Ulbricht Admits Seized Bitcoins Are His and Wants Them Back 243
An anonymous reader writes with the latest news about the aftermath of the Silk Road shutdown "From the article: 'Ulbricht ... said in a notarised December 11 statement that he believes the virtual currency should be returned to him because Bitcoins are "not subject to seizure" by federal law. Ulbricht, 29, now admits the Bitcoin fortune is his — even though he's previously denied any wrongdoing regarding Silk Road and claimed through his lawyer that the feds arrested the wrong guy.' So not only has he now confirmed his link to the site, and confirmed the money is his, but also means that a few precedents will be set. Is it seizable? Is it just 'copying data?'"
Relatedly, three alleged moderators of Silk Road were indicted on Friday.
Yeah.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah.... Don't worry... (Score:3)
He'll virtually be sentenced to bit-jail.
Re:The master owns everything, including your *LIF (Score:4, Insightful)
he believes the virtual currency should be returned to him because Bitcoins are "not subject to seizure" by federal law.
See the bolded part?
Both you and Ulbricht don't get it. What you believe has no bearing on reality.
Ulbricht isn't claiming that the government violated the constitution. He is claiming Bitcoins aren't property and thus can't be seized under federal law. That is for a judge to decide, but lawyers don't think he will prevail because intangible property is still property and federal law allows for the seizure property that are the products, or purchased with the products, of federal criminal acts.
Unless you were at Waco, you don't know what happened at Waco.
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The Government can do what it pleases. The Law does not apply to the police, FBI, Feds, etc...
He has ZERO chance of getting anything back.
I know people that had servers illegally seized in a data center raid, they were scooped up with everything else, they did not get anything back bot a box of parts that were not even theirs.
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Since it's a financial crime, I would expect the Secret Service to be handling it and hold the property. The FBI does the investigation but not the arrest and seizure of property. Source - I knew this guy [textfiles.com], who got busted by them for piracy (albeit not well - friend of a friend kind of knew him).
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True when you operate with the mode that everyone is a criminal, everything is legal.
Re:The master owns everything, including your *LIF (Score:5, Funny)
Unless you were at Waco, you don't know what happened at Waco.
You mean what happens in Waco stays in Waco?
Re:The master owns everything, including your *LIF (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you were at Waco, you don't know what happened at Waco.
Bullshit. Even the US government doesn't deny that children were burned to death. They do deny their culpability, but it isn't terribly hard to see that as misdirection.
Even if the footage (which I watched on live TV at the time) of the tank pushing in the walls and the fire starting not to long afterwards was misleading, the government were the ones with all the resources and time necessary to handle the situation in a safer way. They decided that their time was worth more than the risk to the children and that's the best possible light you can put on the government's actions, all other interpretations are much less favorable.
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The government has a bunch of fuckups working for it. They botched a hostage situation. They are partly responsible for the deaths of the children inside because they could have handled the situation better. The other part of the blame goes to the religious nutjobs who don't feel like they need to obey the law and would rather endanger a bunch of kids and have a shootout with the government.
This is quite different than saying the government assumes the authority to kill whoever they want without any dang
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Bullshit. Even the US government doesn't deny that children were burned to death. They do deny their culpability, but it isn't terribly hard to see that as misdirection.
Even if the footage (which I watched on live TV at the time) of the tank pushing in the walls and the fire starting not to long afterwards was misleading, the government were the ones with all the resources and time necessary to handle the situation in a safer way. They decided that their time was worth more than the risk to the children and that's the best possible light you can put on the government's actions, all other interpretations are much less favorable.
Hundreds of guns, several agents shot and possibly dead. Agreed the ATF was heavy handed, but it was quite understandable in that situation.
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He is claiming Bitcoins aren't property and thus can't be seized under federal law.
If they're not "property" then they can't belong to anybody, ie. him.
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He is claiming Bitcoins aren't property and thus can't be seized under federal law. .
Catch 22: If he believes Bitcoins can't be seized because they aren't property then he can't believe that there was actually a seizure of his Bitcoins.
