Hi guys. I was just reading up about silkroad, and I discovered that the main advisor and security coder for DPR and SR was someone named Roger Thomas Clark. He went by Variety Jones, Cimon, Plural of Mongoose, and possibly also ~shabang~ and smedley. He is a Canadian Citizen, who was also very active in the Overgrow cannabis community (which also happened to get busted/seized because the owner RC also ran multiple seed businesses - coincidentally in quebec/montreal - apparently PoM was living in UK at the time). PoM went on to contact DPR on SR and advise him including suggesting he hire someone to kill an admin, even going so far as to suggest that he knew someone who knew someone. The alleged hitman ended up being a fed, but I don't know if it was the person PoM linked him up with or not. Anyways - PoM was recently arrested (i think 2015 or 2016) in THAILAND at the behest of US authorities for his part in silk road and is being held in a Bangkok prison... PoM was also well known for concocting elaborate tales and establishing multiple online personalities to lay false trails and for plausible deniability. sounds like he was schizophrenic or otherwise psychotic and sociopathic. was also known for creating drama. PoM could very well also be Smedley
My theory is after the bust of SR this person PoM either started alphabay or perhaps suggested to someone else to start AB (interesting they are both canadians... i can't find out if Roger Thomas Clark is from quebec or not) or otherwise contacted the owner after it was started (and maybe suggested he come to Thailand later) and offered to help with security auditing and coding etc. He also very well could have contacted Hansa market (or all of the markets) to offer help coding and with security. Maybe Hansa and AB were the only ones to accept his help, maybe more markets did. when he was busted for his involvement in SR he flipped and starting talking about AB/Hansa and helped engineer it's demise. Also interesting is AB02 kills himself in a Bangkok jail while PoM is also held in a bangkok jail.. i wonder if it was the same one or not? Probably, since both are being held on drug charges... PoM could have a fortune in btc and might have paid someone to kill "alpha02" as he may have been framing him to take the fall for his own actions, who knows. it is absolutely not above PoM to bring in an old friend to help run the site he started with all intentions on eventually framing him. Anyways, super weird coincidences and a lot of speculation, but theres my theory.
Smedley could also be Mike Wattier, an american IT guy also living in Thailand who was described by a thai resident who knew PoM as his "erstwhile business partner." What's interesting is I don't see a record of Mike Wattier being arrested in Thailand along with Roger Thomas Clark, so it could also be very possible that Smedley ratted on all of them. It seems very likely that Smedley and Variety Jones would have opened a new marketplace, or otherwise been involved with one, after Silk Road went down because they knew how much money it could generate and basically did all the work to create and maintain the website. I wonder where Smedley is now ...
https://www.wired.com/2015/12/variety-jones-alleged-silk-road-mentor-arrested-in-thailand/
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35025976
https://antilop.cc/sr/#jones <-- great investigative article about VJs identities
Such a well documented article and no comments at all?
I don't know man.. But good read.