Silk Road Process

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Passport photo of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht (2013)

The Silk Road Trial (officially: United States v. Ulbricht ) was a trial held in the United States in 2015 against Ross Ulbricht , the then 31-year-old founder of the black market platform Silk Road . In May 2015 Ulbricht was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of early release for money laundering , computer hacking , conspiracy to forge passports and conspiracy to trade drugs . Ulbricht's appeal against the judgment was rejected in May 2017. A final appeal to the United States Supreme Court was not accepted for decision in June 2018. The judgment is then final.

background

Silk Road was a virtual black market founded in February 2011, only accessible via the Darknet , on which illegal goods and services were traded. Drugs, pirated copies, forged identity documents and the services of hackers were offered. On the other hand, child pornography , stolen goods , falsified certificates and (temporarily) weapons were not allowed to be traded . The digital currency Bitcoin was used as the only means of payment, which made it extremely difficult for the law enforcement authorities to trace the payment flows. Silk Road charged 10% of the sales value of each transaction as commission, with volume discounts being granted for larger sales.

For drug traffickers in particular, Silk Road's anonymity was a huge advantage. The drugs ordered were usually sent to the customer's postal address or a hacked PO box using standard parcel services . In view of the strict rules governing the secrecy of correspondence in most Western countries and the fact that millions are sent packages a day alone in the United States, of which only a small fraction is analyzed for example by drug sniffing dogs, a detection of illegal shipments was very unlikely . In the rare event that a shipment could actually be intercepted, usually only the address of the recipient and not the dealer could be found. Silk Road opened up access to a large, international customer network for providers of illegal goods and services, while significantly reducing their own risk.

In October 2013, US law enforcement officials closed Silk Road and seized the website's servers located in Iceland . At the same time, Ross Ulbricht, the alleged founder and operator of the website, was arrested in San Francisco . Shortly before the closure, over 10,000 goods and services were offered on Silk Road, 7,000 of which were illegal drugs. Investigators estimate that Silk Road's total sales on Silk Road totaled $ 213 million over the course of its existence.

Dread Pirate Roberts

Until February 2012, the administrator of Silk Road remained anonymous. He then communicated with the users of his site under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts , a character from the fantasy film The Prince's Bride , who is feared in the story for her ruthlessness and never takes prisoners. In the film, however, Dread Pirate Roberts is not a single person, but his ship and title are passed on to a worthy successor when the governor has amassed enough fortune to retire.

Dread Pirate Roberts was extremely careful not to reveal his true identity. For authentication, Dread Pirate Roberts used an encryption system that enabled users to recognize whether messages were authentic. Nonetheless, during his time as Silk Road Administrator, he communicated with journalists in order to increase the profile of his site. In August 2013, a few months before Silk Road was closed, he gave Forbes magazine a five-hour interview conducted through Silk Road's own intelligence service. In it, he stated that he was neither the founder of Silk Road nor the original Dread Pirate Roberts, but - just like the film character - had taken over the title and the platform from his predecessor. He also said he was proud of the drug trafficking made possible through Silk Road, as it should be left to the individual to use drugs or medication. The prosecution of drug trafficking is an illegitimate interference by the state in the individual freedom of action. Silk Road offers an opportunity to oppose what he believes to be unjustified interventions.

In the hacker and darknet scene, Dread Pirate Roberts advanced to a cult figure because of his public fame, the eloquence of his contributions in the Silk Road forums and his partly idealistic viewpoints .

Dread Pirate Roberts' identity investigation

Silk Road became the target of various law enforcement agencies shortly after its establishment, in particular by the FBI , the Department of Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration , but also officials of the IRS tax authority . The determination of the backers and the localization of the Silk Road servers became all the more urgent as the amount of drugs and other illegal goods traded via the platform skyrocketed in a very short time. Due to his public appearance and his central importance for the administration and IT infrastructure of Silk Road, the search for Dread Pirate Roberts was the top priority for the investigators. For a long time, however, the responsible authorities groped in the dark or even followed false leads. For example, the Indian blogger Anand Athavale was investigated for several months because the choice of words and spelling details on his blog were similar to the posts by Dread Pirate Roberts on Silk Road. In addition, Mark Karpelès , CEO of the Bitcoin trading platform Mt.Gox , was suspected by investigators of being Dread Pirate Roberts.

