{"id":75701,"date":"2013-10-03T18:28:59","date_gmt":"2013-10-03T17:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/owner-of-silk-road-website-charged-with-attempted-assassination-of-employee\/75701\/"},"modified":"2013-10-03T19:56:59","modified_gmt":"2013-10-03T18:56:59","slug":"owner-of-silk-road-website-charged-with-attempted-assassination-of-employee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/owner-of-silk-road-website-charged-with-attempted-assassination-of-employee\/","title":{"rendered":"Owner of Silk Road website charged with attempted assassination of employee"},"content":{"rendered":"
Only hours after a criminal complaint unearthed on Wednesday accused a California man of operating an online black market, an indictment unsealed in Maryland alleged that the same webmaster ordered the assassination of a former employee.<\/div>\n

The unsealing of the indictment late Wednesday lent even more
\nweirdness to an already bizarre account of events unraveled
\nearlier that day through a federal complaint. It accused
\n29-year-old Ross William Ulbricht of San Francisco, CA of
\noperating the Silk Road website, and in turn masterminding a
\ncriminal conspiracy<\/a> that involved the mass buying
\nand selling of illegal drugs and other contraband over the
\nInternet.<\/p>\n

Wednesday’s indictment also indicated for the second time in
\nunder a day that Ulbricht had been under investigation regarding
\nnot one, but two attempted assassinations.<\/p>\n

Earlier that day, security researcher Brian Krebs uncovered a
\nsealed complaint signed by a federal magistrate for
\nthe Southern District of New York Court. It accusied Ulbricht
\nof<\/span> narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking
\nconspiracy and money laundering conspiracy by way of his alleged
\ninvolvement with the Silk Road website. According to the Federal
\nBureau of Investigation, Ulbricht used the website to
\nfacilitate the transfer of<\/span> hundreds of kilograms of
\nillegal drugs to over a hundred thousand buyers, laundering
\nhundreds of millions of dollars in the process.<\/p>\n

Silk Road \u201cserved as a sprawling black-market bazaar, where
\nillegal drugs and other illicit goods and services have been
\nregularly bought and sold by the site’s users<\/i>\u201d using the
\nencrypted, almost-anonymous digital currency Bitcoin, FBI Agent
\nChristopher Tarbell testified in the complaint.<\/p>\n

Authorities also indicated that through their surveillance of
\nUlbricht they believed he asked a Silk Road user to execute
\nanother customer for a fee of $300,000. The would-be victim, a
\nSilk Road vendor operating under the name \u201cFriendlyChemist\u201d
\naccording to the complaint, threatened to release the identities
\nof otherwise anonymous Silk Road clients if Ulbricht didn’t pay
\nhim to keep quiet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my eyes, FriendlyChemist is a liability and I wouldn’t
\nmind if he was executed<\/i>,\u201d Ulbricht allegedly told Silk Road
\nuser \u201credandwhite\u201d on March 26 of this year.<\/p>\n

When FriendlyChemist threatened again to release the identities
\nof Silk Road users, Ulbricht reportedly told redandwhite, \u201cI
\nwould like to put a bounty on his head if it’s not too much
\ntrouble for you<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

When redandwhite said the price to execute a hit could be upwards
\nof $300,000, the FBI claims Ulbricht wrote back contesting the
\ncost as too high, adding, \u201cNot long ago, I had a clean hit
\ndone for $80k. Are the prices you quoted the best you can
\ndo?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Although redandwhite later sent images to Ulbricht purported to
\nbe of a slain FriendlyChemist, the FBI does not believe the
\nmurder occurred.<\/p>\n

According to the indictment unsealed hours later, though,
\nUlbricht wasn’t bluffing when he said he had ordered executions
\nbefore.<\/p>\n

Indictment against Ulbricht:<\/p>\n

An October-1 superseding
\nindictment made public shortly after the complaint did its rounds
\non Wednesday and revealed that the US District Court for the
\nDistrict of Maryland charged Ulbricht this week with not just
\nconspiracy regarding the buying and selling of contraband over
\nSilk Road, but also for the attempted assassination of a Silk
\nRoad employee months earlier.<\/p>\n

The FBI’s claims reinforce the comments made about the killing of
\nFriendlyChemist in March when Ulbricht referred to an earlier
\nhit. Indeed, authorities say Ulbricht authorized the murder \u2013 or
\nat least intended to \u2013 of a former staffer at Silk Road for a
\nfraction of the $300,000 he spent on the second, likely botched
\nmurder.<\/p>\n

Before Ulbricht became concerned that FriendlyChemist would post
\nthe identities of his clients, he was worried that a recently
\narrested Silk Road employee would reveal even more to the feds.<\/p>\n

The indictment suggests that starting January 26, Ulbricht
\nengaged in online discussions with an undercover FBI agent that
\nhe believed to be a hit-man. A Silk Road employee had recently
\nbeen arrested by law enforcement and had stolen funds from the
\nwebsite’s users, Ulbricht allegedly told the agent, and in
\nresponse he wanted him \u201cbeat up, then forced to send the
\nBitcoins he stole back<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

One day later, Ulbricht told the agent that the employee \u201cwas
\non the inside for a while, and now that he’s been arrested, I’m
\nafraid he’ll give up info<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ulbricht \u201cnever killed a man or had one killed before, but it
\nis the right move in this case<\/i>,\u201d the FBI claims he told the
\nagent.<\/p>\n

Days later, Ulbricht allegedly wired $40,000 from his bank
\naccount to one registered at a Capitol One branch in Washington,
\nD.C. After he received photos from the undercover agent of a mock
\nmurder, he wired the remaining half of the bounty at the end of
\nFebruary.<\/p>\n

\u201cUlbricht<\/i>,\u201d writes the FBI, \u201cdid attempt to kill the
\nemployee, with intent to prevent the communication by the
\nemployee to a law enforcement officer of the United States of
\ninformation relating to the commission and possible commission of
\na federal offense, to wit: narcotics conspiracy in violation of
\nTitle 21, United States Code, Section 846<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FBI claims that, beginning in November 2011, it purchased
\ndrugs on more than 100 occasions from Silk Road vendors.
\nThe site, which generated an estimated $1.2 billion in sales
\nwhile in operation, went offline this week after Ulbricht was
\narrested.<\/p>\n

The original complaint against Ulbricht:<\/p>\n

Copyright: RT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only hours after a criminal complaint unearthed on Wednesday accused a California man of operating an online black market, an indictment unsealed in Maryland alleged that the same webmaster ordered the assassination of a former employee. The unsealing of the indictment late Wednesday lent even more weirdness to an already bizarre account of events unraveled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-75701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}