Dread Pirate Roberts, or Ross Ulbricht, was publicized as the face behind the Silk Road drugs website.
The goal of the federal agents involved in the Silk Road case appears to have been their own financial gain and career advancement.
Their goal was not to catch a dangerous criminal, but rather to create one.
Ulbricht was portrayed by law enforcers as having been a violent criminal, but the evidence seems to indicate the following.
a) He was a libertarian pacifist.
b) He was inclined to drug use but had no tendencies towards violence and took firm measures to ensure violence was not encouraged on the website. A person who has questions should read what he actually wrote and compare it to what the federal agents involved in the case claim he wrote.
c) There is a big question about whether those federal agents may have simply used him as the apparent manager of the business that they were running.
It isn’t clear if the following wallet has coins stolen by federal agents. Most likely corrupt law enforcement personnel control tens or hundreds of thousands of bitcoin, and that may be the case behind the following digital wallet.
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1933phfhK3ZgFQNLGSDXvqCn32k2buXY8a
https://mobile.twitter.com/socrates1024/status/1036609823486472193
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/9bfnff/near_1b_are_currently_on_the_move_from_a_silkroad/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/9ceb5v/1b_bitcoins_on_the_move_owner_transfers_100m_to/
https://trademarketsnews.com/thousands-of-bitcoins-on-silk-road-related-addresses-began-to-move/
There are indications that he was manipulated into starting numerous criminal activities by a still unidentified federal agent *not any agent referred to in the Wired articles below* who acted as his mentor before the website began, and used the investigation for personal financial gain. That agent is apart from the two federal agents who were caught stealing during the investigation. The third corrupt federal agent may have been given a pass because, aside from ruining the case, exposing his activities would have had far reaching effects on the image of law enforcement.
~A huge sum of money was being paid regularly to ‘hackers’ who were supposedly attacking ‘his’ website. Most likely this ‘hacking ransom’ was in fact the ‘income’ side of the Silk Road for the several federal agents who ran the lucrative project. The few who were caught, two known publicly, were almost certainly out of the loop and simply assigned to the case because they could be trusted to be crooked, if necessary. A careful examination of the relationships between the federal agents involved in this case would probably uncover a complex web of corruption that appears to be widespread.~
d) It has been shown, beyond a reasonable doubt, that individuals involved in prosecuting this case did alter evidence, including chat logs and digital records. So the case appears to have started with a few federal agents seeing an opportunity to profit by manufacturing a criminal, and finished with those agents having full liberty to change evidence to suit them. The two corrupt federal agents who were caught most likely were not aware of the corrupt agent, or group of agents, who initially cultivated the project.
https://www.wired.com/2016/11/ross-ulbrichts-lawyers-point-another-corrupt-agent-silk-road-case/
https://www.wired.com/2017/05/silk-road-creator-ross-ulbricht-loses-life-sentence-appeal/
https://www.wired.com/2015/01/heres-secret-silk-road-journal-laptop-ross-ulbricht/
https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agorism
https://www.wired.com/2015/12/the-untold-story-of-silk-roads-rise-and-fall/ or https://web.archive.org/web/20160226200114/https://www.wired.com/2015/12/the-untold-story-of-silk-roads-rise-and-fall/
A person can like or dislike drugs. I do not care for drugs, aside from tobacco, but this case is not really about whether a person should or shouldn’t care for drugs. Rather it’s about whether a gang of corrupt individuals should be able to use the disguise of “serving the public” to build elaborate careers for themselves, and in some cases steal vast amounts of money.
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There is one central piece of evidence, a fact, that throws doubt on the substance of the case made against Ullbricht by a group of federal agents. Many people are aware of this fact, it involves so called “dark net” privacy, and it strongly indicates that Ullbricht was managed by corrupt federal agents literally from the beginning, for their personal gain. There are reasons not to spell out this detail explicitly but eventually it will lead to a reexamination of the case and hopefully discredit the predatory law enforcement mentality behind it.