The investigators finally got on Ulbricht's trail through an analysis by tax officer Gary L. Alford. Alford pursued the goal of getting clues about the founder of the platform through analyzes of popular internet forums from the early days of Silk Road. According to his theory, the founder of Silk Road must have advertised his site on the Internet during the time it was founded and - at this point possibly still through carelessness - left traces on the Internet. As a result, Alford used the search engine Google to search for the term “Silk Road” when the site was founded in spring 2011. In a scene-related chat room on the Shroomery.org platform, Alford came across a user named altoid , who met the others on January 27, 2011 Chat room users then asked if they had heard of a site called "Silk Road" a few days after Silk Road went online. Alford concluded from this that altoid must have inside knowledge of Silk Road and viewed all other posts by this user. In doing so, he came across a post that altoid had deleted, but which could still be traced via a chain of replies from another user. In this post, altoid asked for programming tips and gave an email address as contact, from which Ulbricht's real name emerged. Further research revealed that a young Texan named Ross Ulbricht held libertarian positions on the Internet , which also appeared in the posts by Dread Pirate Roberts on Silk Road.

When Alford informed his superiors of what he believed to be an initial suspicion, however, little attention was paid to him, as the evidence was still very weak and Alford's team had previously provided little useful information. However, this changed suddenly when investigators learned that the Department of Homeland Security had intercepted a mail piece addressed to Ulbricht's address containing forged passports during a routine inspection of mail at the Canadian border. The passports bore Ulbricht's passport photo . During a house visit, Ulbricht explained to the officials that anyone could "hypothetically" have such passports delivered to their address via a site called Silk Road. Dread Pirate Roberts had previously written in a post in the Silk Road forum that he needed false passports in order to rent additional servers abroad due to the increasing transaction volume. By analyzing the data traffic over Silk Road, it was also possible to determine that Dread Pirate Roberts had logged into Café Luna on the Silk Road side, only a few hundred meters from Ulbricht's apartment .

This established a reliable chain of evidence between Ulbricht and Dread Pirate Roberts. Ulbricht was henceforth followed as a suspect and his internet usage behavior was monitored. The investigators then found striking similarities between the times when Ulbricht used his Internet connection and when Dread Pirate Roberts wrote articles on the Silk Road platform. According to further research, Ulbricht also asked for programming tips for Darknet websites in the coding forum Stack Overflow , initially giving his real name . He later changed his username to Stack Overflow to Frosty , but the real name could still be determined by the authorities. A few weeks earlier, the investigators had located the Silk Road server in Iceland through a data leak on the platform and received a complete data copy of the code and the databases of the trading platform from the Icelandic authorities. The code posted on Stack Overflow was found in almost identical form on the Silk Road server. With this additional evidence, an arrest warrant could be obtained.

The legality of access to the Silk Road server is controversial, but this was irrelevant for the criminal proceedings, since Ulbricht did not register a data protection interest ( privacy interest ) in relation to the server with the court . This would have been understood as an admission that Ulbricht was the operator of the server. The evidence obtained through server access was therefore usable in court. The appeals court also shared this assessment in the later appeal process

Arrest of Ross Ulbricht

On October 2, 2013, Ross Ulbricht was arrested while using his laptop in a public library in San Francisco , with the use of numerous undercover agents to ensure that Ulbricht was not given the opportunity to lock or turn off the computer during the arrest so that access to encrypted or password-protected data on his computer was possible. Two plainclothes police officers disguised as library visitors played standing next to Ulbricht that they had got into a loud argument, which meant that Ulbricht was briefly distracted, which gave another plainclothes officer the opportunity to take Ulbricht's opened and unlocked laptop.

