gets a wide berth from the courts. A couple of years ago, they seized some TOR child porn website, and then started making upgrades to it causing the userbase to increase by 30%. Then they tried to pin that user count on the person they arrested.

FBI is federal, unlike the police, so they can do whatever, at least that’s how it’s playing out. The FBI is supposed to be effective, not ethical. It’s what’s “on the tin” and has always been. A good example is their treatment of MLK.

The FBI is supposed to be ethical, that's what's on the USA tin containing the FBI tin.

You can provide a billion examples of how the US hasn't lived up to that notion, but 'liberty and justice for all' is, "what's on the tin."

I think we agree, probably that what is and what should be are not the same. The tension is that voters will often reward politicians that are effective, rather than those whom are ethical. When it comes to the safety of your child, most humans go for effective over ethical.

We disagree insofar as your statement, "The FBI is supposed to be effective, not ethical." They are supposed to be ethical, and then effective.

> When it comes to the safety of your child, most humans go for effective over ethical.

Wouldn't the balance of the child's needs change the ethical judgement (now considered ethical as well as effective)? I don't see how they would be mutually exclusive.

Entrapment is an invention of 20th century American courts. See William E. Mikell, "The Doctrine of Entrapment in the Federal Courts," U. Pa. L. Rev. 90 (1942), calling entrapment as a defense a "purely American doctrine" not considered by earlier English writers on criminal law.

Trivia aside, no. Entrapment is a specific concept narrower than "a fed lied to me."

Given the mention of "across the pond", it seems the parent commenter was talking about the English law meaning of entrapment. That is where you are enticed to commit a crime by a law agency. Technically it's still a crime and there's no legal defence based on entrapment, but courts will tend not to prosecute if "the police did more than present the defendant with an unexceptional opportunity to commit a crime".

I'm assuming you pulled that from Wikipedia, which is what Google points to for that phrase. You've radically oversimplified Wikipedia's coverage of UK entrapment, and Wikipedia oversimplifies UK law. "More than an unexceptional opportunity to commit a crime" is just one factor in a complex analysis. The "exceptional" opportunity starts the consideration of entrapment; it doesn't end it.

Yes I got that quote via Wikipedia. It, in turn, is a direct quote from a judgement from the Law Lords, which set a precedent – the main precedent on the subject if that Wikipedia article is to be believed. So it's not just a random Wikipedia editor's view on the subject.

Yes, no kidding it's a more complicated subject than that one short sentence. But my point was just that it's different from any notion of entrapment, or lack of, in the US.

The point is that it's simply not the case that the state tends not to prosecute in cases where "the police did more than present the defendant with an unexceptional opportunity to commit a crime".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com