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Individual government agents with high paying prestigious jobs tried to portray Ullbricht as a dangerous individual, but his twitter account https://mobile.twitter.com/dreadpiratesr?lang=en written entirely behind what he believed to be a cloak of anonymity, shows more accurately what his priorities were. He may not have the blunt force of a large group of law enforcers, but he does have basic individual integrity which those law enforcers do not.
~A brief look at his Twitter posts also may explain the timing of his arrest.~
~
When I first read about this case and the supposed hit man services, child pornography, illegal weapons etc supposedly offered on the site, my first thought was that he should pay a steep price.
As it turns out, more and more of the government case is turning out to be carefully crafted fiction.
More details about that case can be found at https://freeross.org/
One of the takeaway points from this case is that while Ulbricht had money and publicity to try to defend himself, there are many people attacked by gangster cops who don’t have his resources. If federal agents can go unchallenged in creating such a ridiculous case against him, and if the system offers no legitimate recourse for him, then the system is even more broken for those who have less ability to defend themselves than he has.
~
Interesting to note the disparity between the publicity and sentences of nonviolent offenders and those of ‘law enforcement officers’ arrested for more serious crimes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Connolly_(FBI)
FBI agent John Connolly was only arrested when it seemed likely there would be publicity about his actions, as is usually the case with arrests of ‘law enforcement agents’. After he was arrested there was an obvious slant given to publicity in his case that seemed to minimize his crimes.
Ulbricht, of course, received a much more serious sentence than the corrupt FBI agent.
~
Worth noting too that
a) Oftentimes federal agents are given ultra mild sentences, or even passes on serving their sentence, under the guise of providing some service, including as a witness. Publicity forces a trial and sentencing, but whether the sentence is actually served is left to the discretion of those same individuals who protect corrupt agents.
b) Connolly did serve some time for his corruption at a low security “summer camp” prison, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Correctional_Complex,_Butner the same facility used for wealthy criminals like Madoff. According to Wikipedia “As of 2018, Connolly's name does not appear in the Florida Department of Corrections database. This suggests that he is being held at Florida State Prison under an alias, which would not be unusual for a former FBI agent.” Actually, it would be unusual. If the goal were to incarcerate him secretively the facility he was at would not be listed. The goal more likely is to obscure the fact that Connolly is either not incarcerated or is in a noncustodial situation approved by a judge. Ross Ulbricht is incarcerated at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Penitentiary,_Florence_High, a high security federal penitentiary.
c) Connolly, an FBI agent involved in extensive corruption, was charged with only a tiny fraction of the crimes he committed. Reading the disgusting excuses provided by his colleagues, and comparing them with law enforcement comments about Ulbricht makes law enforcers in both cases look like jackasses.
d) Also interesting, and coincidental, that both the Connolly and Ulbricht cases involve a number of ‘law enforcers’ making large amounts of extracurricular cash. “During Connolly's trial, Bulger's right-hand man, Kevin Weeks, testified that Bulger boasted that he had corrupted six FBI agents and more than 20 Boston police officers. At holiday time, Bulger stuffed envelopes with cash, Weeks testified.” The key corrupt federal agents in both cases appear not to have been exposed.
~
There is no question that there are FBI agents who believe their organization is decent, perhaps here and there a little corruption. But the truth is that law enforcement agencies operating that way are inherently corrupt. It becomes a game between the established corrupt powers within the organization and the “fresh blood”, the naive agents who will either be drawn into the corruption, however peripherally, until they reach the top of their level of trustworthiness, or be sacrificed to keep the organization alive.
https://www.upi.com/Feature-FBI-testified-on-behalf-of-hitman/24931014237792/
Below, the full text of that article, in case it is removed.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- In Santa Rosa, Calif., during the summer of 1970, Joe "The Animal" Barboza murdered small-time thug Clay Wilson, while under the protection of the federal witness protection program.
As this was the 26th murder committed by Barboza that the FBI knew about, two FBI agents and a U.S. Attorney were dispatched from Boston -- where Barboza had been a key witness in three major organized crime trials -- by the U.S. Attorney General to help with the Wilson murder trial. But the agents came to help with the defense.
