There was already a lot of evidence that alleged Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht (a.k.a. Dread Pirate Roberts) was not the world’s greatest guy, and the condemning information just keeps rolling in. Newly surfaced legal documents say that the 29-year-old ordered not one but two hits on former associates.
The new court documents come from Maryland, and it does not look good for old Ross. They tell the story of an undercover agent that won Ulbricht’s trust through a $US27,000 cocaine deal and was then recruited to beat up a Silk Road employee who evidently stole users’ Bitcoins. “I’d like him beat up, then forced to send the bitcoins he stole back,” reads a message from Ulbricht to the agent. “Like sit him down at his computer and make him do it.”
Things get darker from there. According to the court documents, Ulbricht soon wrote back and said that he wanted to “change the order to execute rather than torture” because the Silk Road employee had been in prison before and might rat on Ulbricht rather than go back. Ulbricht added that “he had never killed a man or had one killed before, but it is the right move in this case.” Then came the money. Ulbricht sent a downpayment of $US40,000, and when the supposed hitman returned with (staged) photos of the murder. Ulbricht then made a second payment of $US40,000. “I don’t think I’ve done the wrong thing,” he said.
Well, ordering one hit is bad enough, but as we learned on Wednesday, Ulbricht did it again with a drug dealer on Silk Road who promised to reveal users’ identities. However, that was also a sting operation — and at $US150,000, it was an expensive one for Ulbricht. The money doesn’t really matter now, though, because it looks like this guy’s going to prison. For a long time. [Forbes]