Topic: Any other Americans considering a claim against the FBI over SilkRoad? - page 2. (Read 3952 times)

Actually, after thinking about it again, you may have a claim. I was just thinking about how I purchased some sunglasses, a fake rolex (as a gag gift) and a chainsaw off of the Silk Road, nothing illegal there. The argument that it is an illegal marketplace kind of reminds me of a flea market. You can find drugs and stolen goods at a flea market, however you don't have your money confiscated for shopping there, I guess unless you are partaking in knowingly buying stolen goods or drugs.

The question is, if you can prove you didn't use the SilkRoad for nefarious purposes, would you be able to get your coins back?

Why doesn't the Bitcoin Community have more lawyers?

Actually all of that is relevant to the problem. Swartz violated a terms of service agreement and downloaded more free documents than the site's terms allowed a user to do all at once. If Swartz had simply downloaded them manually one at a time, no violation would have occurred under any interpretation of the law. By speeding up the process (he never distributed the docs he downloaded, the allegation was intent to distribute). Despite all docs being free to download on campus, he was hit with all the charges in the indictment. None of them are reasonable. Wire fraud? Aiding and abetting...what? 35 years!

It's relevant because that case is the benchmark for the level of insanity that the legal system can operate when it comes to 'computer crimes'. Throw in drugs, and all the leeway given to prosecute drug crimes, possible organized crime and money laundering involvement...like I said it's not about right/wrong or legal/illegal. It is that none of the charges really fit the crime, and the punishment certainly did not fit the alleged crimes. But instead of a prosecutor acknowledging that, or a judge dismissing it, or a state or federal senator standing up for his rights, or a media fury, he was ordered to stand trial. For a terms of service violation.

For a closer case as far as the sirlk road specifics,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold#Criminal_prosecution

Again rewriting the laws to suit a prosecution, is the only relevant consideration for a potential defendant, if you view it as a sort of Pascal's Wager on a legal scale.

it might be worth it. imagine getting it in a decade and bitcoins are worth 100,000 each

either way, the point is that it was an underground black market.. for illegal activity. he might as well go to the police station with a line of coke still on his nose.

I don't know much about SR (was never a member). But even at its peak, less than 50% of the merchandise items were drugs, weapons and other illegal stuff. The rest consisted of Bullion, BTC to Cash offers, Bitcoin miners.etc

LOL people in Mexico can't even use Ebay that country is so screwed up.  And with NAFTA, they just move their stuff across the border to designated distribution points. 

They never needed anything like Silk Road and have no use for it.

I don't do illegal drugs.
I visited silk road(out of curiosity, not intent to purchase/consume).

I have seen people benefit greatly from Marijuana.

Silk Road was a good thing for BTC. It gave people a reason to buy BTC.

What is the point of a decentralized peer 2 peer network outside of avoiding the law?

Tor = For violation of law(privacy? ROFLMAO)
BTC = For violation of law(Sorta like torrent, other uses exist, their usefulness is negligible)
Torrent = For violation of law(The existence of "legitimate" torrents does not change the fact that torrents are useful for one thing(piracy))

You guys need to stop coming down on people for things that your local law man says is bad.

The irony here, how many of you U.S. BTC fans believe you have freedom?
I know, I don't.

Lols,I was joking about the consequences.
They will label him as a Mexican Venezuelan Colombian Chinese pirate drug dealer Somali rapist the moment he submits his request:)

Hmm... Mexican drug lords are not that intelligent. Most of the drug vendors in SR were from Canada and the EU (especially Netherlands and Germany), in addition to those in the US.

Are you still considering it? And if we hit 500?
I'm curios about the price you're willing to risk finding out that you're a Mexican drug lord that has shipped thousands of kilos of narcotics via SR:).

Yep, it was supply meeting demand.  And those supplying the drugs had a reputation to uphold on the site. 

The only group of people who have gained from the closure of Silk Road are the Mexican drug mafias. Earlier, the drugs which were available from the SR were cheap and safe. Those you get on street are adulterated with toxins and a part of the revenue is going towards the organized crime.

Lots of journalists and police accessed it. I don't think the site in itself was illegal per se, just 99% of the stuff it sold was, and obviously they weren't paying taxes on profits. It's probably a grey area.

I wonder if there's any lawyers on here. Might be worth making a thread in the Law section. Would be interested to see what is and what isn't legal regarding these type of black marketplaces.

There's no such offense at the federal level (though there may be something similar).  Even if there were, it would be unconstitutional, and probably state frequenting laws are unconstitutional as well.