Everyone involved admits it was an airtight case against Barboza -- at the time using the alias Joe Baron. The prosecutors had detailed witness statements and the testimony of a jailhouse informant that Barboza had admitted to the crime. The details of the murder supplied by the informant turned out to be completely accurate.
And with the help of character testimony and consultations from the federal agents -- FBI Special Agents H. Paul Rico and Dennis Condon and then-U.S. Attorney Edward F. Harrington -- for the defense, Barboza was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to five years to life for the murder. He was later paroled in just over three years and released from a minimum-security prison.
Adding to the debacle of sentencing a man to three years for his 26th murder, while the federal government actively assisted the defendant, investigators now suspect that much of his original testimony -- which earned him the loyalty of federal law enforcement -- was false and led to four innocent men being sentenced for a 1965 murder. Two men received the death penalty -- later commuted to life -- and died in prison. Two others served 30 and 34 years respectively before being released.
Chairman Dan Burton, R-Ind., of the House Government Reform Committee is convinced that not only did the FBI and federal prosecutors assist Barboza in his defense on the Wilson murder charges, but also knowingly allowed Barboza to falsely testify on several occasions and send men they knew were innocent to jail.
"Joe Barboza went on trial for murder in 1971," Burton said in a hearing last week. "Here you have a known mob hitman. The FBI believed that he'd already committed 26 murders. The evidence against Barboza in the 1971 trial was overwhelming. The detectives and even Barboza's own lawyer testified that it was a slam-dunk capital murder case. And the FBI pulled out all the stops to try to help get Joe Barboza off. They flew out to California They worked with the defense team. They testified on Barboza's behalf."
Over the course of two days of hearings, the committee heard testimony on the case against Barboza in the 1971 murder case from Martin Miller, the public defender for Barboza during the trial, Edwin Cameron, the Sonoma County District Attorney's office investigator who assisted in making the state's case, and Tim Brown, a detective with the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office.
On the second day of hearings, the committee called retired FBI agent H. Paul Rico and Edward Harrington, now senior federal district judge in Massachusetts. Rico refused to testify, citing his constitutional protection against self-incrimination. Harrington discussed the process by which the federal government decided to testify on behalf of a multiple murderer.
Rico and Condon are at the center of a Justice Department taskforce investigating a slew of allegations about the FBI's handling of informants in New England and California. Rico is also a target of an investigation into corruption at World Jai Lai, a company that he joined as head of security after his retirement from the FBI in the mid-1970s.
Cameron testified about the effect that Condon, Rico and Harrington's testimony on Barboza's behalf had on their case, which he claims forced them to offer the lenient plea bargain to Barboza.
"The FBI at the time was considered pretty sacrosanct," he said. "They had damaged our case to the point that we didn't think the jury would give us a first degree murder verdict," because "having the FBI there and the color of their authority painting him as honest and truthful."
Miller recalled the FBI agents and Harrington explaining their motivation for coming to the aid of Barboza, whose previous testimony had helped convict several topflight mobsters in New England -- including Raymond Patriarca, head of the New England crime empire.
“They were worried that if Barboza were given death (for the Wilson murder) that he'd recant his previous testimony (against Patriarca and others)," he said. "So they would help him in anyway they could."
"The better they treated informants in the witness protection program, the more people would join them," he added. "This they made perfectly clear to me at the time."
Brown testified that, ironically, the sheriff's office had requested help itself during the case from the FBI, because of information that the Mafia might be looking to kill Barboza and others in their county during the trial.
"We were told that people had been sent from the East Coast to Santa Rosa to kill our witnesses," he testified. "We sought help from the FBI, but no help ever came."
When federal law enforcement did arrive in California, the witnesses testified that they were all shaken to discover that they had come to help protect Barboza, not to convict him. Miller testified that the agents and Harrington actually met with his client before meeting with local law enforcement and insisted that the defense attorney not be present when they met with his client.
When asked by the committee if he found this unusual, he was clear that such behavior had never occurred before in a trial, but that he had been convinced that the agents were there to help him.
"I would have gone out of my mind (normally), but they seemed so intent on keeping him from the death penalty that I figured they wouldn't hurt (my case)," he said.