At the time of his arrest, Ulbricht was logged into Dread Pirate Roberts' account at Silk Road on his notebook . The name of the notebook confiscated during the arrest was Frosty , which is identical to the username of the suspicious post on the Stack Overflow website, which had contributed to the connection between Ulbricht and Dread Pirate Roberts. On the day of the arrest, Ulbricht's apartment was also searched, and various other indications were found that Ulbricht was indeed Dread Pirate Roberts. During the search, the officers found backups of Ulbricht's computer on two USB storage media , as well as written documents with a clear connection to Silk Road.

process

The trial of Ulbricht began on January 13, 2015 in a district court in New York state and spanned a period of 3 weeks until the verdict was pronounced on February 5, 2015. Ulbricht were charged on seven counts, including conspiracy to drug trafficking and drug trafficking Money laundering . He was also charged with forming a criminal organization under a federal law enforcing the leaders of large drug cartels and mafia organizations. The contract killings, which Ulbricht was also charged with, were not the subject of the indictment, but were taken into account in the later sentencing. If convicted, he could face life imprisonment . He pleaded not guilty on all counts and was represented by experienced criminal defense attorney Joshua Dratel , whose remuneration was largely funded by donations. The prosecution team was headed by Preet Bharara .

Strategy of prosecution

Most of the prosecution relied on evidence found on the Silk Road server, during a search of Ulbricht's home and on his confiscated computer to prove Ulbricht's guilt. From the enormous amount of data directly related to Silk Road that was found on Ulbricht's laptop and on storage media in his apartment, it is clear that Ulbricht founded Silk Road and operated under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts until recently. The data on the basis of which the public prosecutor found Ulbricht convicted included extensive database extracts from the Silk Road database, chat logs from the Silk Road Forum, detailed cost accounting and a diary in which Ulbricht recorded his experiences with Silk Road. In addition, the huge Bitcoin fortune amounting to many millions of US dollars, which was found on Ulbricht's laptop and, according to a computer expert, 89% came from the Silk Road server, is also stressful. The defense could not plausibly explain the origin of this property. The defense did not provide any evidence for the explanation given by Ulbricht's attorney that his client had obtained these assets through legal Bitcoin trading. In addition, this explanation is completely unrealistic.

The prosecution saw the final, irrefutable proof of Ulbricht's guilt in the fact that Ulbricht was registered with Silk Road as Dread Pirate Roberts when he was arrested. This fact, which was not denied by the defense, left no doubt as to Ulbricht's guilt.

Defense strategy

In light of the evidence, Ulbricht's defense attorney admitted in his opening speech that Ulbricht founded Silk Road in 2011 and, when he was arrested, was in possession of Dread Pirate Roberts' credentials and, for a short time, had played his role. Ulbricht founded Silk Road out of idealistic motives in order to give users the greatest possible freedom in shaping their lives. According to his naive ideas, this also included taking drugs. However, he gave up control of Silk Road after a few months in 2011 and resold the platform to the real Dread Pirate Roberts. This has led Silk Road for most of the platform's existence. When the real Dread Pirate Roberts realized that the investigation by the law enforcement authorities was well advanced, he lured Ulbricht back to Silk Road to blame Ulbricht for operating the platform. Ulbricht agreed in his good faith and naivety to take over the role of Dread Pirate Roberts again. Shortly afterwards, his client was arrested. During Ulbricht's time as Dread Pirate Roberts, only a small fraction of the crimes on Silk Road were committed. In addition, Ulbricht, as the mere operator of the website, was not involved in the drug trade itself. Most of his Bitcoin fortune did not come from Silk Road, but from legal Bitcoin trading.

According to the defense, it has by no means been proven that there was only one Dread Pirate Roberts on Silk Road. After all, the investigators not only investigated Ulbricht, but first followed up on the suspicion for many months that Dread Pirate Roberts was the Indian blogger Anand Athavale or the Mt.Gox CEO Mark Karpelès . So there are also suspicions against other people.

Circumstances and evidence of Ulbricht's guilt

The public prosecutor's office did not use Ulbricht's confiscated computer as evidence, but instead used a two-week-old backup of the computer's data on a USB stick that was found during the search of Ulbricht's apartment. This made it difficult for the defense to argue that evidence was placed on Ulbricht's computer in order to attach the identity of Dread Pirate Roberts to it, as this should have happened two weeks before the access. The USB stick also damaged the credibility of the defense's argument that Ulbricht was lured back to Silk Road by the actual Dread Pirate Roberts and reassumed his identity shortly before his arrest. Since a two-week-old backup of his computer's data was found in his apartment with numerous evidence of his activity as Dread Pirate Roberts on Silk Road, he should have assumed this identity not immediately before his arrest, but at least two weeks beforehand. During this time, Ulbricht would have received the usual commission for every sale of illegal goods and services at Silk Road and thus made himself liable to prosecution for a large number of drug offenses.