I'm sure they could think of something, though.  Accuse you of money laundering and either actually prosecute you just for pissing them off, or try to pin some kind of liability on you for participating in a money laundering enterprise. 

OP would be well advised to consult a good lawyer with criminal drug and forfeiture experience.  It would be worth it to cultivate a contact now, in case the value of the BTC in question is actually worth pursuing it during the period where you can.

That. And it is entirely warranted fear. You are taking two areas where the gov has demonstrated it will act above anyreasonable interpretation of the law and combining them. Illegal use of a computer (see Aaron Swarz, rip) and the war on drugs (#winning for 42 consecutive years).

You are confusing some sense of justice with the US legal system. The DEA has arrested and convicted airplanes, on suspicion of having been used for trafficking at some point in their lives. They have confiscated cash upon suspicion that it was drug money because only drug dealers carry cash.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/struggling-minnesota-waitress-sues-police-seize-12000-tip/story?id=16074433

That's just the first one that came up on google. There's thousand just like it.

So you can sue, and hope they don't example you by charging you with frequenting, attempted money laundering, tax evasion, computer fraud/abuse, aiding and abetting terrorists (piracy, ya know), or any other stupid thing they can conjure up. Which is endless. Asset forfeiture is the least of your potential problems, your criminal defense would cost a lot more than you are walking away from.

But if you want to be a martyr I will give you my utmost respect and even send you letters in prison. It isn't about the right thing, at this point. It's about choosing who to pick a fight with and when, and knowing when you will be crushed regardless of justice. I would not pick this fight.


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Edit- imagine if they lined you up with a judge whose only internet experience consisted of an email account, drudgereport, and maybe a facebook page that he/she has never really figured out how to use.

They get... "defendant converted dollars to an encrypted currency used predominantly for illicit purposes and smuggling via the internet. Defendant then transferred a substantial amount of encrypted currency (over $30,000 worth) to an encrypted website, accessible only through a sophisticated surreptitious browser designed to conceal online activities, most commonly used by pedophiles and terrorists. Defendant delivered these encrypted funds anonymously, with full knowledge it would be received by persons engaged in wanton criminal activity, and defendant has no stated legitimate purpose for doing business in this manner..."

Good luck explaining to your computer illiterate judge that you just wanted to understand how the platform worked, you didn't know this, you didn't know that, you didn't think it was that much money...judges love that shit. 30 years, maybe a last minute plea bargain to 5-7 if you are squeeky clean.


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Final edit, I promise. You need to read this to understand what you are dealing with. The final sentencing guideline was 35 years in a federal prison after he refuse a plea bargain.

So you understand the reality before you read this. JSTOR is academic journals. They are freely available to download for anybody on the MIT campus. Their terms of service had set some arbitrary limit on the total number of downloads, but it was a large number. Aaron left his laptop on campus set to auto download all the academic journals on JSTOR, allegedly to take them and make them freely available to people off campus as well. The public could buy any of these papers for a couple bucks via the JSTOR website, or go to the MIT campus and download them for free also.

With that understanding of the "crime", here is the indictment

http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pdf

now imagine Silk Road...

I guess I'm genuinely interested in the legal aspects of this.  Given the Eric Holder/complete lawlessness issue, it really should be in a court room rather than the administrative divisions.  But here's the general scenario as I see it:

Marketplace ABC has trade accounts with X number persons.  Not disputable X/2 of those were engaged in activities illegal in their jurisdiction.  Others were curious about the site and may have placed minor amounts of coin there in 2010/2011.  Market changes caused those small amounts to become fortunes.

FBI takes said trade accounts....do they have to pay some or all of the trade account funds back?

Say they confiscated funds from an individual in Colorado who had bought marihuana on Silk Road from another individual in Colorado, said purchase being legal in Colorado (he might have bought from an unauthorized/unlicensed source, but that would be a state not a federal problem). 

I'm smelling a class action suit here....but what do I know, maybe the current social/political environment is so oppressive and totalitarian that everyone just sits in the corner shaking in fear.

Obviously a lot of people have standing to sue.

And that is why I'm wavering....

Half of me is saying "Do it". I'm most interested in proving in a court you own some bitcoins.
The other half is saying , "Nope" for obvious reason. I'm sure they have some felonies for which they haven't found the criminal you yet.

Yeah, they know how dangerous it would be to let him loose with a phone. It's still not impossible for him to get one, but I'm sure they're doing everything within their power to minimise the risk.