Non-Sequitur argument (Score:2)
Ulbricht isn't claiming that the government violated the constitution. He is claiming Bitcoins aren't property and thus can't be seized under federal law.
An argument which is a non-sequitur. If they aren't property then he can't very well claim they are his. You can't own something that isn't property. If they are an asset (which they are since they can be used to purchase useful goods and services) then they are by definition property and can be seized.
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Huh. If they're not property then they weren't his to begin with, were they?
Seems like a pretty shaky base to start from. Methinks someone's greed overwhelmed their common sense. Or perhaps he's been pinned to the wall hard enough that the extra evidence won't make things any worse, so he may as well at least try to get his money back.
Then again maybe he's got a drug cartel gunning for him for losing their money, in which case he may have decided they're scarier than the federal prosecutors. Yes he prob
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I can bold random words too. It makes my stuff much more important.
There is no federal law that makes it illegal to seize bitcoins. It is an asset just like any other. The fact that it is electronic has nothing to do with it at all
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I can bold random words too. It makes my stuff much more important.
There is no federal law that makes it illegal to seize bitcoins. It is an asset just like any other. The fact that it is electronic has nothing to do with it at all
To people who don't want their assets seized it does. On the other hand, some people enjoy a seized asset.
(New) Mount Carmel Center, if you will... (Score:3)
please look back to the incident that took place in Waco, Texas, USA, back in 1993.
They burn children to death.
As the folks from Waco never tire of telling you, it really didn't happen there.
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Re:The master owns everything, including your *LIF (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, let's tone down the hysteria a notch now, shall we?
Mr Ulbricht admitted to committing a crime, by facilitating the buying and selling of drugs on the Internet. Wrong move, but let us set this aside for a moment.
Bitcoins can be considered (and, indeed, are presented everywhere) as a currency. Hence, they can be considered as an ill-gotten gain.
While I am not a lawyer, I am pretty much certain that every country under the sun has got a law in its books that says, essentially: "Thou shall not profit from illegal activities" or some such.
This is prefectly constitutional, it respects the 4th amendment of the Constitution of the USA, and I am pretty sure it has been challenged many times in front of the Supreme Court, and upheld every time.
Since Bitcoin is a currency, and that said currency has been obtained from an illegal activity, it represents a profit from an illegal activity, and, therefore, can be and should be seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, a branch of the Department of Justice of the Government of the United States of America. The same thing would happen if, say, he had been paid in Euros or Yens (or any other currency, really) instead of Bitcoins.
If Mr Ulbricht is cleared of all charges - good luck with that since he pretty much admitted committing or facilitating an illegal activity - then, of course, the Bitcoins he has stashed should be returned to him by the FBI, probably with a little note attached saying: "Sorry! Here is your crypto currency" (again, good luck with that).
Should drug selling and buying be considered legal? Why not, you may have some arguments for the legalisation of drugs (See: Marijuana, legal use of), but, in the mean-time, it remains an illegal activity.
Hence, I believe Mr Ulbricht (a) will never see ''his'' Bitcoins again, (b) is about to learn a thing or two about the US legal process and (c) spend quite a number of years in a Federal Correctional Facility (or Prison). Whis is as it should be, since the guy comes off as a complete amateur.
And, while I agree that the ATF has badly bungled the whole Waco fiasco, I have zero compassion for religious nuts.
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Big assumption: BitCoin is a currency. If it is then it is confiscated as proceeds of illegal acts. If it isn't then it is an asset, just like converting dollars into works of art, shares, et alia and is *not* confiscated except as means of paying fines. They can't have it both ways.
That BitCoin is "presented" as a currency is immaterial (pun intended) as it can also be "presented" as barter.
Re:The master owns everything, including your *LIF (Score:5, Informative)
Except that ill-gotten gains are always subject to seizure. Look up US Federal drug forfeiture laws some time. The feds can take anything that's the proceed of or used to facilitate drug crimes. It doesn't matter what form the assets are in. If the feds can prove they were bought with drug money, they can seize them. If they were used as an active part of the trade, the feds can seize them. Since the bitcoins appear to be both, it's going to be pretty easy for the feds to get them.
