Topic: DEA Agents in Silk Road Case Face Fraud Charges - page 10. (Read 14427 times)

Yeah, so am I. I lived near the park in downtown Oakland. The Oakland zoo was a short walk from my house and has a free community day once a month. I used to go to the zoo every month and watch them. That was my favorate exhibit. I'd watch the monkeys for hours.

I'd say greed is just a lack of understanding. This is more a consciousness "thing" than a genetic one (at this stage in our development).
We've been sold on Survival of the Fittest, when it is in actuality Flourishing though Cooperation.

That is true, I've seen it myself. I used to live in Oakland.

Hard to tell. To others they may appear trustworthy but nobody can no for certain if they ever had doubts about stealing the money. I think greed is just part of being human and everyone can succumb to it at some point regardless of how moral you may or try to be. Sometimes situations pop up in your life that alter your morals or behavior too. What if a person becomes in debt or needs it to save a child etc? Desperate measures sometimes call for desperate measures.

Maybe but I still believe that some people can guard a truckload of cash their entire life and never be tempted because it's not in their makeup. People with no integrity and no morals take the first opportunity to prove themselves if they think they can get away with it.

Alright.

I've taken a gander at the recent pleadings filed. Let me begin with the caveat that these are just my thoughts, and they are obviously based on incomplete information, both because I don't have all the pleadings, and some of them of these recently unsealed pleadings still have redactions.

I'll summarize the government's position as to the problems with the defense's argument:

The defense's argument is essentially that account "flush" which had admin access, was used to plant evidence that Ulbricht was DPR. Force (the DEA agent) had access to the "flush" account. As we call may recall, "flush" was controlled by Green, who was the target of the murder-for-hire that "nob" (aka SA Force) and DPR were involved in. Green subsequently cooperated with the government, which is how SA Force got access to the "flush" account. This have happened on Jan. 19, 2013, which was subsequent to his arrest on Jan. 17, 2013.

These are problems with this theory:

• There is evidence on Ulbricht's computer linking him to DPR long before the SA Force had access to "flush," and long after. Ulbricht locked out the "flush" account on Jan. 26, 2013.
• Even assuming that "flush" reset the DPR account and then planed info using it somehow, Ulbricht always had root access to the server, and could have regained control.
• DPR signed communications with a PGP key that was on Ulbricht's computer. SA Force, with access to "flush" or even the DPR account, could never have gotten the private PGP key.

Judge Forrest considered an extremely broad discovery request by defense. Judge Forrest did not accept the defense argument's that this information is exculpatory, though the defense's arguments are redacted in the order. Ultimately, the only new information is that SA Force was being investigated, and that the previously known fact that "flush" may have stolen 350K worth of BTC was already known to DPR and to the defense.

Ultimately, defense always was able to put on its theories regarding technical capabilities, and it didn't need any of the SA Force information to do so. (That they didn't do so because of their ludicrously late expert disclosures, is, of course, another matter.).

***

Really, I think the best argument that defense could have had was to delay the trial. But I would think such an issue would be reviewed under an abuse of discretion standard, and J. Forrest's decision would be upheld, particularly in light of the information known at the time of these December 2014 motions. It seems particularly unlikely to succeed before Defense didn't make any kind of argument with particularity as to what exculpatory information would be uncovered during the Force investigation.

***

Subsequent to this, defense tried to bring the SA Force thing back into play by attempting to admit hearsay evidence from "DeathFromAbove" (aka Force) to DPR on the SR messaging system where "DeathFromAbove" accused DPR of being a Mr. Athavale. It's clearly hearsay, and J. Forrest rightly excludes it. All other evidence linking Athavale to DPR was highly circumstantial and speculative. Moreover, other evidence demonstrates that DPR did not take DeathFromAbove's threats seriously, and that the identifying of him was "bogus."

For all we know he could have been a great and lawful officer for 99.9% of his career but we must remember than everyone has a price and can succumb to greed. Maybe he just saw the opportunity to make some easy and what he thought would be victimless cash. When you're sat at your computer and all it takes is a few clicks to transfer massive amounts of anonymous money from a drug lord greed can always fall over you, but that's obviously not excusing it. In this line of work you need to have some restraint or you'll push yourself down a dark path and he's obviously facing the consequences of those actions now.

No problem.

