Silk Road Boss' First Murder-For-Hire Was His Mentor's Idea
The allegation that the Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts attempted to pay for six murders has loomed over the story of that massive online drug market. How could the pseudonymous figure preaching non-violent, libertarian ideals stoop to commissioning the paid killings of half a dozen people?
Now a newly revealed chat log from the case sheds light on how the first of those paid murder attempts appears to have arisen. The logs show it was not the creator of the Silk Road who first suggested enlisting the services of a hit man, but rather his top advisor and mentor.
Earlier this week, a trove of new records from the Silk Road pre-trial hearings was unsealed, including logs of January 2013 instant-message conversations that prosecutors say were pulled from the laptop of Ross Ulbricht at the time of his arrest. In February, Ulbricht was convicted of being the Dread Pirate Roberts, Silk Road’s creator and owner. But the recorded conversations, along with the other sealed documents, had been kept secret throughout Ulbricht’s trial earlier this year to avoid compromising an investigation that led to the arrest Monday of two federal agents on corruption charges.
In the 21-page IM chat log, which occurred over the anonymous IM service Torchat, the Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts carries out conversations with his staffer Inigo, a supposed drug-dealing associate named Nob (who we now know was actually undercover DEA agent Carl Force), and a figure named Cimon, also known as Variety Jones, whom Ulbricht had described in his journal as his “mentor” and advisor. The conversations revolve around $350,000 worth of bitcoin that had been stolen from the Silk Road, which Dread Pirate Roberts and Inigo believed had been taken by Silk Road staffer Curtis Clark Green. (In fact, it seems the bitcoins had been allegedly stolen by rogue Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges, using Green’s account—one of the criminal charges for which Bridges was arrested Monday.)
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-boss-first-murder-attempt-mentors-idea/