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However, you're certainly right that Dollars are bartered with, as they are not the currency everywhere where they're actually in use. I know I've bartered a mixed bag of different paper not-currencies-here when I had problems with plastic when travelling.
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OK, fine, Bitcoins are an asset. But, you admit it yourself, assets can be seized.
And, in the case of a criminal proceeding, assets will be seized because you are not allowed to profit from an illegal activity.
Hence, the distinction between currencies and assets is moot: they will be seized, because they both were acquired through aiding or engaging in an illegal activity.
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Doesn't matter if they're currency; if they're barter they're still subject to seizure and forfeiture. If you gave your dealer a watch for your drugs, the watch is now going to be seized when he gets busted.
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I'm an atheist and I shake my head at the incredulity of religious belief. But being a religious nut should not rule out people from being treated with compassion, even if only out of sense of enlightened self-interest.
The Feds killed a bunch of innocent people at Waco, including kids. The direct blowback from this was Timothy McVeigh who had no qualms blowing up a building including a day ca
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The adults weren't completely innocent. They were served a legal search warrant and instead of the doing the sane thing, they hold up inside their compound. After surrounded by police a sane person would surrender. They were delusional and caused the deaths of their own children by not letting the cops serve a warrant.
If the cops come to my house to serve a search warrant and I hold up inside with guns and don't let them in their is only one end result. Eventually they are coming in and if I hold out
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Not an expert on Waco, but didn't that become a fiery death trap due to a combination of; "Stupid overbearing FBI" coupled with "Stupid zealots sitting on munitions and flammable objects"?
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Im glad Im not the only one who found his statement chilling.
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The Feds killed a bunch of innocent people at Waco, including kids. The direct blowback from this was Timothy McVeigh who had no qualms blowing up a building including a day care center under the notion that anyone who worked for the Federal Government, including their families, was complicit in the Waco atrocity/debacle/fuckup/whatever.
If you are going to say "The Feds killed the kids at Waco". Why not take it one step further and say that they also committed the Oklahoma city bombing since they caused Timothy McVeigh to commit the bombing with their actions at Waco?
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Federal Bureau of Investigations, a branch of the Department of Justice of the Government of the United States of America.
FBI. It's called the FBI. You could've just said FBI and everyone would have known what you were talking about.
the ATF
What? What's that? The Asia Task Force? The American Type Founders? The Atlantic Theatre Festival?
I'd mod you down, but there is no -1: Pomp
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But while I recognize that Silk Road was illegal -- now that I've grown up a bit, I don't think it's so wrong.
What's killing us in this country is a lot of things that should be illegal, are legal. High compound interest loans. Money influencing votes. Hiring of mercenaries for war. Private contractors with tanks. FBI unaware of wrong-doing on Wall Street. I've got a LONG list of grievances.
I see a legal system that comes down hard on someone with a bag of ween but Wachovia and now HSBC got caught money lau
Perfect is the enemy of good (Score:2)
What exactly are we protecting people from?
We are protecting them from themselves AND we are protecting ourselves from them. We restrict availability of certain drugs because used improperly they are dangerous to the individual taking them AND because people who are cognitively impaired by drugs and/or addicted to drugs tend to affect other people in negative ways. Do I really need to explain that someone addicted to cocaine is pretty likely to make all sorts of bad decisions that will not only affect themselves but will probably hurt people aroun
Arrogant power (and bigotry) (Score:2)
I fixed that for ya, bud. With all respect, please take your demonization and arrogant intolerance, and stuff it.
I don't know if Mr. Ulbricht's bitcoins have been improperly seized or not, but I do know that property [newyorker.com] is seized [bradenton.com] all the time [fee.org] in the US from people who have not been found guilty of a crime. Funny, I don't find authorization for anything of the
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"And, while I agree that the ATF has badly bungled the whole Waco fiasco, I have zero compassion for religious nuts."
did you really just say that as long as the government potentially-kills-thru-negligence the women and children of "religious nuts", its ok???
as opposed to what? the children of left-leaning journalists?
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Here are some wise words from legal experts: when dealing with the police, just keep your mouth shut.