In Ulbricht's data, a detailed cost and performance calculation for Silk Road as well as chat logs of the Silk Road forums were found, which extended over the entire service life of the platform. The cost calculation even contained an entry for the purchase of the notebook that was confiscated when Ulbricht was arrested. In addition, there was a virtual diary on the backup of Ulbricht's computer , in which Ulbricht had obviously recorded his experiences and impressions during the programming and administration of Silk Road, according to an entry for the event that a biography is ever written about his life. In his diary, in particular, the considerations and arrangements relating to the contract killings were recorded in detail. According to the investigators, details of the diary and chat logs such as information on vacation trips coincided with Ulbricht's actual behavior at the time in question. When searching Ulbricht's apartment, investigators found handwritten notes and sketches in a trash can about how certain aspects of the trading platform on the Silk Road website could be improved. These were improvement initiatives, the content of which was very similar to the changes announced by Dread Pirate Roberts shortly before on Silk Road. The investigators also found a Bitcoin wallet with a value at the time of 18 million US dollars. A blockchain analysis showed that 89% of these bitcoins had reached Ulbricht's computer via the Silk Road server in Iceland.

To authenticate his own contributions, Dread Pirate Roberts used an encryption technique with a private PGP key . The Silk Road users were able to check the authenticity of Dread Pirate Roberts' signature, encrypted with the private PGP key, with the help of a public PGP key. However, only Dread Pirate Roberts knew and used the private PGP key. The private key used by Dread Pirate Roberts was found on Ulbricht's computer during his arrest. In addition, Dread Pirate Roberts used the same public and private PGP keys to authenticate his signature throughout the life of Silk Road. If Ulbricht had passed the identity of Dread Pirate Roberts to someone else shortly after the establishment, as indicated by the defense, that person would obviously have given up using new PGP keys, which would have been associated with little effort. The new Dread Pirate Roberts would have accepted that not only he, but also Ulbricht would still have the possibility to authenticate the contributions of Dread Pirate Roberts. Ulbricht would also have refrained from using new PGP keys after - according to the representation of the defense - he had been lured back to Silk Road shortly before his arrest and had re-assumed the identity of Dread Pirate Roberts.

Corruption allegations against FBI agents

Shortly before the start of the trial, it became known that federal agents involved in the investigation against Ulbricht had been accused of corruption and self-enrichment. Special Agent Carl Force from the US Homeland Security Service was part of the Silk Road investigation team and was tasked with gaining the trust of Dread Pirate Roberts as a camouflaged user in order to gain information about his identity. For this purpose, Force opened a user account on Silk Road, made contact with Ulbricht under the user name Nob and posed as a leading member of a drug cartel from Puerto Rico under the name Eladio Guzmán Fuentes. Force pretended to provide advice to Dread Pirate Roberts from his drug trafficking experience and developed a friendly relationship with the Silk Road administrator over many months.

Through his undercover investigation, Force was able to determine the identity of Curtis Green, an employee of Silk Road in the service of Dread Pirate Roberts, and to have him reveal the password of his employee account. With the help of this account, federal agent Shaun Bridges - a colleague of Force - stole $ 350,000 in bitcoins from Silk Road and diverted the money to his private bitcoin account. Dread Pirate Roberts suspected Curtis Green - whose real name and address were known to him - behind the theft and instructed his confidante Nob, whom he believed to be a member of a drug cartel, to torture and kill Curtis Green, unaware that Nob was also the officer Carl Force stood. Force pretended to accept the offer, produced a posed photo of the allegedly dead victim together with Green and had Dread Pirate Roberts pay him $ 80,000 into his private Bitcoin account for the contract murder. The machinations of Force were exposed when he tried to exchange the bitcoins received for US dollars via the Slovenian bitcoin exchange Bitstamp. In addition, Force had tried to blackmail Dread Pirate Roberts using another account called DeathFromAbove . He contacted Dread Pirate Roberts, explaining that he knew that Dread Pirate Roberts was in fact Anand Athavale - the prime suspect at the time in the investigation and threatened to tell the FBI if it did not transfer a hush money of $ 250,000 in Bitcoin to his private Bitcoin- Account would be paid. However, Dread Pirate Roberts did not respond to the request. In the diary found on Ulbricht's laptop at around the same time there is an entry about an attempt at extortion, which, however, was "nonsense". With another account called FrenchMaid , Force Dread Pirate Roberts provided information about alleged results of the Silk Road investigation and received 100,000 US dollars in Bitcoin. Force was sentenced to six years and six months in prison.

