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Alleged Silk Road drug kingpin denies charges

sfgate.com

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Re: Alleged Silk Road drug kingpin denies charges

#5
> In one case, they said, Ulbricht paid $80,000 in bitcoins to have a former website employee tortured and killed after he was arrested. But according to prosecutors, the anonymity of Silk Road backfired on Ulbricht after he asked a purported drug smuggler to carry out the hit.

The smuggler was actually an undercover agent, the government said - the same agent who had arrested the employee.

Are there more details about this previous arrest?

Re: Alleged Silk Road drug kingpin denies charges

#6
post #5

> In one case, they said, Ulbricht paid $80,000 in bitcoins to have a former website employee tortured and killed after he was arrested. But according to prosecutors, the anonymity of Silk Road backfired on Ulbricht after he asked a purported drug smuggler to carry out the hit. The smuggler was actually an undercover agent, the government said - the same agent who had arrested the employee. Are there more details abo…

A bit of info here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/feds-silkroad-bos... and commentary here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6486718

Re: Alleged Silk Road drug kingpin denies charges

#7

>Ulbricht did not enter a plea. But his public defender,... Looks like the Federales did seize his assets. He may be about to have a bad time.

You can't use the proceeds of crime to fund your defense.

If he can't show income then he gets a public defender.

Also this is a federal defender and my understanding (I'm a Brit watching from afar) is they are like our QC's (Queens Counsel - essentially very good and experienced legal professionals) rather than the stereotypical "plead to everything and go to lunch" public defenders.

Re: Alleged Silk Road drug kingpin denies charges

#8

>Ulbricht did not enter a plea. But his public defender,... Looks like the Federales did seize his assets. He may be about to have a bad time.

You can't use the proceeds of crime to fund your defense. If he can't show income then he gets a public defender. Also this is a federal defender and my understanding (I'm a Brit watching from afar) is they are like our QC's (Queens Counsel - essentially very good and experienced legal professionals) rather than the stereotypical "plead to everything and go to lunch" public defenders.

Public defenders range from quite good to incompetent, but almost all of them are over-worked because of the large number of things made illegal in our bloated legal system. So, many public defenders encourage their clients to plea guilty for crimes they did not commit. Sadly this happens far too often in the US. HBO did a documentary about this recently: www.hbo.com/documentaries/gideons-army
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