Let me say this again: Keep. Your. Mouth. Shut.
And whatever you do, do not admit, in front of cops, that your bitcoins came from an illegal activity. I expect better than that from Dread Pirate Robert!
Nay, I DEMAND better legal knowledge from the Dread Pirate Robert! Shoot, man, the right to remain silent is a part of the freaking US Constitution!! Fifth Amendment and all that.
Here is a guy whou KNEW he was
Just copying data? (Score:2)
When one song is put online for illegal download, it's potentially worth $700k, still a lot more than one bitcoin, so I guess this is not "just copying".
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So the government should pay for all potential copies of his money! ;D
Arrogance (Score:5, Insightful)
The foolish arrogance of geeks is sometimes astounding.
Re:Arrogance (Score:5, Interesting)
indeed.
I say - give him his bitcoins back, with a wimpy apology. And then refuse to allow him access to computers whilst he's in prison because of the computer-network related offences he just admitted to.
And then imprison him more for evading taxes on his bitcoin income.
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That's the rub, in claiming them he has admitted a massive tax fraud that could put him behind bars in prison for just as many years. Since the bitcoins are a product of tax fraud they could be seized on that basis alone. They won't give the bitcoins back though, because he could turn them over to third parties and use them to do things like put out hits on witnesses - the thing that they shut down his operation for in the first place.
Remember it was taxes that did Al Capone in, everything else he had a han
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And do you think we all should have to prove that we got our money legally? Please consider carefully. If so, do you think we should have to prove we are innocent if charged with a crime? (Hint: our Common Law legal system says no)
Actually, Al Capone wasn't convicted for failure to prove that his money was gotten legally. He was convicted for not payi
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The root of the issue goes back to he had income that he did not report. It was the lifestyle and assets he had which proved that he had income beyond his means. Without any conceivable legal means to use to show as proof to justify the lifestyle and assets he had he was nailed for the tax evasion charges. The point very much stands as I made it.
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They are extremely volatile price wise, on this we agree.
Hypothetically speaking if they were pristine and purely an investment that went up, would that count as income before they were sold? I do know enough to know that such a claim could easily be proven by looking at the block chain to see if they were pristine bitcoins that had never been traded. It would be interesting to hear from a tax expert on that question as a number of slashdotters will have mined them back in the day and have sat on them.
If he
Shirley, Dread has a Brobdingnagian Defense Fund (Score:2)
There is a better probability my brother-in-law will leave Jennifer Anniston beneath the Christmas tree for me tomorrow than the Feds returning this seizure.
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Better proposal. (Score:2)
Give them all to me!
In all seriousness, I imagine the bitcoins are currently in a state of limbo - if the government were to spend them it could legitimise the new currency, something that would make a lot of officials uncomfortable. Most likely the wallet will be retained until the case is done and whatever legally mantained retention of evidence is passed, then just deleted, effectively removing the coins from circulation forever.
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If it is encrypted, can they force him to turn over they keys?
Sure they can. Wash Post [washingtonpost.com]
This time the interrogator will be, surprise, another cop!
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Seized assets that are legal to hold are auctioned off, things like cars and houses. Seized assets that are not legal to hold, such as inventory of drugs, are destroyed.
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Do bitcoins qualify as 'assets?' While economically things are worth whatever people will pay, politically even selling them for cash could be problematic.
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Yes they qualify as assets. They're certainly not liabilities.
When the Feds bust a drug dealer, they might find an expensive car, and a large stash of heroin. They are certainly OK to auction the car, and certainly not OK to auction the heroin. Bitcoins falls in the middle somewhere. We don't know yet whether it is OK to auction them off.
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Heroin and other drugs have (street) value, and perhaps the government could get a pretty penny by selling them. The reason the government doesn't, moral issues aside, is because it's illegal to sell or even posses them, so there's
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I agree that it is not illegal to possess bitcoin, however I am less certain that it is legal to sell them.
For example, it is perfectly legal to possess a 401(k) pension plan, but unless you are appropriately authorised by the relevant authorities, you can't sell them. I suspect it is the same for bitcoins, except that it probably isn't possible to get the appropriate authorisations to sell them at the moment.
