The authenticity of those messages is not a given. Keep in mind, that's the task force that had multiple agents independently of one another steal thousands of BTC and launder the cash.

That whole investigation was shady as hell even outside of the agents who were corrupt and got caught. Keep in mind, those agents were the professionals looking for criminals doing that kind of thing. They of all people should have been good at stealing those coins and not getting caught. How many of them succeeded and weren't caught?

Also if the murder for hire allegations were legitimate, why was the task force even attempting that sting in the first place? The corrupt agent was the one who allegedly persuaded Ross to order the hit in the first place while he was simultaneously the guy who had stolen the BTC to begin with. That's textbook entrapment and I can't imagine that a DEA agent of all people would believe for a second that that would ever have a chance at standing up to scrutiny in a court.

The prosecution also knew about the corrupt agent who was behind much of the work on the case before the trial but at the time that wasn't public knowledge. They illegally withheld that information from the defense. Not to mention that the prosecution lied about how they identified the IP address of the Silk Road servers in the first place.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/10/how_did_the_f...

Looking at that traffic log, I'd wager that half of the people on this site are knowledgeable enough to realize that the prosecution committed perjury. Parallel construction is unethical enough as it is, this isn't that. They flat out lied about how they identified the server.

I think Ross certainly deserves a great deal of jail time for his crimes but that trial was a travesty of justice.

Entrapment doesn't mean what you think it means.

For the alleged murder for hire plot that absolutely meets the definition of entrapment. In a court of law in the United States there needs to be two elements of an entrapment defense.

1. The police have to have induced the crime. 2. The defendant's lack of predisposition for the crime.

As to 1., the agent was the one that stole the money in the first place. The agent was the one that approached him telling him that he needed to have him killed. The agent was also the supposed hitman. No rational person would conclude that the agent didn't induce him to commit that specific crime.

As to 2., DPR initially only wanted his location in order to scare him. The agent was the one that convinced him that he would just hide and he'd never get a chance to find him again. He had to convince him to order the hit, Ross Ulbricht was certainly predisposed to commit crimes, but not attempted murder specifically.

Where is his attempted murder conviction?

Like all uncharged crimes, I imagine it's in the prosecutor's back pocket.

Not only was it dismissed, it was dismissed with prejudice. He cannot be charged with that now or ever in the future.

To be fair, the charges in question were actually in an indictment, which is a slightly different case than leaving the crimes known but unmentioned.

Oh absolutely, but it's still pretty chilling that the prosecution effectively levied those allegations against him yet never charged him with them and gave him no possibility of defending himself. He might not have been convicted on it but I think you'd be hard pressed to conclude that that didn't impact the jury and the judge outright used that to substantially extend his prison sentence.

It's a shame the Supreme Court didn't hear that appeal based on the judge sentencing him largely based on something that he did not receive due process for.

The house always wins.