Bridges, the second corrupt federal agent involved in the investigation against Curtis Green, also used the information Green received about the administrative functions of Green's employee account to steal bitcoin balances from drug dealers and divert them to his own private accounts. Bridges is said to have looted over $ 800,000 in this way. Bridges pleaded guilty and was sentenced to several years in prison for his misconduct and other misdemeanors.

The prosecution did not cite Force and Bridges as witnesses in the criminal case and did not bring any evidence related to the two officers. In the court proceedings against Ulbricht, the judge forbade the defense to present findings about Force's corruption to the jury, as a grand jury , which was still secret from the public, was dealing with an indictment against Carl Force. The court also refused to adjourn Ulbricht's trial pending a possible indictment against Force, which might have enabled the said evidence to be brought in. The introduction of chat logs that indicate the criminal acts of force, were not approved by the court, because it is hearsay ( hearsay IN QUESTION), which makes the logs as evidence unsuitable. During the appeal process, Ulbricht argued that this prevented him from getting a fair trial. In addition, the defense learned of the criminal acts of the officer Shaun Bridges only after the trial. The judge's decisions violate the Brady v. Maryland Supreme Court Guaranteed Rights. However, the appeals court upheld the legality of all of the judge's decisions.

Verdict and sentence

On February 5, 2015, after a three-week trial, the jury found Ulbricht unanimously guilty of all charges, including drug trafficking , running a criminal organization , computer hacking , conspiracy to forge passports and conspiracy to launder money. Ulbricht was also fined $ 183,961,921. The jury reached a verdict in just four hours, which is considered a very short deliberation time in criminal trials in the United States.

In the hearing on sentencing, the public prosecutor's office pleaded for a sentence “well above the prescribed minimum imprisonment” of 20 years in view of the gravity and scope of the crimes committed. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines in Ulbricht's case resulted in the highest possible offense level of 43, which results in the recommendation of life imprisonment without the possibility of early release even for convicts with no previous convictions. The United States Probation Office also recommended the maximum sentence of life imprisonment with no possibility of early release.

The defense asked for a mild verdict. Silk Road contributed to reducing the risk of drug trafficking through the anonymity of buyers and sellers and the fact that the banned substances were delivered by post, as the drugs were not traded on dark street corners. The Silk Road rating system helps to ensure the quality of the substances sold and warns users of the site against dubious dealers. To increase the safety of its users, Ulbricht even hired the Spanish doctor Fernando Caudevilla - referred to as "Doctor X" on Silk Road - to offer users of the site free medical advice on the substances they ordered. To mitigate the sentence, it should be taken into account that Ulbricht has no criminal record . In addition, the defense submitted 98 letters to the court from relatives at all stages of Ulbricht's life (from family members, former teachers, friends, relatives, etc.), in which the defendant was described without exception as friendly, courteous, helpful and law-abiding.

Ulbricht himself wrote a personal letter to the judge, asking that the sentence not be too severe. He said he regretted starting Silk Road and understands that the judge must impose a long prison sentence. The sentence should, however, make "light at the end of the tunnel" recognizable. For him, a life sentence is synonymous with the death penalty . Although he understands that the middle section of his life has to be taken from him, he asks that the judge at least give him the opportunity to regain his freedom in old age.

