On Ross Ulbricht's "mentor" Variety Jones

Since his name was first mentioned during Ross Ulbricht's trial, Variety Jones has become an intriguing character of Silk Road.

This is our take on Variety Jones and a complex story going way back to the legendary cannabis grow site overgrow.com to some more recent events involving:

Full story: Variety Jones or the old guard back in harness (http://antilop.cc/sr/#jones)


Comments


[7 Points] plusfour_:

Thank for posting this well researched article. Your efforts are underappreciated in this sub. Now if only we can get an r/darknetmarkets member in the Philippines to interview Gypsy...


[4 Points] None:

Between you and /u/gwern you make my workday reading much more enjoyable. Thanks for all your hard work


[5 Points] sharpshooter789:

Thanks. I'll have to take a look at that tomorrow.

edit: I kind of have a hard time believing VJ is a single person. They seem to be very knowledge in a wide variety of subjects and their opsec appears to be solid considering they were not busted. I'm really looking forward to reading your article to see possible connections with other aliases.

This is a major tinfoil hat conspiracy, but what if VJ was LE attempting to grow SR to maximize the amount of money seized. Despite being very unlikely it wouldn't surprise me.


[3 Points] Deafcunt:

Great work as always, looking forward to reading this article.


[2 Points] frunobulaxpoodle:

An interesting read, thanks!

I'm curious.. in one of his SR forum posts, VJ mentions that he was active on the forums under another username before registering. Do any of these posts survive in the archives?

"I've been eying up Silk Road since long before Gawker (was Badger Copter on the old forums ;) )"

http://antilop.cc/sr/users/variety%20jones/messages/20111217-2312-Re_I_was_just_PM_d_by_a_BBC_journalist_To_be_aired_on_5Live.txt


[2 Points] brnqll:

man i used to love overgrow.com

i had an account there and everything, i was so heartbroken when it got shut down. since then it's hard to find the next new "mecca" of growing websites.


[2 Points] bugejqq:

The way they write about him years earlier exactly the same way as Ross does in his journal is nuts.


[2 Points] brnqll:

that last link is an awfully interesting read

thank you

i totally miss overgrow.com


[1 Points] None:

[deleted]


[1 Points] SecondChanceUsername:

If more than one person was VJ (excluding LE) then someone probably woulda spilled the beans by now. I wonder if anyone is still in contact with VJ or if VJ has any type of role associated with DNM. If they are around and can be verified i would be very interesting on reading a forum post on some hidden forums about his perspective and his side of the coin.


[1 Points] ciphersexual:

Thanks Moustache. I enjoy reading these more than you can imagine.


[0 Points] Vendor_BBMC:

I was inadvertently involved in this, back when I was a cannabis breeder.

I had no idea that the owner of Seeds Direct in Kingston-Upon-Thames was involved in all that fighting over who owns overgrow stuff. I used to buy most of my cannabis genetics there.

On the origial overgrow, there was a thing called "strainbase".

As a cannabis breeder, I found it fascinating. it was a collection of information about nearly every cannabis strain. When I was bored at home I copied and pasted every strain description into a word document so I could print it out at work the next day.

It was as thick as a phone directory.

This was lost when Overgrow changed hands, forever they thought. "Ive got the whole thing in a word document" I said. So it was restored.

Seeds Direct's owner was a little bit strange, as you can tell by the grandiose way he makes a mountain out of that forum molehill. I seem to remember it was quite a rude, unscientific and overdramatic forum, as american forums often are. I don't remember any of those usernames (I used to smoke a lot of weed at the time)