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They are not a thing - you can't sell them. You are effectively selling a service - signing a particular transaction record with a cryptographic key. If this is an illegal service, then being a notary public is probably illegal too.
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What I wonder about is if the Feds have just the wallet, or access to the coins inside? This is similar to having a PGP encrypted file, versus the file and its decryption key.
With just the wallet, the coins are pretty much taken out of the BitCoin ecosystem. With the wallet + access to spend coins, the coins can be considered usable assets for auction or spending.
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For the bitcoins deposited by customers on the Silk Road website, they have access to the coins inside, and they transferred them to their own wallet. For DPR's personal stash of bitcoins, they only have access to the wallet.
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Thank you for the clarification.
This poses an interesting item, and it might be something worth noting. Always have a backup of one's wallet, preferably in multiple places. This way, a loss of a machine doesn't mean the coins are lost forever to the aether.
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They are spendable. They were spent (transferred) to the FBI.
Argument? (Score:2)
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Re:Argument? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahhhh! However the hard drive is also evidence against him in a criminal trial. This means the contents should be available to him as a matter of discovery. If he has to answer for the contents of the drive, he needs to be able to have the same data they do to defend himself.
I lived with someone who did computer forensics for the defense at a trial. He had to install a lock on the office door for that, and he had many binders of reports. He also was provided images of all computers that were seized. Full images. (complete with malware!)
Its an interesting argument. The wallets are just data; data being used as evidence against him. They are not the bitcoins themselves. I would be surprised if there is any real direct precedent for this. The very files he needs and should be entitled to for the purpose of his defence, also necessarily give him control over the bitcoins....there is no separation between the two.
It will be interesting to see how these arguments go. It may in fact be that bitcoins perform an end run around existing federal law. It certainly will make me laugh if this works.
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Ahhhh! However the hard drive is also evidence against him in a criminal trial. This means the contents should be available to him as a matter of discovery. If he has to answer for the contents of the drive, he needs to be able to have the same data they do to defend himself.
But then, if he is given access to the contents and sells or trades some of the bitcoins, that would be considered destruction of evidence. So even if he is given access to them, he cannot use them.
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How is it destruction of evidence? The evidence is all still there. Maybe, but I don't think they have to resort to that; of course IANAL; I see no reason they couldn't order him not to transfer bitcoins from those addresses, which would put him in violation of an order if he did it.
Can't imagine why the court wouldn't order that, which may be why he is trying to specifically argue up front that they can't be seized.
settled by child porn etc cases, he can examine (Score:2)
Routinely, if allowing the defendant to copy the evidence presents problems, they are allowed to examine the data but not copy it. Child porn cases are a well known example.
Of course it's the same for any evidence that isn't data - OJ wasn't allowed to take the bloody glove home with him. The defense team is allowed to examine prosecution evidence, there's clearly no right to take it.
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The thing I find absolutely amazing is he had no emergency backup of his wallets. They could be encrypted, put on a usb stick and buried. Any number of ways he could have retained the ability to regain control of his bitcoins despite seizure of the computers.
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That's why the FBI have moved the bitcoin already from addresses under DPRs control to addresses under theirs.
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There are people who have tried very similar arguments when the RIAA/BSA/MPAA came a-knocking and lost that case overwhelmingly in civil court.
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Well, intellectual property is also intangible in a sense, and the courts dispute who has a right to a particular piece of IP all the time.
Good luck with that arguement. (Score:2)
Seeing as you are going to have to prove how you got that much money worth of bitcoins, without tying your self to the criminal activity that went on thru Silk Road.
I don't see him getting his bitcoins back, but I guess if he figures he's probably going to jail for Silk Road, there isn't any harm in trying to get his bitcoins back.
because the flea market isn't designed for pot (Score:2)
Silk Road was clearly designed and promoted as a way to sell drugs and engage in other illegal activity. Same as the difference between a hotel and a whore house.
Sure, let's give it back to him (Score:2)
It's not as if he'd use it for anything bad like having people killed or anything. He's never done that before.
