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A Shaggster From Long Ago May Get a Federal Pardon


Viper

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23 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

That's not trial testimony, but something else.  It's certainly damning, but apparently there was a reason he wasn't charged with solicitation of murder.  Very possibly because there's no federal offense there (oddly enough, murder isn't much of a federal offense unless it occurs on an Indian reservation or federal property).

Nonetheless, it should be axiomatic in this country that we don't punish people for uncharged and unconvicted conduct.

The federal Sentencing Guidelines attempt in some cases to sentence based on uncharged and/or unconvicted conduct, including charged conduct on which the jury acquitted.  Somewhat amazingly, the courts of appeal and Supreme Court are just now coming around to the idea that that conduct has no role in sentencing or anything else in a criminal trial.

I’m not representing it as anything other than evidence of his actions and character. I suspect they were concerned about their ability to convince a jury that there was no reasonable doubt that it wasn’t someone else controlling the handle at the time or that it was just locker room cosplaying talk (which I believe his appeal and an amicus brief actually claimed if I’m remembering correctly).

regardless, it shows me who he was at the time and I just posted it for people to read since there seems to be a lot of worshipping going on in here. 

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7 minutes ago, gsoda3 said:

 

That was an entertaining read.  I can't believe that .....

 

.... the above chat logs can't be used to convict for solicitation.  Did they ever find the red and white guy?

Here’s the press release for his charges.  https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/silk-road-drug-vendor-who-claimed-commit-murders-hire-silk-road-founder-ross-ulbricht

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25 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

That's not trial testimony, but something else.  It's certainly damning, but apparently there was a reason he wasn't charged with solicitation of murder.  Very possibly because there's no federal offense there (oddly enough, murder isn't much of a federal offense unless it occurs on an Indian reservation or federal property).

Nonetheless, it should be axiomatic in this country that we don't punish people for uncharged and unconvicted conduct.

The federal Sentencing Guidelines attempt in some cases to sentence based on uncharged and/or unconvicted conduct, including charged conduct on which the jury acquitted.  Somewhat amazingly, the courts of appeal and Supreme Court are just now coming around to the idea that that conduct has no role in sentencing or anything else in a criminal trial.

Rule 404(b) certainly opens the door for a shit ton of uncharged crimes to come into evidence and allow the jury to use other bad acts as a basis to convict the defendant of the currently charged acts. And judges have been giving upward departures or denying downward departures for years based on uncharged conduct. For example, I tried a bank/wire fraud case once when the government got an uncharged pump and dump stock fraud scheme into evidence even though the government knew about it for years and never cared to charge anyone. 

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35 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

That's not trial testimony, but something else.  It's certainly damning, but apparently there was a reason he wasn't charged with solicitation of murder.  Very possibly because there's no federal offense there (oddly enough, murder isn't much of a federal offense unless it occurs on an Indian reservation or federal property).

Nonetheless, it should be axiomatic in this country that we don't punish people for uncharged and unconvicted conduct.

The federal Sentencing Guidelines attempt in some cases to sentence based on uncharged and/or unconvicted conduct, including charged conduct on which the jury acquitted.  Somewhat amazingly, the courts of appeal and Supreme Court are just now coming around to the idea that that conduct has no role in sentencing or anything else in a criminal trial.

Also, let’s not try and sanewash what Trump did as some sort of stand against drug sentencing abuse. If so, the list is long but we don’t need to speculate. We know this was purely transactional as he states. 
 

Quote

“I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross,”

 

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4 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

.  It's certainly damning, but apparently there was a reason he wasn't charged with solicitation of murder.

Yes there was.   The person who Ross hired to murder someone, turned out to be a cop,  and said cop ended up in jail for extortion and money laundering involving Silk Road.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-silk-road-task-force-agent-pleads-guilty-extortion-money-laundering-and-obstruction

From the lomgform Wired story on Ross and Silk Road

image.thumb.png.8207b77a56ad76cd9d192abe389d7731.png

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I’m not saying “Ross is Innocent” because it was definitely him running Silk Road, I just think the way the FBI “found” the Silk Road server in Iceland was complete bullshit. Without that server their whole case goes nowhere.

The investigation even had one of their own FBI Silk Force Task Members convicted of money laundering, extortion, and obstruction for lying to prosecutors about pocketing Bitcoin payments from Ross in exchange for information about the investigation. 

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10 hours ago, sidis said:

Also, let’s not try and sanewash what Trump did as some sort of stand against drug sentencing abuse. If so, the list is long but we don’t need to speculate. We know this was purely transactional as he states. 
 

 

Yeah, no, fuck Trump altogether.  There's nothing obviously in this for him politically except maybe courting techbros, so there's probably something more insidious behind it.

Criminal sentencing and our general overenthusiasm for it, is one of my pet issues.  Likewise, pardons and commutations and under what circumstances they are appropriate, in the abstract, is also a pet issue.

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16 hours ago, Captainant said:

Bitcoin isn't useful for anything except hoping it goes up in value to sell to a greater fool. If you want to spend it, it's a huge hassle and all but requires you to use a 3rd party for trust in the transaction. And at that point, you're just using a slower and shittier and more expensive debit card

I mean, isn't this thread about a guy who ran an underground marketplace selling in excess of a  billion dollars worth of goods and services between untrusting parties where bitcoin was the only payment method accepted? 

