Faust, this one's for you

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/05/technology/security/bitcoin-silk-road/?iid=EL

I LOLed at "prosecution futures".

[Faust]

Yeah it seems to be the most deluded fallacy to believe, the very system is peer to peer, every transaction leaves records on exchanges and on the machines processing it, all they have to do is prove that he used a computer that had access to the wallet.

That part seems really strange to me, for someone who understood the need for anonymity and had created his systems using a .tor domain you would think he would be smart enough to not link his personal laptop with that wallet. He could have bought any number of intermediaries,  and hidden it away better.

Without that bitcoin wallet he could have argued he just hosts it, or maintains it etc for someone else. Bitcoin ended up being the irrefutable proof of his guilt. Oh well.

I think life imprisonment is too much for him, but he really got caught with the hand in the cookie jar, its hard to have too much sympathy.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I suspect he may have succumbed to the rich man's disease of thinking that he was untouchable? I don't know. He definitely didn't deserve life, but I am also not surprised that the judge chose to make an example of him.

[minuspace]

Life?  That is Entirely too severe a lesson for using persistence.

[Faust]

Well some of the charges they brought against him were attempting to buy a hitman on 5 separate occasions, I have no idea of the validity of those charges, I haven't read up on the case enough, but thats enough to escalate things to a life sentence. 

[Junkenstein]

Yeah, that kind of deserves it really. After failing to hire someone 3 times you've got to drop it or sort it out yourself.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

That's why it annoys me when people say things like "if he had only used his brilliance to do something positive". Lack of ethical scruples is not the same as genius, and trying but failing to hire a hitman FIVE TIMES? Linking his Bitcoin account to his laptop? That's the kind of thing that just makes me irritated to realize that incompetents all over America are making millions.

[minuspace]

My thinking would be to move that transaction not working to his credit.  It seems like his uncharacteristic lack of ingenuity on the subject of murder demonstrates how he was not seriously thinking of going through with it.  If he really wanted to, he would have got it done (that is my superficial and preliminary statement).

I'm no expert, however, since when do people get life for meta-attempted murder?

The price is not right.

[Faust]

I'm no expert, however, since when do people get life for meta-attempted murder?

It's not really meta-attempted murder he was charged for, it was Conspiracy to commit a crime, which in this case its pretty clear cut, they had back and forth records with a number of parties.

I'm afraid I exaggerated the figure as Junkenstien says, it was 3 times he attempted to arrange the hits.

I've been racking my head trying to figure out why he was keeping the bitcoin wallet details on his machine instead of some kind of disposable machine located elsewhere and all I can come up with is paranoia that his wealth would be stolen from him if someone managed to get access to said disposable machine, in short greed.
With proper risk reward balancing the worst that would have happened is he loses his fortune and has to start over, instead, he gambled his freedom to protect that fortune and lost it all.

But then no one is accusing bitcoin users of prudent investment.

[minuspace]

I'm no expert, however, since when do people get life for meta-attempted murder?

It's not really meta-attempted murder he was charged for, it was Conspiracy to commit a crime, which in this case its pretty clear cut, they had back and forth records with a number of parties.

I'm afraid I exaggerated the figure as Junkenstien says, it was 3 times he attempted to arrange the hits.

I've been racking my head trying to figure out why he was keeping the bitcoin wallet details on his machine instead of some kind of disposable machine located elsewhere and all I can come up with is paranoia that his wealth would be stolen from him if someone managed to get access to said disposable machine, in short greed.
With proper risk reward balancing the worst that would have happened is he loses his fortune and has to start over, instead, he gambled his freedom to protect that fortune and lost it all.

But then no one is accusing bitcoin users of prudent investment.

I agree with your conclusion, yet it does not validate the premise.  It seems unreasonable that One persons OPSEC would fail so miserably, given all the precautions taken.  The lead seems contrived so I keep defaulting to thinking he just took the fall.

Then, recently, I skimmed some of DPR's posts that indicate a type of maniacal thinking, perhaps lending itself to lapses of reason, and subsequent security breach(es).

So, to summarize, I don't have a clear picture, yet.

[Junkenstein]

3 was more of a gut feeling based on the following logic:

You want to kill a guy. You don't want to do it yourself. You don't want to get caught.

The WORST possible thing is potential witnesses or others who know anything about your willingness to hire a murderer.

So surely if a hitman turns you down, the next one you're talking to, you automatically have to talk about two murders now.

By the time you get to 5 rejections you're killing half a dozen people (at least, assuming everyone works solo and is reliably mute) just to get the original guy who pissed you off killed. This also assumes that none of the previous 5 decided to get rich by selling the info to your target in the meanwhile.