" As I see it, a life sentence is more similar in nature to a death sentence than it is to a sentence with a finite number of years. Both condemn you to die in prison, a life sentence just takes longer. If I do make it out of prison, decades from now, I won't be the same man, and the world won't be the same place. [...] Even now I understand what a terrible mistake I made. I've had my youth, and I know you must take away my middle years, but please leave me my old age. Please leave a small light at the end of the tunnel, an excuse to stay healthy, an excuse to dream of better days ahead, and a chance to redeem myself in the free world before I meet my maker. "

- Ross Ulbricht : Letter to Judge Katherine B. Forrest.

On May 29, 2015, District Judge Katherine B. Forrest announced that Ulbricht was sentenced to life imprisonment with no early release - the maximum sentence for the charges charged. Forrest attributed the high sentence to the large number of drugs traded on Ulbricht's website. There is ample evidence that drugs ordered through Silk Road directly lead to fatal overdoses . When he was found, a deceased drug addict was registered with a Silk Road account from which he had ordered heroin a few days earlier . A packet of heroin was found next to him. The appearance and packaging of the package corresponded to the information provided by the seller via the Silk Road intelligence service. The tracking number on the package corresponded to the tracking number on a page of the US Postal Service that was opened at the same time and with which the package was sent.

The judge vigorously denied the defense's presentation that Silk Road had reduced the risk of drug trafficking. Not only were drugs for personal use traded on Silk Road, but also large quantities of drugs that were clearly intended for resale by street dealers. In addition, Silk Road would not have replaced street trade, but rather expanded it. Many users would have experimented with drugs through Silk Road, because ordering was so easy and anonymous. Doctor X's medical advice was in many cases irresponsible. Among other things, Doctor X downplayed drug use and even participated in the illegal drug trade by selling expired fentanyl patches to people seeking advice on Silk Road.

The accusation of hiring contract killers, which, according to the judge, was sufficiently proven, was also aggravating the sentence, irrespective of the fact that these were not the subject of the trial and were very likely not to have been carried out.

An application by Ulbricht to be sent to a prison with a lower level of security, which gives prisoners more freedom during their term of detention, was rejected by the judge. Ulbricht has been serving his sentence in maximum security prisons ever since. He is currently detained in the maximum security area of USP Tucson Prison (inmate number 18870-111).

vocation

Ulbricht appealed against his conviction. The convicted person complained about the judge's failure to admit evidence in his criminal proceedings, potential procedural errors in the investigations relating to the monitoring of his use of the Internet, and the failure to pay attention to the possibility that the investigators convicted of corruption could place evidence on Ulbricht's notebook and could have been accused of possible crimes that the corrupt investigators themselves had committed. Moreover rebuked Ulbricht's lawyer, the fine imposed by the Judge Katherine Forrest sentence his client in light of the debt "cruel and unusual punishment" of the convicted as ( cruel and unusual punishment ) that the according to the 8th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was to be regarded as unconstitutional.

On May 31, 2017, the appellate court upheld the verdict and sentence in its entirety. All complaints regarding possible procedural errors were rejected as unfounded. The allegations of corruption against individual investigating officers are also irrelevant for the judgment, as Ulbricht was unable to show that exonerating evidence or clues emerged from the actions of the officers. He also did not show which of the evidence used by the public prosecutor against him, in his opinion, had been placed or manipulated by corrupt investigators. His objection was merely general and abstract and did not invalidate any relevant evidence or circumstantial evidence.

Regarding the sentence, the judges pointed out that a lower sentence would have been possible and might also be considered appropriate by other observers. At the same time, judges in criminal proceedings have a large amount of leeway in determining the sentence and the possible range of sentences allows for a life sentence in the present case. The appellate judges also expressly praised Judge Forrest's conduct of proceedings and the reasons for the judgment. The latter led the complicated criminal proceedings with praiseworthy skill and had met their great responsibility with care and prudence by providing the reasons for the judgment, which were written with extraordinary detail. Overall, no legal or procedural errors can be identified that could justify the reversal of the judgment.

