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Comment by jcampbell1 | Hacker News Reader

The indictment is much better than the article.

An undercover agent posing as a smuggler, wants to unload 10 kilos. DPR sets him up with a major silkroad vendor who is also an employee. The undercover agent sends the drugs, and arrests DPR's employee. DPR doesn't realize that he was responsible for getting the employee arrested, and then hires the undercover agent to kill his ex-employee.

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Reading the alleged DPR dialog I can't help thinking this guy thought he was some Walter White character. Or maybe I just have Breaking Bad on the brain...

It is more like the making of Breaking Bad. The FBI staged torture photos of DPR's ex-employee. I imagine Jesse's makeup artist went from his day job to the FBI.

What is funny, is DPR got away with the murder for hire plot. They tried to set him up by making him do a bank transfer. After having seen the photo's, the undercover agent thought he would send the money non-anonymously, but DPR used some now defunct Australian anonymous wire service. It took the FBI several months to locate him.

> After having seen the photo's, the undercover agent thought he would send the money non-anonymously

"Oh hey, you're a violent thug who murders people for money? I'm a random guy running a billion dollar underground drug marketplace. Here's my contact info..."

After seeing the photos, I'd be absolutely sure to send the money anonymously.

You are right. I was thinking of a payment that would be untraceable by a hitman, but traceable by the FBI. The payment method he used was not traceable by either.

The Feds were waiting to find out what happened to Walter White before they decided what to do with DPR.. timing is impeccable.

It makes one wonder how the conversation went about scheduling this.

Are pop culture events a consideration to get favorable results from judges and grand juries?

As someone that served on a federal grand jury, no. Well, at least not vocally, I presume people internally weren't basing their votes on pop culture but saying something else out loud. Then again the strength of most cases that make it to the grand jury, from what I saw, are fairly strong, and the burden of proof is lower (since indictment != conviction). If the case is weak the ADA's wouldn't even bring it to us.

Perhaps I wasn't clear: gambits by the DA or defense based on timing of world / cultural events (beyond holidays, weekends and lunch) to garner a favorable state-of-mind of adjudicators.

Grand juries sit for 18 months, so that would be one hell of a long game.

If the stakes are high enough, ...

There is, iirc, also a time limit between when an investigation begins and one an indictment is filed. The idea being to prevent the government from simply having someone under investigation in perpetuity. I suppose the ADAs COULD try and time the indictment against unrelated pop-culture events, but in my experience it seems so unlikely as to be mostly the stuff of movies. Delays more frequently where due to problems getting financial records or untangling complex webs of them, problems locating willing witnesses, problems with witness intimidation, etc..

Combining this with the other alleged hit dialog, it paints a picture of a rising criminal's initially uneasy embrace of killing, followed later by a scene where he's literally haggling with a hit man over the market rate for murder. It definitely shares the show's theme of gradual moral acclimation.

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