What You Need to Know About the Unsealed Silk Road Docket

121 pages of previously sealed filings were released yesterday, shortly after the Department of Justice unveiled criminal charges against two law enforcement agents involved in the Silk Road investigation. I read them so you don't have to.

1) BitStamp brought down corrupt DEA agent Carl Mark Force IV

Agents Carl Mark Force IV and Shaun Bridges might have gotten away with their incredibly lucrative racket if it hadn't been for, of all things, the bitcoin exchange BitStamp.

Carl Force was processing suspiciously large amounts of money through a number of bitcoin and payment companies. Unsurprisingly, he kept triggering anti-money laundering / Know Your Customer checks--ironically, the exact kind of regulation that he himself was enforcing in his capacity as a DEA agent.

In the case of both Venmo and BitStamp, he tried to bypass any account blocks or KYC checks by waving around his status as a DEA agent. It's not clear how many companies he did this to. We only know of Venmo and BitStamp because they resisted.

In April 2014, BitStamp representatives messaged Force, asking him why he was accessing his account through Tor. He responded through the support ticket:

"I utilize TOR for privacy. Don't particularly want NSA looking over my shoulder :)"

BitStamp management found this message to be, well, incredibly weird. His account was blocked at this point (and unblocked and blocked again repeatedly for the rest of the month). At some point, BitStamp notified law enforcement, and the investigation into Force began.

2) We now have the Torchat logs that document how the Curtis Clark Green fake murder-for-hire went down.

For over a year, the media has been all over the story of how the Dread Pirate Roberts issued a hit on a rogue employee. We now know that Curtis Clark Green, a/k/a Flush, a/k/a chronicpain, didn't steal from DPR--he took the blame for something a crooked Secret Service Agent did. And then, as has been widely reported, the agent and his colleague helped fake the murder. We now have the Torchat logs that show messages sent by DPR immediately after the theft, leading up to him issuing a hit through a hitman who was actually Agent Force undercover.

(The Torchats have been extracted from the docket update and are embedded at the end of this post).

3) Wait... did DPR pay for that murder-for-hire with a bank wire transfer?

This one doesn't exactly come from unsealed docket, but the newly released Torchats don't contain anything to contradict this gem, lending some credence to this, and making it more than possible that this little snippet isn't a typo or misunderstanding on the part of prosecutors:

Did the Dread Pirate Roberts, who was so insistent on anonymity and security through Tor, PGP encryption, and Bitcoin actually use a bank wire transfer to pay for hismurder-for-hire? Seriously? Seriously?

4) That time DPR made fun of someone else's opsec.

Ross Ulbricht logged all of his encrypted, Tor-hidden chats. He kept a diary and accounting spreadsheets. He was caught in a public library, connected to the library wi-fi, with his laptop open. He once asked a programming question on StackExchange about Tor-hidden services, using rossulbricht@gmail.com, then very quickly changed his e-mail and display name.

Here he is, making fun of someone else's opsec:

BONUS: DPR making sure that his employee Andrew Michael Jones, also known as inigo, isn't logging his Torchats. Inigo confirms that he wouldn't do something so stupid.

5) That time law enforcement thought some random libertarian blogger was the real DPR.

On April 1, 2013, Carl Mark Force attempted to blackmail the Dread Pirate Roberts from the Silk Road account DeathFromAbove, saying he knew his real identity. The "real identity" that Force tried to use against DPR was taken directly from the investigation's internal files. This is literally who law enforcement thought DPR was.

We know from the trial that Anand Athavale is the real life identity of mises.org poster "libertystudent," whose blog can be foundhere. Why did the Silk Road investigation think it was him? A language analysis, that showed both occasionally spelled "a lot" as "alot," "labor" as "labour," "real time" as "real-time," "let me" as "lemme," "phony" as "phoney," and "route" as "rout." Both liked to end sentences with ", right?" Both used terms like "intellectual laziness," "agorism," agorist," "counter-economics," "altruistic," "phoney," "paleo-human," and "anarcho-capitalist."

They also both occasionally used all-caps for emphasis, didn't capitalize the first word in sentence when in a hurry, and used "the symbol for backslash on the computer to split words with similar meaning."

They also discussed authors Murray Rothbard and Samuel Konkin.

Libertarians of the Internet beware. The Feds are watching.

6) Bridges's theft led directly to DPR issuing a hit on Curtis Clark Green. And this was ruled as not relevant to Ross Ulbricht's trial at all.

The extent of Bridges and Force's corrupt activities is nothing short of astounding. It's hard to pick the most outrageous allegation in the Department of Justice's case against them, but the part where Agent Bridges stole bitcoin from the Silk Road and Curtis Clark Green took the blame is definitely one of the front-runners. DPR issued a hit on Green, hiring Bridges's colleague Carl Forcewho was undercover at the time. And then Bridges and Force faked the murder.

None of this was known by the defense until five weeks before the trial, and they were gagged from mentioning at trial because the grand jury investigation into Force and Bridges was still under seal. The U.S. Attorney argued that all of this was "irrelevant and inflammatory," and couldn't possibly exculpate Ulbricht. The judge agreed, saying "defendant has failed to make a showing of 'particularized need' sufficient to overcome the presumption of secrecy."

