Given that these were worth $350k at the time 8+ years ago, my guess is on a vendor that got out of prison and was carefully planning for a day to move it around.
Let's not infantalize him. Twenty six years old is not a "kid." He was a grown ass man who attempted to have someone killed. That being said, a double life sentence is extreme, considering many actual murderers get out after less than twenty years. Our draconian drug punishment escalations are not good.
I think you should presume innocent until proven guilty, if you’re a fan of our court system. And he was not convicted of attempting to have anyone killed.
I do not acknowledge the authority of the legal system of the United States of America over my own beliefs and statements. However, if I did, I'd just call to your attention the fact he was sentenced partly based on this the transgression I named, even if he was not charged with it. That would be enough for me to drop the "alleged" verbiage, were I inclined to put it there in the first place.
I believe the GP was attempting to draw attention to the fact that the majority of Ross's sentence was based on mere allegation of a crime. (Granted, with good evidence, but without due process.) The probable reason charges were dropped on the conspiracy to commit murder charge was it probably would have fallen to an entrapment defence. Hiring a hitman was suggested and pushed by someone acting on behalf of the government at the time.
Ross is no hero, but also, let's not pretend the court system acted reasonably here. If they had even a 50/50 chance of getting him on conspiracy to commit murder, they would have brought the charge to trial. The prosecutor didn't drop the charge to be nice. The evidence of entrapment probably would have hurt the case as a whole, so they dropped the conspiracy to commit murder charge. Yet, it appears this strong suggestion that he committed a serious crime played the majority role in his sentencing.
This should scare anyone around the world, given the long reach of US law enforcement. The prosecutor kept embarrassing entrapment details out of the trial and still got a heavy sentence for just the allegation of a crime. The prosecutor got to have their cake and eat it too.
The fact that he was sentenced based on a crime he was not convicted for is a travesty and in my opinion unconstitutional (violates the rights to a public jury trial and to due process).
Apparently there has been a long standing practice of judges finding facts to justify a longer second, but it's questionable whether the practice is Constitutional.
That's appropriate because a) it's important to be very careful when assigning criminal penalties, and b) they spend a lot of time and money getting at the truth.
But when discussing things casually, as here, neither is true. I'd say HN runs somewhere between "reasonable to believe" and "balance of probabilities". And that's about right. If I'm wrong about Ulbricht, no particular harm comes to him; if more information comes to light and I change my mind, there's no damage to undo.
The whole thread is about a harsh court sentence, so yes - it is very appropriate here.
> And that's about right. If I'm wrong about Ulbricht, no particular harm comes to him; if more information comes to light and I change my mind, there's no damage to undo.
Would you not agree that what you said is equally true for one who judges people at roughly the same high standard as courts?
If you want to use a court-like standard, sure, go wild. Although I think it's a mistake in that you don't have a court's powers. You're guaranteed to err on the side of the guilty even more than a court, even though you have much less reason to bias your judgment that way.
We know Kings of England have committed murders. We know dictators have committed atrocities. We know Germany attempted to get Mexico to attack the US. Should we not talk about those things just because they haven’t been tried in court? No, that would be crazy. We should talk about those things because they did happen and there is evidence.
And there is evidence in this scenario too, is there not?
> And there is evidence in this scenario too, is there not?
Not all evidence is created equal and the situation here where there was a functioning fair court system is quite different from situations where there isn't one. There was definitely some irregularities in the investigation, and a possibility of entrapment.
Regardless, i don't take issue with talking about it, i just take issue with saying he deserves to be punished for it when the allegations were never proven in court. He should be punished for the things its proven he did, not the things he might have done.
Yes. This should scare us all. Hiring a hitman was both suggested and pushed by someone acting on behalf of the government, and an entrapment defence had better than a 50/50 chance of working, or they wouldn't have dropped charges.
Ross is no moral hero, but let's not pretend he was treated fairly or reasonably by law enforcement or the court.
In truth, that really depends on where you fit into the legal/court system. Spurious allegations can be libelous, so make sure you have the right kind of clout, position, and justification before alleging anything serious, especially if you fall into the "private citizen" camp when making the aforementioned claims.
That's the first and hopefully last time I've seen "grown ass man" on HN. This isn't Reddit (although a tiny bit of Reddit humor and wordplay is nice from time to time).
But good news! The US draconian drug punishment laws are changing as we speak... for users, that is. Sellers are probably still at significant risk.
I do cringe at the sight of reading "grown ass man" considering that it does not really add much to what "grown man" could have accomplished. Thanks, I am glad to know I am not the only one who feels this.
may be the transfer of that $1B is exactly the way out of jail. Giving that the fed agents in the case so easily succumbed to the sub-$1M temptation, one can only imagine what $1B can buy you there.
The operator didn’t stash every Bitcoin that came in. A few vendors here or there may have withdrawn their funds. These were withdrawn from the main account, but who knows who owns it.