Still an idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
My opinion that the less than Dread Pirate Roberts is a massive idiot has now been reinforced in a way I never would have imagined. The demand is tantamount to the drug lord demanding the feds return the hundred million dollars that could only have come from selling 100 kilos of cocaine many times over.
He hasn't got any possible legal pretense to justifying having the money and all it's going to do is prove his guilt. This idiot ought to look at the cartels and organized crime worldwide where they pointedly have this process called laundering money so that they can have at least have a pretense of legitimacy for their claims. No jury in the world is going to buy that this guy made tens of millions of dollars day trading bitcoin without a paper trail.
I haven't seen a single thing about the silk road operation that did anything other than prove the man was an idiot from inception through the present day. Why the hell are people defending this guy, just because he ran a trading site for drugs? The people who were deluded into thinking they were safe on silk road are being arrested, the intelligence gained was an incredible coup and likely the only reason it lasted as long as it did until the guy started trying to trade bitcoins for murder.
If you want to defend legalizing drugs, than make your argument for that, but don't defend one of the biggest idiots the Internet has ever seen.
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"The demand is tantamount to the drug lord demanding the feds return the hundred million dollars that could only have come from selling 100 kilos of cocaine many times over."
no, there are many ways to make money. The feds need to prove the money came from selling drugs on the black market.
"He hasn't got any possible legal pretense to justifying having the money"
how do you know? Maybe he made it selling bitcoin high and buying them low.
"No jury in the world is going to buy that this guy made tens of millions
Re:Still an idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
Your an idiot without any idea of how the law works. So let me point you in the right direction with some links that didn't come from wikipedia.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/forfeiture [cornell.edu]
http://www.mackinac.org/1274 [mackinac.org]
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforcement-bulletin/april-2012/money-laundering-and-asset-forfeiture [fbi.gov]
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/white_collar/asset-forfeiture [fbi.gov]
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=19&cad=rja&ved=0CHcQFjAIOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.drugpolicy.org%2FdocUploads%2FAsset_Forfeiture_Briefing.pdf&ei=y6e5UofjNeGqyAGxxoHABQ&usg=AFQjCNH69cfy5T2Ayp8TL9L38XZJ4VPCcw&sig2=g3-gNZLWLpcJMyhtBipLCg [google.com]
But hey, it's not like there isn't precedent going back centuries for doing this.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512253265073870 [wsj.com]
Even if he somehow could get out of the drug dealer and murder for hire charges he would still have the problem of proving how he legitimately got the money and why he didn't pay taxes on it. Penalties for failing to report tens of millions of dollars in income could easily put him in prison for a decades and would still result in the loss of the bitcoins because he can't prove any legitimate means why which he got them.
He admitted an entirely new set of felonies around taxes just to try to claim the bitcoins back. Again, he is one of the biggest idiots that the Internet has ever known.
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Even if he somehow could get out of the drug dealer and murder for hire charges he would still have the problem of proving how he legitimately got the money and why he didn't pay taxes on it. Penalties for failing to report tens of millions of dollars in income could easily put him in prison for a decades and would still result in the loss of the bitcoins because he can't prove any legitimate means why which he got them.
I assume he will claim he mined them (which could very well be true - an early adopter could've easily mined that many - although it will be interesting to see how the argument will be countered with block chain analysis) and that they aren't taxable until the gain in value is realised (by selling them for dollar).
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If he mined them the block chain would provide that information in a heartbeat as it records it's entire history. If he has a pristine block chain than he could argue that they were mined and not from the proceeds of the crime.
I think the odds of that are very low though for two reasons. The first is that he used a program to tumble all the bitcoins together to make tracking for law enforcement more difficult. The problem is that by doing this he knowingly put his bitcoins into a money laundering operation
They can't have it both ways. (Score:2)
Essentially, he's trying to deny what Bitcoin fans/supporters (including Ulbricht himsel
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They may or may not get you - probably will. However, the Capone case has nothing to do with proving or disproving anything about sources of income. It has only to do with failing to pay income taxes on money earned. How it was earned did not bear on the conviction. Actually the prohibition related charges were dropped; he was only convicted of tax evasion.
