Ross Ulbricht was found guilty in the Silk Road trial, which is entirely unsurprising. He was caught dead to rights with his laptop open to the admin page of Silk Road. He also kept extensive, detailed records of everything. The jury deliberated for only three hours. I'd feel a little bad for the guy if not for him ordering hits on people. The prosecutor is looking to make an example of him and never offered a plea deal, so I'm sure he'll get life in prison. He's a pretty boy, so I expect he'll make a fine bitch for the homies. From world class drug kingpin to prison bitch. It seems like he was relying entirely on the Tor browser to protect himself. I don't know why he kept records of anything, why he didn't regularly destroy his hard drives, and why he didn't secure the Silk Road page better. Although investigators were able to figure out that he was running Silk Road just through a simple Google search and some old forum posts, so it seems like he wasn't very secretive about any of it. Seems like he was overconfident and not terribly bright.
I tried to follow this stuff on Reddit, but the whole deep web stuff it went over my head. I still don't buy into this online anonymity, there will always be an electronic trail. You can turn it into a 2 million piece puzzle so nobody bothers to try. But if someone is willing to sit there and figure it out (unlimited funding govt acronym), they probably will.
It seems like he just wasn't terribly bright, and thought Tor would protect him, while neglecting other aspects of security. If he had been destroying his data and his drives on a regular basis, the prosecutor would not have had such an artight case. Everything they needed to convict him was on his laptop, which he was using in a public library. It also looks like he was abroad for a few years, but came back to the US. When you can administer the site from anywhere, and it uses an internationally accepted, untraceable cryptocurrency, why would you come back to a country with some of the harshest drug laws on the planet? Also why would you advertise for a drug selling website using sock puppet style posting on easily searchable public forums? The prosecutor actually said the old forum posts were the main way the government figured out who he was, and on top of that he used his name in the email address he used to sign up for the forums. Conspiracy theorists seem to think the government hacked Silk Road, but I'm not sure I buy that. He really wasn't that hard to find. Anyone investigating his forum posts would have had his real name. He was convicted under some law meant for crime kingpins which carries a mandatory life sentence. But he also still has a murder for hire trial to contend with. He's never getting out of prison. He also has the kind of face that screams prison bitch. The homeboys are going to have fun with him.
LOL @ his screen name! I almost want to believe he was framed. It's INCONCEIVABLE! that the real dread pirate roberts would fall victim to one of the classic blunders!
Princess Buttercup ---> Prison Buttercup Love the thread title! lol I wonder if his true love will come to save him when he's forced to become a prison wife for a guy named Tyrone Humperdick.