The Silk Road's Alleged Right-Hand Man Will Finally Face a US Court (arstechnica.com) 74
It's been nearly five years since the FBI surrounded Ross Ulbricht in the science fiction section of a San Francisco library, arrested him, and grabbed the laptop from which he had run the dark web drug bazaar known as the Silk Road. Ulbricht went on trial in a New York courtroom, and is currently serving a life sentence without parole. But even now, the Silk Road saga still hasn't ended: Half a decade after Ulbricht's arrest, his alleged advisor, mentor and right-hand man Roger Clark will finally face a US court, too. From a report: On Friday, the FBI, IRS, DHS, and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York announced the extradition of 56-year-old Canadian man Roger Clark from a Thai jail cell to New York to face newly unsealed charges for his role in Silk Road's operation. The indictment accuses Clark, who allegedly went by the pseudonyms Variety Jones, Cimon, and Plural of Mongoose in his role as Silk Road's consigliere, of crimes ranging from narcotics trafficking to money laundering. But even those charges don't capture the outsize role Clark is believed to have played in building and managing the Silk Road, from security audits to marketing, and even reportedly encouraging Ulbricht to use violence to maintain his empire.
"As Ulbricht's right-hand man, Roger Clark allegedly advised him of methods to thwart law enforcement during the operation of this illegal ploy, pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process," writes FBI assistant director William Sweeney in a press statement. "Today's extradition of Roger Clark shows that despite alleged attempts to operate under the radar, he was never out of our reach."
"As Ulbricht's right-hand man, Roger Clark allegedly advised him of methods to thwart law enforcement during the operation of this illegal ploy, pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process," writes FBI assistant director William Sweeney in a press statement. "Today's extradition of Roger Clark shows that despite alleged attempts to operate under the radar, he was never out of our reach."
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I can think of no better reason for voting for Trump's second term. Vermin will live without my vote next time.
AC don't be a pussy. Lie down on a _low_ speed rail, train track, lengthwise, so the train splits you, crotch first, at below 2 mph. Super glue the junk to the rail, to prevent last second bails.
Re: He'll do far less time than Donald Trump will (Score:1)
Dude, suicide is nothing to encourage or joke about.
Re: He'll do far less time than Donald Trump will (Score:1)
Agreed. It is serious business, like visiting the dentist regularly, paying your bills on time, and trimming your fingernails. Not something to joke about.
Thailand (Score:1)
Where criminals and pedophiles like to visit. Perhaps some day they'll grow meaningful laws.
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Re: Thailand (Score:3)
Thailand is a literal tyranny and a US-inspired police state. Really a shame he's so enthused about brutally repressing political dissent - otherwise Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-o-cha is a fine administrative leader and a friend of public transport.
That said, their judiciary is *at least* a corrupt as ours. So indeed if you have a big enough suitcase full of money you can probably do whatever you want. Guess Uncle Sam most have offered the Thai judge a bigger bag of cash than Clark could afford.
Thai
Re: Thailand (Score:2)
Thailand is one of the few places where a prisoner probably is genuinely better off getting extradited to America.
As corrupt and inhumane as the U.S. "justice" system is, I'm willing to bet that's it's still better than anywhere other than Europe, Canada/OZ/NZ, Japan and Korean. Obviously nothing to brag about, however...
Was there a reason to add the 'finally' (Score:2)
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Re:Was there a reason to add the 'finally' (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids don't die from standardized dosages. They die because they're young and stupid and street drug strength varies widely.
Legalize good, old fashioned, wholesome cocaine, heroin and LSD. Keep the untested 'test chems' illegal.
Ask yourself: Is it illegality that stops you from shooting up heroin? Would you start if it was legal?
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Yes.
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So will living.
Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally' (Score:2)
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He must think he's Keith Richards.
Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally' (Score:2)
Please donâ(TM)t lump LSD in with heroin and cocaine. Psychedelics are non addictive and some of the safest drugs you can put in your body. With the right set and setting psychedelics can in fact be a good for an individual and society as a whole. The general public conception of psychedelics is literally the same level as âoereefer madnessâ was about marijuana. It comes from the exact same kind of moral panic. How many drugs do you know of that turn most people that use them in the correct c
Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally' (Score:3)
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And the doses these days. It's robbery.
When I was a kid, if a tab didn't have 250 mics, we wanted our dollar back!
As to the labs, always been that way. Owsley, the famous drug chemist, was the first fucker to add just a little strychnine, to enhance visuals. Now people, with no clue, think he was 'special'.
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Jesus fucking tits, you hippies are tiresome. I called it 'wholesome'.
I'd agree that most people's first trip (in the right context) is good for them, but their 100th? No. Too much, brains are fried, the Grateful Dead starts to sound good for fucks sake, that should be a warning.
At least it won't make you start to like techno, like MDMA...That is a dire warning BTW. Death before disco! Keep Ecstasy illegal, only _you_ can prevent disco!
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Ask yourself: Is it illegality that stops you from shooting up heroin? Would you start if it was legal?
Smoking is legal, extremely addictive, and yet people start smoking every day. The smoking rate is around 20% in the US! It used to be MUCH higher. If it were illegal, far less people would start smoking.
I'm certainly not advocating making smoking illegal. And I'm not even saying we shouldn't make drugs legal. But you're naive if you think that if we make heroin legal that we won't get a LOT of peop
Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally' (Score:2)
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If you legalize all drugs there will be so many dead kids you dumbass. OTOH, it might be a reasonable solution to our overpopulation problem.
Legalization means legal for adults, not children. It would likely still be 21 and older.
Probably a few kids would sneak some pot, just like they do now. And likely the same number of kids would die from pot overdoses, which is... zero.
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If you legalize all drugs there will be so many dead kids you dumbass. OTOH, it might be a reasonable solution to our overpopulation problem.
No, but it could be a reasonable solution to the idiot problem.
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Perhaps you're forgetting that lots of other things were sold through Silk Road, and not just drugs--things like murder for hire?
Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally' (Score:2)
Re: Was there a reason to add the 'finally' (Score:4, Interesting)
How many of those "ads" were placed by the Feds??
That's irrelevant.
Relevant question: "Who accepted those ads and the money paid to run them?"
In the real world, if someone walks up to you and offers to kill one of your enemies for a fee, and you accept the proposal, you've just engaged in conspiracy to commit murder. It matters not a single damned bit whether the someone making the offer was a Federal agent or the guy who runs the fry station at the local Burgers-R-Us. You're still going down.
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Please spare us the misguided attempt to defend Ulbricht & crew. (Yeah, we're on to you—see whataboutism [rationalwiki.org].)
Thanks!
Not charged but referenced (Score:3)
So, I am not saying that this is what happened in this instance, because I could not bear to RTFA, but in the Federal system, this is allowed.
When a federal defendant is convicted of (or pleads guilty to) a felony, the judge is allowed to also sentence him/her to additional time/conditions for unindicted crimes, so long as the additional crimes are considered relevant to the original criminal conduct (thus the term: "relevant conduct"). Problematically, relevant conduct charges do not have to be proven bey
Re: Don't mess with the feds (Score:1)
Who is this 'we' you refer to? The government represents us. Unless you are an interloper who refuses to participate in civilized society, the 'we' includes you. So, we own ourselves.
That just doesn't sound so scary.
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Plural of mongoose? (Score:2)
Plural of mongoose? Now my OCD is acting up again.
Mongooses?
Mongeese?
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Mongoosen?
Mongi?
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Meanwhile... (Score:2)
...Your basic cop who guns down a black kid holding a cell phone gets a pat on the back and six months of stress leave.
Re: Meanwhile... (Score:1)
Citation needed.
Silk road dark web drug bazaar was small potatoes (Score:2)