Unmasked: The Man Behind the Silk Road by Andy Greenberg & Various Authors

Author:Andy Greenberg & Various Authors [Greenberg, Andy & Authors, Various]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Retail, True Crime
ISBN: 9781508011163
Google: lJQUCAAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Forbes Media
Published: 2015-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

ALLEGED SILK ROAD BOSS ROSS ULBRICHT NOW ACCUSED OF SIX MURDERS-FOR-HIRE, DENIED BAIL

By Andy Greenberg

November 21, 2013

A New York judge denied bail to alleged Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht Thursday, based in part on fresh accusations of violence: that Ulbricht allegedly commissioned the murders of a total of six people through would-be hitmen he contacted online, four more than the two attempted killings described in prosecutors’ original criminal complaint.

Judge Nathaniel Fox said that the risk that Ulbricht might flee or present a danger to the community overwhelmed arguments that he be released on bail, citing “powerful evidence presented to us that the defendant has attempted to secure the murders of a number of people.”

Prosecutor Serrin Turner laid out that evidence in a statement to the court, saying that much of it was gathered from a Silk Road server located by the FBI as well as Ulbricht’s seized computer after he was arrested in October and accused of running the Silk Road’s massive anonymous online drug sales operation under the pseudonym the Dread Pirate Roberts. Turner said that Ulbricht had not only sent messages to two would-be hitmen—an undercover agent on one of those two occasions—asking to have a witness and a blackmailer killed, but had followed up by ordering the killing of the blackmailer’s associate and three people who lived with him.

Mysteriously, Turner said that in none of the cases were actual victims found; in the first, FBI agents say they faked the death of alleged former Silk Road employee Curtis Green to convince Ulbricht the murder had taken place. But the outcome of the other five murders remains unexplained. Nonetheless, Turner argued, “the evidence is crystal clear that the defendant intended these murders to happen.”

Criminal complaints against Ulbricht previously accused him of ordering the killing of former Silk Road employee Curtis Green in January of 2013 for $80,000 and then paying a user known as “redandwhite” $150,000 in Bitcoin to kill a Silk Road user identified as “FriendlyChemist,” who claimed to have hacked another Silk Road vendor and threatened to release Silk Road customers’ identifying information if he wasn’t paid $500,000.

In court Thursday, Turner added four more attempted murders, saying that FriendlyChemist had implicated another Silk Road user known as “tony76.” And when redandwhite had told Ulbricht that tony76 lived with three other people who would have to be killed if they were to obtain the money and possessions in his home, Ulbricht allegedly agreed to have all four killed for $500,000 in Bitcoins. “Based on the say-so of [an online assassin], he was willing to kill three others just living with him,” said Turner.

Turner also described evidence on Ulbricht’s computer that included a log he kept of his activities that he said included the line “commissioned hit on blackmailers with angels,” implying that redandwhite may have been a member of the Hell’s Angel motorcycle gang, given its association with the colors red and white. Another line allegedly read “sent payment to angels for hit on tony76 and his 3 associates.

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