Ross witness list reveals new SR1 arrest: Michael Duch, SR1 vendor

Witnesses

The witness list includes a number of unknown names; in appearance order, I did not recognize:

Particularly intriguing is one mention of who one of the witnesses will be:

The prosecution also claims Ulbricht lured in ​vendors who had never sold drugs before with the ease and anonymity of Silk Road. One of those vendors will testify in the case.

Ars is more specific:

Another was a drug dealer who sold heroin on Silk Road, who would provide "an inside view of how Silk Road operated," promised Howard. "He ran his own business but it was overwhelmed by his addiction." The man turned to selling drugs on Silk Road and was soon making serious cash. "Almost overnight he was able to become a big time drug dealer on Silk Road," said Howard. "The defendant made it possible for this man, who had never sold drugs before in his life, to sell to literally thousands of around the country."

Perhaps this vendor is one of the unknown names? Let's see.

Duch PACER case

Me and Moustache have figured out one of them: "Michael Duch" appears nowhere relevant in Google, but he does appear in PACER.

He was arrested 1 October 2013 on charges of distributing clonazepam. The two PACER entries (7:13-mj-02352-UA & 7:13-mj-02352-UA) include some seizure paperwork which expand the accusations to selling heroin and hydrocodone. The dockets are confusing and the complaints seem to be sealed, but it seems he was in rehab for a while. It also seems that he has agreed to a plea bargain, very recently, on 10 December 2014:

Minute Entry for proceedings held before Judge Vincent L. Briccetti: Deft. present with attorney Louis Fasulo; AUSA Maimin also present. Arraignment as to Michael Duch (1) Count 1s held on 12/10/2014. Plea entered by Michael Duch (1) Guilty as to Count 1s., As to Michael Duch. Deft. is remanded. ( Sentencing set for 3/13/2015 at 10:30 AM before Judge Vincent L. Briccetti.) (jm) (Entered: 12/12/2014)

It is near-certain that Duch is one of the unaccounted-for SR1 arrests, and it seems likely given the plea deal & date that he may be the vendor who will testify.

Dockets: https://www.dropbox.com/s/79m9i3jprrp2w9d/duch.maff?dl=0 (also in RECAP)

Seller identification

Duch is highly likely the SR1 seller "deezletime".

We are looking for a USA-based seller who was busted simultaneously with SR1, who sold heroin, hydrocodone, and clonapezam (not necessarily all at once), and was still operating when SR1 went down (because investigations like to catch sellers in the act to get hard evidence, not attack someone who's cleaned house); ideally they'd be fairly high-volume to make backtracking packages easier - they can't all be as incompetent as MDPro.

Examining the StExo profile dump for pages with case-insensitive hits for any 2 of "heroin", "clonapezam", or "hydrocodone", I get the following:

Of these, several can be excluded immediately because they ship from the UK or Canada or Europe. "caligirl" can be excluded because we already know about that bust. That leaves basically: Maestro, greendaddy888, kingcopkilla, & deezletime.

The only one to offer those 3 products and only those 3 products is deezletime, an American vendor with a fair amount of sales, who writes:

Currently we are offering:

  • 4 Heroin East Coast Style Stamps

  • 5mg Hydrocodone Pills (Vicodin)

  • .5mg Clonazepam (Klonopin)

deezletime also ships from the USA. A 2013-09-15 crawl of SR1 confirms that deezletime was still selling almost right before the bust, and it also includes some interesting bits: he had banned new customers, rotated his PGP key, and was requiring all PMs be encrypted. Why did he seem to be scared? When we look to see if deezletime resumed selling on other markets, we find Redditors worrying about him going silent and speculation he had been busted, although no one in the linked case was named 'Duch' so that part of the speculation seems to have been wrong. (There may also've been speculation on SR2F, but I didn't want to unpack my archives to check.) And finally, as Moustache points out, in the evidence list:

Exhibit #700: Silk Road transaction spreadsheet maintained by Silk Road Vendor deezletime

That answers that.

Tea leaves

But here's another interesting question: Duch is witness #9, and #10 is Inigo, and the final #11 is an unknown; so if a flipped seller is third-to-last, and an actual site employee is second-to-last, what is this best that they're saving for last? Who is Brian Shaw? Here's a thought: the prosecution is bragging about a friend who will testify that Ulbricht told him about running SR1:

We've learned one of the witnesses is a friend of Ulbricht's from college, who apparently gave him programming advice, but we need to confirm the name

and

However, the prosecution claims to have at least one witness who knew Ulbricht in real life: an old college friend who said he helped Ulbricht with programming the site, and later forced Ulbricht to admit to him what he was doing.