" Although we might not have imposed the same sentence ourselves in the first instance, on the facts of this case a life sentence was within the range of permissible decisions that the district court could have reached. [...] The district court gave Ulbricht's sentence the thorough consideration that it required, reviewing the voluminous sentencing submissions, analyzing the factors required by law, and carefully weighing Ulbricht's mitigating arguments. The extraordinarily detailed sentencing transcript shows that the district court appreciated its important responsibility in considering a sentence of such magnitude and carried out that responsibility with care and prudence. Under the law, we cannot say that its decision was substantively unreasonable. "

- Judge of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals : grounds for judgment in the case United States v. Ulbricht, pp. 138/139.

Ulbricht appealed this decision to the United States Supreme Court on December 22, 2017 . His final appeal focused on the constitutionality of the surveillance of his internet traffic and the level of the sentence. The latter was unlawfully increased by the judge by including suspected crimes that were not the subject of the criminal proceedings. The allegation that drug trafficking on Silk Road resulted in deaths from overdoses, and that Ulbricht hired contract killers, increased the possible sentence from no more than 30 years to life imprisonment in accordance with the guideline for determining sentences has been. The aggravating facts were, however, determined by the judge alone and never submitted to a jury for a decision, which made it possible to sentence the sentence several decades higher. Such a momentous finding by a judge without the participation of the jury violates the 6th Amendment to the United States Constitution and is not consistent with recent supreme court rulings in the Hurst v. Florida. However, the Supreme Court did not accept the case for decision. All of Ulbricht's possibilities of appeal are exhausted and his conviction is final.