I saw that the government made some filings yesterday/today. There's more than 100 pages, including the government response. I'll take a gander at reading it and post something here.

Thanks a lot for sharing that info. It helps to better understand things.

Has anyone seen any legal experts comment publicly on the case now?

Greed!Greed!Greed!

How do you know this? If that's true, why would he need to steal BTC? ArtForz has tons of it, and I'm sure he would have just given Carl some.

Edit: And who is/was Carl on Bitcointalk.org?

I don't think anyone will argue that cops are superhuman. The PoPo is just as human and just as fallible as anyone in any other profession. You are correct. He was a person of low moral and ethical standards because that's who he has always been. You can give all the psych evaluations you want to cops and there will always be kooks that slip through the net. Bad cops don't worry me. The most they can do is kill a few people. Air Force pilots flying around and submarines sailing around with live nuclear warheads scares me. Not a happy thought.

Live by the fed sword, get rekt by it in the end when you think your expertise is too high.

I've got to say that I'm very surprised that these guys went rogue like this when they had such great jobs, thinking they could pull this move and get away with it. Unless, they were sold on the anonymity factor that really doesn't exist. I think hubris did them in and I feel for their families at this point.

Thank you, gmaxwell, for that excellent informative summary.

I just want to add one little-known detail:

CarlForce is the brother of ArtForz.

It looks like a "well fitting glove," because it's something done very frequently in federal prosecution.

Let me sketch out an example of how this is done.

Let's say a confession is take from a suspect in violation of their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and Miranda v. Arizona. The government cannot use that confession in court. Moreover, the government prosecutors cannot use any of the fruit of that confession. So the government regularly will set up two teams of law enforcement and prosecutors. A so-called "taint team," that knows the confession, and a "trial team" that takes case to trial. The taint team screens all the evidence to make sure it isn't tainted with the unconstitutional confession, and then gives the untained evidence to the trial team.

While a procedure quite as rigorous as that would not have been necessary here, because there is no unconstitutional taint, I bring it up to demonstrate that federal prosecutors are familiar with segregating different components into different teams in order to avoid similar problems.

That possibility you just mentioned sure does fit like well fitting glove, now doesn't it? I believe when I saw the trial notes that is when I really started to question
the case. Though going in I couldn't imagine the trial would be fair.

For sure they will do everything in their illegal and legal powers to make sure Ulbricht doesn't go free. But that said, the case can
fall apart and would be even beyond corruptions manipulative hands. They are on their heels now. This is not small thing.
I would not at all be shocked at a Dismissal, but they can't have dancing in the streets, now can they?
And they sure as Eternal Life don't want a made for TV movie or series, ending where he gets let go and the war on drugs basically collapses a few months later.  

What you say is most likely exactly what happened.

One thing that even the most argumentative bastard on this site, of which you may very well be, cannot argue with is the following: Those filthy fucking dirty cops, like so many other similar cops, were reprehensible in their activities.  Cops, and lots of them, are dirty as week old laundry.  The difference is, a little soap will put the laundry back in good order.  Dirty cops are filthy for ever -  you don't ever really put them right.  

I imagine there will be a few fellows in jail for drug related offenses.  I wonder what they will think of their new DEA roommate.  I imagine ol' Force4 will get a bonus with his sentence.  That bonus being the anger of his new peers.  Force4 is well fucked - and he deserve it too.

Carl Force was not the LEAD investigator. He was the lead contact with DPR. He was part of the maryland group called "marco polo" the maryland office just knew what the new york and other offices were doing, but they all had separate investigations. My gut feeling is that Russ might get a new trial, but that doesn't change a lot of the facts, but i dont see how they can keep the murder for hire charge, they would have to call Carl as witness and he would just plead the fifth, unless he cuts a deal. Force is going to prison for a long time. Lets hope the government doesn't screw this one up...

I'm not sure I've got this straight, but it's likely that the investigation into actions of these agents has been going on for some time. If so, then as Ulbricht's trial was going on, the federal government knew that it likely had a big mess on its hands internally.

So is it reasonable/possible that they worked hard to scrub the prosecution's case to keep it clean of any evidence of contamination from Force and Bridges? If so then Ulbricht's conviction may hold up. But if they did not do this and evidence from their activities was used, then it looks like he may have a serious opening.