The Brian Shaw on Bitcointalk is a pro-marijuana-legalization activist from California, where Ulbricht lived for much of SR1's tenure, and marijuana was Ulbricht and DPR1's favorite drug; could this Brian Shaw be the right Brian Shaw and the friend? That would provide a bang to the prosecution's parade of witnesses, starting from some random agent doing package seizures, to a friend declaring 'he told me he did it'. EDIT: no, Bates turned out to be the friend and testified Thursday 22 January 2015; Brian Shaw remains a mystery, although there is speculation Shaw may be connected somehow with the bizarre Redandwhite loan incident recounted in Ulbricht's 2013 journal released as an exhibit.


Comments


[15 Points] lickcunt2:

How about that fucking guy SRthrowaway2468 with one fucking post and he was on the money with his theory on deezletime fucking detective


[10 Points] lamoustache:

Deezletime is named in the evidence list.

Exhibit #700: Silk Road transaction spreadsheet maintained by Silk Road Vendor deezletime

Sounds about right.


[7 Points] loveisrealnfa:

The first witness has stated that he was involved in running the site up until the arrest of Ross, this according to the press briefing on YouTube that I posted earlier. Jared Deryegnan is the DHS agent who became an employee.


[5 Points] None:

"The defendant made it possible for this man, who had never sold drugs before in his life, to sell to literally thousands of around the country.

Expect me to believe that someone who does heroin has never sold a bag to a friend? I don't think so. I've done it, shit. All of my friends have sold me at least a jay or two before(at least the ones that smoke). Im pretty sure thats purgery. IM SNITCHIN ON THE H ADDICT!! #FREEROSS


[6 Points] None:

you really, really want to think hard before you sell drugs because you will get snitched on. The amateurs and sleaze balls you deal with will get the shits put up them about how long they're going to spend in jail and unless they're intelligent enough to hire a good lawyer immediately and then take that lawyers advice they will crumble and do a deal the instant a reduced sentence is mentioned, every single time.


[3 Points] ciphersexual:

Thanks Gwern. What do the asterisks indicate after names 3, 4, and 5?


[3 Points] lamoustache:

Richard Beles is misspelled.

You should probably read Richard Bates a/k/a baronsyntax, fellow University of Texas student and friend of Ross.

You know the Libertarian friend that just helped Ulbricht with programming Silk Road, but didn't know what it was about, until much later, when Ross "bragged" about it, thus shouldn't have to feel guilty of anything, but ends up testifying against Ross (probably didn't have choice).

FWIW; https://twitter.com/lamoustache/status/555359455236587522


[2 Points] brassmail:

wow, those reviews are so good and thorough on deezletime's seller page...I'm so used to agora's 140 character limit and "fe will update" bullshit ratings, I forgot what they could be like.


[2 Points] Vendor_BBMC:

First, let me say that's brilliant work, Gwern

Second, when the guy with the beard who everyone suspects is DEFCON ((Benthall?) was no longer listed as being in custody, I assumed he'd done a deal to squeal for the prosecution to save his own bacon.

He lived in California, and did a little programming, and a little thieving. If he's in a witness relocation program, would he be named as a prosecution witness?

The thing I can't get over with Benthall, is that he looks exactly the way I imagined DPR2 would look, somehow. But everyone seems certain he's "Defcon".

I assume it was short for "definite conman"


[1 Points] InfinitelyOutThere:

which vendor was this Duch guy, any idea?


[1 Points] None:

[deleted]


[1 Points] ramjambamalam:

Are these witnesses likely to enter the WPP?


[1 Points] ShulginsCat:

So what happened to Tracy O'Neill aka shpwrckd ? or was that a false name?


[1 Points] deezletimeAnytime:

Who here knew/ordered from deezletime when he first started in the beginning 2013 or end of 2012? He was a top notch vendor for sure.... his bags were kind of light, however they were fire. I've been clean now but he had excellent service. Sucks he got indicted...

Great work gwern on finding this.... I hope he hadn't snitched/made a plea bargain in exchange for testifying against Ross.... however really...

if I was deezletime I probably would do everything I can do save my ass from jai.... since I don't know their relationship (if Ross was a friend of his I wouldn't fuck him over), and I am against snitching... but man idk what I would do in his situation and thankful I never will have to be


[1 Points] None:

[deleted]


[1 Points] 3domfighter:

You should be getting paid for this. Awesome.