When the defense moved for the trial to be postponed until the grand jury investigation of Force and Bridges was complete, the prosecutors invoked "the people's right to a speedy trial."

7) Everything important is still redacted, and we don't know if Ulbricht will get a new trial.

Is the Force/Bridges scandal exculpatory for Ulbricht? There's good arguments on both sides, but here's the key part: we don't know any of the important parts. Everything relevant to this question is still under seal--pages and pages of the newly released filings are still redacted. This is not an overstatement. Here's an example of one of the pages:

Even if the public doesn't know what's in those pages, at least Ulbricht's defense knows. But there's even more that no one outside the government knows. After being informed of the investigation into Force and Bridges, Ulbricht's defense attorneys understandably issued a discovery request for as much information as they could get about Carl Force's conduct while on the Silk Road investigation.

The request was denied: "Defendant has not articulated a coherent and particular reason why the fact of SA Force's investigation, or the fruits of that investigation, could themselves 'counter the government's case' or 'bolster a defense.'"

The judge has yet to rule on the defense's motion for a new trial.

Source


Comments


[37 Points] GIEV_RP_PLZ:

Before it became a scheduled drug, alphaethyltryptamine was what is known as a "fine chemical" and was listed in the catalog of a major chemical company (1993) for a modest $60.90 for a hundred grams. It became a Schedule I drug by emergency scheduling that same year. Recently (1995) I noted that the chemical has been discontinued (as a fine chemical) but has appeared in a catalog from a major supply house for neurological chemicals. Alphaethyl tryptamine now requires a DEA license for purchase, and retailed at $424.00 for 100 milligrams. That calculates out at $424,000.00 for a hundred grams, a price inflation of a factor of almost 7000, or a 700,000% increase. Now THAT is truly drug abuse.


[7 Points] -STIMUTAX-:

I have read over everything a few times and yet I am still completely confused?!? Was the Fake Hit of Flush actually sanctioned by the official investigation? Or was it something done by these assholes to cover the stealing? I mean if it was sanctioned by the official investigation, wouldn't someone ask why DPR suddenly wanted to kill a witness they just flipped? Without knowledge of the "Theft" wouldn't the hit imply that DPR knew he was comprised after the coke deal? Why would he trust a claimed vendor over a known employee he had DOX on? Even if they attributed the theft to Curtis Greene, wouldn't that raise questions about the integrity of the witness?

Remember this hit is separate from the RedandWhite/friendly chemist situation. As we have not seen the Baltimore case and these new rouge officer revelations the lines between official investigation and personal scam has become very unclear.


[6 Points] InfinitelyOutThere:

Great writeup :)

I do have to say that these guys are fucking stupid for getting rid of their btc that way.


[4 Points] None:

His OPSEC was a joke; everyone knows the only way to have true opsec is to have thermite rigged to your computer from a chip surgically embedded in your left ankle. Kind if hard to explain how the evidence caught on fire whilst the accused is in the back of a car in cuffs.


[3 Points] MrGangGreen:

Wow... I can't believe how stupid everyone involved was. It's comical. If they make a movie out of this I hope it's written by the Coen brothers.


[2 Points] PWEI:

Fucking cunts


[1 Points] sharpshooter789:

Hella interesting. The entire chat about involving nob and the fake assassination is released. It looks like CG was receiving the coke on behalf of googleeyed.


[1 Points] presari0:

Nice post man, really interesting stuff.


[1 Points] asdqwe1230:

screw Bitstamp. I left them after they started demanding extensive proof of ID to send/receive BTC. I'm sure they stole alot of money that way, not too different from PayPal's way to rob people. I still occasionally visit them to watch that nice-graphic graph of BTC-price fluctuations though


[1 Points] colocures:

To the Forbes OP: No, DPR didn't wire $80k from his own bank or exchange verified account, he used an exchanges site who exchanged BTC/PerfectMoney/LibertyReserve/bank wires, etc, and sent them Bitcoin to pay for them to send a bank wire.


[1 Points] ciphersexual:

The author's twitter has been a fun read lately too. @sarahjeong


[1 Points] alfabi:

If I remember correctly, dpr paid for a hit 80k using some AUS anon wire transfer service ( now think is defunct, not sure though).


[1 Points] throwaway:

“I utilize TOR for privacy. Don’t particularly want NSA looking over my shoulder :)” BitStamp management found this message to be, well, incredibly weird

...What is weird about that? It's where my main interest in tor and encryption comes from.


[1 Points] Canna-Juice:

“Defendant has not articulated a coherent and particular reason why the fact of SA Force’s investigation, or the fruits of that investigation, could themselves ‘counter the government’s case’ or ‘bolster a defense.’”

Seriously?!? Becuase the supression of key evidence in a high-profile case as this, with little to no public awareness is not only astounding, but goddamned petrifying.

Also, what a stand-up, bad-luck guy Green has turned out to be, no?


[1 Points] heyfreshhhhh:

Assholes.


[0 Points] None:

Thanks for the post and link..gonna read the whole article later


[0 Points] soliketotally:

Great post!

What a dumb reason to give for using tor..

How about "it is part of an ongoing investigation"

What a interesting turn that fake hit took.. Actually Better than fiction


[-2 Points] SEND_ME_YOUR_DICKPIC:

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