At the same time, his newly appointed attorney Paul Grant filed a retrial before the New York District Court to obtain a renegotiation of the case ( Rule 33 Motion ). To this end, Grant requested an extension of the normally valid 3-year exclusion period for introducing new evidence, which had expired on February 4, 2018. However, Judge Katherine Forrest denied the request with a short handwritten note. An appeal can be lodged against the rejection, which Ulbricht's lawyer immediately announced. His appeal was dismissed by an appeals court in January 2019. Another request for a new hearing before an enlarged chamber of the appeals court ( en banc hearing ) was also denied a month later.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Supreme Court of the United States, June 28, 2018: Court order list 585 US , accessed July 19, 2018.
  2. ^ The Guardian , March 22, 2013: Silk Road: the online drug marketplace that officials seem powerless to stop , accessed January 18, 2018.
  3. ↑ Reuters , December 5, 2015: Suspected adviser to Silk Road creator arrested - US prosecutors , accessed January 18, 2018.
  4. ↑ In his later interview with Forbes magazine , Dread Pirate Roberts stated that he liked to be addressed with the male personal pronoun .
  5. ↑ Forbes , September 2, 2013: Meet The Dread Pirate Roberts, The Man Behind Booming Black Market Drug Website Silk Road , accessed January 18, 2018.
  6. ↑ Forbes , August 14, 2013: An Interview With A Digital Drug Lord: The Silk Road's Dread Pirate Roberts , accessed January 18, 2018.
  7. ↑ Wired : The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1 , accessed January 19, 2018.
  8. ^ Forbes , April 1, 2015: What You Need to Know About the Unsealed Silk Road Docket , accessed January 18, 2018.
  9. ↑ Wired , January 15, 2015: DHS believed Mt.Gox CEO might have been Silk Road's secret mastermind , accessed January 18, 2018.
  10. ^ New York Times , December 25, 2015: The Tax Sleuth Who Took Down a Drug Lord , accessed January 18, 2018.
  11. ^ New York Times , October 2, 2013: Arrest in US Shuts Down a Black Market for Narcotics , accessed January 18, 2018.
  12. ↑ The Guardian , October 3, 2013: Five stupid things Dread Pirate Roberts did to get arrested , accessed January 19, 2018.
  13. ^ Stack Overflow , March 16, 2013: Request attributed to Ross Ulbricht , accessed January 19, 2018.
  14. ↑ Wired : The Rise and Fall of Silk Road , accessed January 18, 2018.
  15. ^ Ars Technica , February 4, 2015: Op-Ed: Ross Ulbricht got a fair trial (but not a fair investigation) , accessed on January 19, 2018.
  16. ↑ Wired , January 13, 2015: Silk Road Defense Says Ulbricht Was Framed by the Real Dread Pirate Roberts , accessed January 18, 2018.
  17. ↑ a b Vice News , January 14, 2015: What Happened on the First Day of the Silk Road Trial , accessed January 20, 2018.
  18. ↑ Wired , January 23, 2015: Here's the secret Silk Road journal from the Laptop of Ross Ulbricht , accessed January 19, 2018.
  19. ↑ Diary entry from January 1, 2012.
  20. ↑ 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, May 31, 2017: Statement of reasons in the appeal process. Assessment of the evidence on p. 15ff.
  21. ↑ 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, May 31, 2017: Statement of reasons in the appeal process, p. 16.
  22. ↑ Ars Technica , August 17, 2016: Stealing bitcoins with badges: How Silk Road's dirty cops got caught , accessed January 20, 2018.
  23. ↑ Vice News , October 20, 2015: DEA Agent Who Faked a Murder and Took Bitcoins from Silk Road Explains Himself , accessed January 20, 2018.
  24. ↑ Ars Technica , June 18, 2015: Secret Service agent who stole $ 820K from Silk Road pleads guilty , accessed January 20, 2018.
  25. ^ Ars Technica , November 8, 2017: After admitting to new crime, ex-Secret Service agent sentenced to 2 years , accessed on January 20, 2018.
  26. ↑ 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, May 31, 2017: Statement of reasons in the appeal process. Discussion of the reported procedural errors in relation to criminal acts by the officers involved on p. 12 and p. 60ff.
  27. ↑ United States Department of Justice , May 29, 2015: Ross Ulbricht, A / K / A “Dread Pirate Roberts,” Sentenced In Manhattan Federal Court To Life In Prison , accessed January 18, 2018.
  28. ↑ Vice News , February 4, 2015: Jury Takes Less Than Four Hours to Convict Ross Ulbricht of Running Silk Road , accessed January 19, 2018.
  29. ↑ Federal Sentencing Guidelines: Sentencing Table , accessed February 17, 2018.
  30. ↑ 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, May 31, 2017: Statement of reasons in the appeal process, p. 32f.
  31. ↑ Ross Ulbricht: Letter to Judge Katherine B. Forrest , accessed January 18, 2018.
  32. ↑ Vice News , October 5, 2015: Unsealed Transcript Shows How a Judge Justified Ross Ulbricht's Life Sentence , accessed January 18, 2018.
  33. ↑ US District Court for the Southern District of New York: Katherine B. Forrest's judgment in the United States v. Ulbricht, May 29, 2015, p. 31.
  34. ↑ 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, May 31, 2017: Statement of reasons in the appeal process, p. 28f.
  35. ↑ US District Court for the Southern District of New York: Katherine B. Forrest's judgment in the United States v. Ulbricht, May 29, 2015, p. 83ff.
  36. ↑ US District Court for the Southern District of New York: Katherine B. Forrest's judgment in the United States v. Ulbricht, May 29, 2015, p. 18ff.
  37. ↑ US District Court for the Southern District of New York: Katherine B. Forrest's judgment in the United States v. Ulbricht, May 29, 2015, p. 96.
  38. ↑ [1]
  39. ↑ 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, May 31, 2017: Statement of reasons in the appeal process, p. 14 and P. 139.
  40. ^ Grounds for the judgment in the United States v. Ulbricht, pp. 138/139 , accessed on January 20, 2018.
  41. ↑ Supreme Court of the United States December 22, 2017: Petition for a Writ of Certiorari in the Ulbricht v. United States , accessed February 20, 2018.
  42. ↑ Supreme Court of the United States, June 28, 2018: Court order list 585 US , accessed July 19, 2018.
  43. ^ US District Court for the Southern District of New York February 5, 2018: Request for Extension of Time to Submit Rule 33 Motion , accessed February 20, 2018.
  44. ^ Ars Technica February 17, 2018: Judge shuts door on attempt to get a new trial for Ross Ulbricht , accessed on February 20, 2018.
  45. ↑ Financefeeds.com February 9, 2019: Silk Road's mastermind Ross Ulbricht has his appeal nixed , accessed on March 9, 2019.
  46. ↑ Financefeeds.com March 9, 2019: Silk Road's mastermind Ross Ulbricht fails to secure rehearing in appeal case , accessed on March 9, 2019.