Rather than spherical up a sequence of tales from the deep net, this week we’re specializing in simply the one. The story, regarding Silk Road’s most enduring thriller, is so labyrinthine it warrants recounting in full.
‘Redandwhite’ Indicted in Black and White
Silk Road is a saga that simply gained’t finish. Every few months, a brand new prosecution or a trove of freshly found clues provides additional intrigue to the deep net’s most infamous medication market. Despite the conviction of Ross Ulbricht in 2015, there stays various questions regarding his stewardship of Silk Road. One of probably the most puzzling pertains to the homicide for rent prices that Ulbricht was indicted for, regardless of proof displaying that no assassinations had been ever carried out. The arrest of James Ellingson, 42, by Canadian authorities final month, nevertheless, has shed some mild on the matter.
If the allegations are confirmed true, Ulbricht was duped and defrauded a number of occasions by Ellingson, who operated underneath a number of pseudonyms on the Silk Road market. While quite a few opsec errors Ulbricht made would doubtless have led to his arrest anyway, Ellingson, or ‘redandwhite’ to make use of one among his personas, performed a pivotal function in consigning Ulbricht to life behind bars and ruining Silk Road for the 1000’s of consumers and sellers who had performed enterprise with minimal friction up till then.
One Man With a Multitude of Handles
In 2013, redandwhite contacted Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR), as Ulbricht was recognized, providing to unravel an issue with one other consumer, Lucydrop. Lucydrop was blackmailing DPR by threatening to launch compromising info on 1000’s of Silk Road distributors. Ulbricht consented to redandwhite murdering Lucydrop, by which level DPR had info that will result in redandwhite’s arrest years later. As Canadian court docket paperwork launched earlier this month defined, “Redandwhite communicated with and received bitcoin payments from Mr. Ulbricht, in connection with purported attempts to begin selling narcotics on the Silk Road. A laptop recovered from Mr. Ulbricht contained a file labelled “save_red,” which housed multiple photographs referenced in the communications.” They continued:
The pictures had been despatched by redandwhite and consisted of packaged medication and Canadian currency. Some of the pictures confirmed a person in entrance of a constructing holding an envelope with a numerical code. Based on a comparative evaluation with Mr. Ellingson’s driver’s license, authorities have recognized him because the particular person within the {photograph}.
The most astonishing revelation to have emerged from the case is that Ellingson seems to have been the reason for and purported answer to DPR’s issues, donning many various hats to extort DPR a number of occasions over. As All Things Vice weblog summarizes, “DPR had apparently paid bitcoin value round $650,000 … to a slick-talking shyster and opened himself as much as prices of conspiracy to commit 5 new murders that had by no means taken place. Tony76 [one of redandwhite’s previous Silk Road accounts] first robbed a whole lot of Silk Road clients to the tune of six figures in April 2012, scammed them once more for the same quantity underneath the identify Lucydrop in 2013, then tried to blackmail Dread Pirate Roberts with clients’ addresses he had gathered whereas promoting as Tony76 and Lucydrop. When that failed, he extracted the cash out of Silk Road by pretending to be a hitman, finishing up the murders of himself and his alter egos.
Given the extent of deception he was up towards, each from Ellingson and from legislation enforcement, whose chief investigating officers dedicated a litany of crimes together with blackmail and extortion, Ross Ulbricht by no means stood an opportunity. A number of dangerous apples from the prison and legislation enforcement fraternities had been all it took to seal Ulbricht’s destiny.
What are your ideas on Ross Ulbricht’s conviction and on this newest twist within the Silk Road saga? Let us know within the comments part below.
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