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I agree that he's an idiot, but maybe he's better off confessing guilt and going to court as a rich man than trying to maintain his innocence while poor? With access to those funds he can get an all-star team of lawyers and, worst case scenario, maybe a cell in one of those cushy white-collar jails.
Off Subject (Score:2)
Captain Obvious (Score:2)
Um, the fact that they were just seized, seems to refute that statement.
Most don't understand the legal argument (Score:5, Insightful)
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The bitcoins don't reside anywhere, including in any particular "virtual wallet on a PC".
If you don't believe that, make 100 copies of that "virtual wallet" and ask yourself if you now have 100 times as many bitcoins.
Well, let's ask a far more pertinent question: if you make 100x copies of wallet, do you have 100x the bitcoin purchasing power? The answer is no. It is theoretically possible to spend the same bitcoin twice, but th protocol is designed so that on average that costs more than obtaining a second bitcoin legitimately. You don't have to make it impossible to cheat; you only have to make it pointless.
A bitcoin is an abstraction, just as the dollars in your bank account are. If you have $100K in a bank account
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You've earned that +5.
In addition, from everything you hear about the US prison system, having access to a shitload of money is probably a very good idea and could come in helpful for the purpose of securing a somewhat comfortable stay.
You know, without new sexual experiences and all your bones remaining in one piece, etc.
"Subject to Seizure" (Score:2)
Look, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advise, but does this guy actually have a lawyer*? Would any lawyer make such a dumb argument?
* If he doesn't, he sure needs one. Stat.
Re: (Score:2)
argh : "advise" -> "advice"
How many, locked wallet? Backups? (Score:2)
The last I read was that there was a raid of "live" bitcoin on the server for silkroad, but it was only a fraction of the total sum that DPR had control over. For all we know, the mother-lode is still somewhere in one or more locked wallets. If I had that much money in BTC wallets, I'd have locked backup on several places. I'd abandon all the unlocked BTC and get my backups taken care off by a trustee so I'd be rich when I got out of jail and my lawyers would get paid.
I honestly can't think of any good re
Re: (Score:3)
I suspect the bitcoins in question were 'live' on the servers during the raid.
Running a marketplace means that the servers have to be able to move money about. So the servers have to have access to keys for spending to perform some operations. So the keys have to be accessible to the machine just like pretty much every web server with SSL has a private key that is effectively unencrypted. Sure it might be encrypted under a password but the password is no the same machine.
If he has $30m on the live systems I
Re: (Score:3)
Shutting them down could be a bit trickier in this case - there's no one person or organisation to convict. Only thing they could do is find something to charge businesses that accept them with, and push it underground where it is comparatively ineffectual and not good for much more than a hobby.
Re:Unequal treatment (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no crown. In the US, the Feds seize first, worry about proof later. Civil forfeiture is big business, "policing for profit":
http://www.ij.org/policing-for-profit-the-abuse-of-civil-asset-forfeiture-4 [ij.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, that's the way I've seen these civil forfeiture laws as well.
If you don't have money -- it's really hard living in the "home of the free."
So by taking all of someone's stuff, the justice system is denying them justice and power before proving them guilty. Loss of liberty is accomplished by putting someone in prison -- or just taking all their stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no crown. In the US, the Feds seize first, worry about proof later. Civil forfeiture is big business, "policing for profit":
http://www.ij.org/policing-for-profit-the-abuse-of-civil-asset-forfeiture-4 [ij.org]
Yes, letting the police keep the proceeds of civil forfeiture is an obvious moral hazard, which has lead to predictably bad results. It is hard to overstate how vile that can be in practice, and I personally think that there are police that should go to jail over it.
On the other hand, we got rid of the crown a long time ago, we are citizens, not subjects (thank God), and we didn't even have to guillotine anyone to do it. (Yet.)
Re: (Score:2)
You clearly don't understand the US civil forfeiture laws then. Yes they can and yes they do.
There are certainly corrupt uses of the civil forfeiture laws but this is not one of them. The coins were seized from a rig operating a market for illegal drugs.
There are cases where the cops have performed seizures on no evidence at all and no indictment.