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2 hours ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

I mean, isn't this thread about a guy who ran an underground marketplace selling in excess of a  billion dollars worth of goods and services between untrusting parties where bitcoin was the only payment method accepted? 

My bad, Bitcoin is also excellent for operating a criminal enterprise at scale. One step further, I really doubt that TSR's operating model would be palatable for any real business considering how much overhead and time they spend on just maintaining crypto infra, rather than traditional payment means. Also, you're an order of magnetude off on scale, TSR only sold $183M in revenue off illegal drugs and human trafficking and contract killers

Most of Ulbricht's profits came from the money laundering services of the tumblers he operated, and it came out to around $13M in profits for him at the time.

Edited by Captainant
h/t to MrBig
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21 minutes ago, DPR said:

In the words of a Great American Poet,

Truth Hurts

How many posters do you have to harm with your false and misleading statements before you give it up?

Scoreboard, Captain

Ant expresses an opinion.  To use a possibly disgusting cliche, most of the posters here are "free white and 21" (and thus validly exercise free choice in your preferred world) and free to take or leave Ant's opinion, and yours, for that matter.

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3 hours ago, DPR said:

You should realize that poster has been objectively wrong about Bitcoin here for the better part of a decade. Like, it’s hard to imagine you could be more wrong about something and still post so confidently about it after all this time.

It’s a shame he posts so many wrong and/or misleading things about it. Over the years he's probably helped nudge a good number of posters such as you away from looking deeper into something that would've materially benefitted them and their families. Sad!

You sound just like an AMWAY salesman.  

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Lots of ballsy people here to bad mouth a 13-year instituonalized tech savvy and brilliant person who now has nearly unlimited amount of money and who will likely at like 90% odds read this and see what you are saying about him. Stay frosty, brothers!

Edited by Vegas64
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36 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

Lots of ballsy people here to bad mouth a 13-year instituonalized tech savvy and brilliant person who now has nearly unlimited amount of money and who will likely at like 90% odds read this and see what you are saying about him. Stay frosty, brothers!

Hey Ross if you pay me half a million dollars I'll kill Santa Claus for you

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13 minutes ago, blacklab said:

it was GRUhorn

I don't ban him fast enough people complain, I ban him fast people complain

"I get bitched at for being too fast, then not fast enough."  Look, dude, you don't need to bring the challenges of your sex life into things around here.  We're friends, but we ain't THAT close.

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it was GRUhorn
I don't ban him fast enough people complain, I ban him fast people complain

Notice it’s the same handful of posters that piss their pants everytime about it. As intelligent as some of those people fancy themselves to be, it is fascinating that they haven’t figured out how to work the ignore feature yet.
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1 hour ago, Herbie Hancock said:


Notice it’s the same handful of posters that piss their pants everytime about it. As intelligent as some of those people fancy themselves to be, it is fascinating that they haven’t figured out how to work the ignore feature yet.

too many clicks

 

I haven't used it until recently.  I thought it would be easy to find by clicking on the user profile.  It was not.

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3 hours ago, Herbie Hancock said:


Notice it’s the same handful of posters that piss their pants everytime about it. As intelligent as some of those people fancy themselves to be, it is fascinating that they haven’t figured out how to work the ignore feature yet.

The ignore feature is dogass and all it does is remind you over and over again that ignored posters are posting instead of just erasing them entirely from memory.

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5 minutes ago, Armybrat said:

This Ross dude is going to be interviewed on CNN right now (after the ads) 4:54 pm.

edited to add:

 

IMG_4863.jpeg

He looks like he’s still in shock he got out of prison. I never thought he would get out. He is about to become rich as fuck on the speaking circuit even if he doesn’t get a dime back from the federal government. 

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On 1/24/2025 at 9:31 AM, Vegas64 said:

Lots of ballsy people here to bad mouth a 13-year instituonalized tech savvy and brilliant person who now has nearly unlimited amount of money and who will likely at like 90% odds read this and see what you are saying about him. Stay frosty, brothers!

I concur.  If he isn't tech savvy enough (LOL), he can certainly pay someone to probably dox everyone here before lunch and by supper own your home.  Or on the other hand he could set us all up with a little jingle in our front pocket.  I vote jingle. 

I'm betting he eventually comes around with a clever username, something like FilthyRich&Free.  OK, not clever, but you get the idea. 

Edited by Bevo&Pevo
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10 hours ago, futureman said:

can you post that in the ross ulbricht cr thread

unless you wanna start talking trump

I mean the guy was literally an internet drug dealer - if he wasn't white he wouldn't be getting the love that he is enjoying. The pardon in and of itself is overtly political 

Not sure how you separate the two in this story. Get used to it, this sort of newsworthy norm breaking is gonna only intensify and make you more tired and frustrated.

It's how the soviets and russians maintain power, at least. Now that we've got our oligarchs class calcified it's time for the next step

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1 hour ago, Captainant said:

I mean the guy was literally an internet drug dealer - if he wasn't white he wouldn't be getting the love that he is enjoying. The pardon in and of itself is overtly political 

Not sure how you separate the two in this story. Get used to it, this sort of newsworthy norm breaking is gonna only intensify and make you more tired and frustrated.

It's how the soviets and russians maintain power, at least. Now that we've got our oligarchs class calcified it's time for the next step

I think it’s pretty easy for people who are not unhinged to leave the cr talk in cr. 

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