Harrington testified that his testimony came at the request of the U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell for three reasons: Barboza had been promised that his cooperation in the previous cases would be brought to the attention of judges during sentencing, that protecting Barboza would help develop the new witness protection program and because the government wanted to show potential informants that they would be protected in exchange for testimony.
Despite no evidence that the Wilson murder was in any way connected to Barboza's previous testimony as an informant, Harrington pushed his superiors to be allowed to testify -- along with Rico and Condon -- on Barboza's behalf. Prosecutors and even Barboza's own attorney had testified that Barboza killed Wilson to steal $250,000 worth of bonds and other valuables that Wilson himself had recently stolen.
In a Justice Department memo obtained by United Press International, Harrington urges his superiors to allow the testimony on the hitman's behalf.
“It is my judgment that the federal officials involved should respond to (Barboza's) subpoena as it is essential that the government fulfill its commitment to Baron to do all within its power to insure that he suffers no harm as a result of his cooperation with the federal government," the memo says.
Other Justice Department documents from the period that show the instructions given to the three men in regards to their testimony were released by the committee. In them, Mitchell grants permission to testify, under the condition that the testimony cannot reveal the identity or information of other informants, or any other information from Justice Department filed without expressed permission from the attorney general. The testimony was limited to warnings the FBI had given Barboza about Mafia efforts to kill him, and the arrest of two presumed Mafia figures from Boston, who traveled to the San Francisco area in January, 1970, presumably to kill Barboza. No mention of testifying to Barboza's honesty and character were made in the memos.
As the testimony unfolded, Burton accused the Justice Department of ignoring the threat Barboza posed as a killer and as an unreliable witness.
“Joe Barboza was a cold-blooded killer," he said. "They gave him a new identity. They put him in the middle of an unsuspecting community. They put him on the payroll. And he killed again. At that point they should have locked him up and thrown away the key. They did just the opposite. They did everything they could to get him back on the street. Joe Barboza was murdered himself in 1976. I have to wonder, if he hadn't been killed, how many murders would they have let him commit before the Justice Department decided to reign him in?"
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Interesting to note that one of the corrupt FBI agents involved in the nonsense above was commissioner of the Massachusetts state police. Do state police in Massachusetts really need organized crime to help pay their bills?
“As of 2017, the Massachusetts State Police average pay for a state trooper was $145,413, with three troopers earning over $300,000, and 245 troopers (12% of the workforce) earning over $200,000. A trooper's base pay is augmented by working multiple details, directing traffic, overtime shifts, or providing security at special events.
Perks and extra benefits
Along with their base salary and overtime, troopers have other benefits to include:
- Troopers receive hazard bonus pay of $700 annually.
- Troopers who commute more than 75 miles or more miles in one way from home receive $75 each week.
- State police employees who work in civilian clothing for 10 days or more each calendar month receive a stipend of $62.50 per month.
- State police employees who work a five-day workweek are compensated an extra 17 days off per year. This time off is to align with employees who work four days on duty, then get two days off.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_State_Police
~
Researching the names in the above article will lead you into a string of different cases in other states as well that all have one thing in common, investigators that bounce back and forth between corruption and incompetence. Then, after a career of profiting from shoddy policing, these gangsters promote each other as heroes and authorities.
http://victimsofcrime .org/our-programs/dna-resource-center/profiles/mike-huff-and-mike-nance https://web.archive.org/web/20160408004656/http://victimsofcrime.org/our-programs/dna-resource-center/profiles/mike-huff-and-mike-nance
http://www.tulsadetective .com/Experts/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160420130650/https://tulsadetective.com/Experts/
http://fbistudies.com/2016/06/14/the-paul-rico-case/
They have spent their careers using locals as pawns in their theater https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/courts/michael-lucas-sentenced-in-failed-plot-to-murder-tulsa-police/image_e9fc69de-7b91-5034-b925-7a4ed9900259.html
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Any person who is a good researcher might be able to connect the dots and see how the FBI corruption in Massachusetts connects to FBI corruption in Alaska and elsewhere, and how that relates to the topic of this website, material which will not be added for a while.
A clue https://aboutthemafia.com/tag/dennis-condon