It also assumes that murderers for hire are willing to work for bitcoin. I would have suspected they would prefer something more tangible. Like, say, anything. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what killed every would be murder pact. "Kill this guy and I'll make you a millionaire in something that's kind of like money but not really".

[Cain]

According to the closing statements of the judge, he hired a conman posing as a hitman to kill five different people, and this act was factored into his sentencing.

[Faust]

Yeah, In Ireland there was a case a few years ago when a woman tried to hire a man to kill her husband, she got six years in jail for conspiracy to commit murder. The funny thing is that her sentence was reduced because her husband was a witness for the defense and lobbied for her after the charge, paying for the appeals.

If you were to take into account the repeated nature of DPR's actions a life sentence doesn't seem at all outrageous.

[Junkenstein]

According to the closing statements of the judge, he hired a conman posing as a hitman to kill five different people, and this act was factored into his sentencing.

"...You are dumb for believing in the offer of the group rate."

£5 says he was targeting previous conmen who also posed as hitmen. 

[POFP]

TL;Don't want to read?: This guy made a lot of mistakes, and here's how not to make them.

Also the government knows what you fap to when you're not busy. And they know the method by which you fap. And they can psychologically explain why and how you fap based on the slant in your handwriting and whether or not you use verb tenses correctly. And this information can be used to put you in the slammer.





If you want something done, do it your goddamn self. If you don't have the time, use someone you consider to be an extension of yourself. My closest friends would do anything I asked in that regard. But I wouldn't use them if I didn't understand them through and through.

If you plan on becoming a murderer or conspiring to commit murder, go into a career that gives you the information you need to avoid getting caught, like Crime Scene Investigator or something in Crime Lab. Or maybe just get the text books and keep yourself updated on the new tech.

If you wanna stay anonymous with your banking and transactions, make some foreign friends. It can take years to gather the amount of human resources you need to run something that big. You know what would be better than foreign friends, though? Lobbyist friends. The high-rolling ones. The ones that deal with the FBI for example, or the DEA. This kind of business is all about friends and connections. Junkenstein is right. If you wanna hire a stranger to do something illegal, and they reject you, then you better be making sure they're either playing for the right side, or they better be in a body bag within the week. And make sure your organization (If you're organized) isn't connected to their death. Dead potential business partners or dead previous contacts are bad for business, unless you tactically planned one to send a message.

If you're running something on the black market/deep web like he was, you should know to assume every single person that you encounter on the deep web is a fucking narc. Assume everyone is in the FBI, and you'll never do anything stupid enough to get caught. That was the first rule of the 70s-90s phone phreaker crowd, and that hasn't changed for the Deep Web crowd. This guy probably got comfortable talking to people on the Deep Web and gave a little bit too much information to one of the "Hit-men." Or was incapable of killing the rejecting "hit-men" before the end of the week (End of the week is more of a suggested amount of time. Some, if they are suspicious, might require some early retaliation, while others might just be a basic, mostly non-threatening loose end).

Keep in mind that if you think the government doesn't suspect you of the crimes you've tried to cover up, you're wrong. They don't just have a report on all of your internet and phone communications and bank accounts and everything. They also have a psychological profile that outlines behavioral tendencies and writing styles. You better be good at changing your writing style for different environments if you wanna at least stay under the radar. Most of the time, the only reason you're not in jail for what you did is because they're waiting for you to lead them to another criminal or criminal organization. Or it's because they can't use legally (Or mostly legally) obtained evidence to convict you. And if your crime is big enough, you better not be able to remember your passwords, because if you can remember it, you're kidding yourself if you think they won't get it out of you by any means necessary.

And finally, the device you're using for transactions, illegal communications, and sensitive transfers, should be amnesiac via Live Disc OS or it should be disposable, as Faust stated (Destroyed, completely, when disposed of). (FOR GOD'S FUCKING SAKE, DON'T FUCKING USE YOUR OWN WIFI THAT YOU PAY FOR. FUCK.) I wouldn't trust any encryption that the government doesn't use for top-secret communications. It just so happens the government uses AES a lot, so I would use that with [as random as you can make them] salts and seeds, as well as making sure the key is as random as you can make it, while also making it long enough for a hash cracker to be useless. As far as I know, if you can get ahold of a hash of a small enough key, you can just bruteforce the hash and get the key easily. But, because the size of any hash is cut off, only part of the key could even be recovered if you got ahold of a hash for a very long key. Or, it would be a useless chain of characters, depending on whether length had anything to do with the hash encryption algorithm. I forget exactly how that works.