Topic: SilkRoad 2 Taken down by Feds - page 2. (Read 16038 times)

Ignorance of the law isn't a defense, even if it was plausible.

I would say the blake guy was almost trying to get caught as it made it very easy for the government to find his identity. I might speculate that he might use his mistakes as a defense that he was not aware as to how illegal what he was doing was illegal

Everyone knew that they were going to catch the people behind the silk road eventually. As for the price of bitcoin i think that the price is going to stay where it is at now until some great adoption from the world is taken into place.

Some would argue that SR2 was a scam that kept repaying the people who were scammed over time several times (they probably had many users who simply never logged in again after one of the scams and did not have to repay them).

It would be very difficult to know with any level of certainty that any instance of SR3 is a scam/honeypot or not, the only reason it is easy to say that the current instance is one of these is the speed at which the site was brought up

SR3 was up in a matter of hours after SR2 was publicly taken down. I would speculate that SR3 is some kind of honeypot and would personally not consider it safe (or it is some kind of scam). Just because the UI is the same does not mean the actual site is the same - the operator is clearly different considering that the previous alleged owner is in jail. 

A silk road 3 is already up and functioning, amazing what a free market leads to!

It was rumored that the "hacks" that SR2 encountered were really the operators just stealing their customer money. He could have kept the site open in order to install further confidence in the site to be able to steal even more money from customers in the future. Although the site was reportedly making huge sums of money - $400,000+ per month according to the complaint

Why would he have previously made good on money stolen in a hack if that's the case?  All the "character evidence" so far I've seen on Defcon is that he seems to have been ideologically motivated as well as by money, and wanted to run an honest (if illegal) business.  He doesn't even have the taint of DPR's scheme of having antagonists whacked.

So I really doubt he was running off with anything.  I wouldn't be surprised, though, if the nark urged along acquiring new vendors in the hope of acquiring new investigation targets.

Or maybe he was going to run with the escrow....... Sometimes the most simple answer is true (occams razor)

I would say this was likely because they wanted to expand the number of listings on their site, along with the associated increased level of potential sales (and related commissions the site would receive)

Any else find it a bit suss that SR2 started accepting new venders about a month or 2 before going down?

It's pretty rare for an undercover sting to involve trying to entice someone to BUY drugs, unless it's dealer quantity.  In that case, though, the issue would still be predisposition, and for instance, already having drugs in your system, going through withdrawal, having the necessary paraphernalia, etc. would be strong evidence.

(This is aside from the issue that it would be genuinely shitty behavior even for cops to go around trying to urge addicts to relapse just to bust them.  But it's pretty rare that anyone bothers with undercover agents to bust a user.  In fact, I can't even think of a sting like that offhand.)

This is not true. Every drug has a fatal dose. At present it is estimated that marijuana’s LD-50 is around 1:20,000 or 1:40,000. In layman terms this means that in order to induce death a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times as much marijuana as is contained in one marijuana cigarette.  NIDA-supplied marijuana cigarettes weigh approximately .9 grams.  A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response.


Even if you took the ethical stance that our liberties should be curtailed in the name of protecting us from ourselves, we still should be motivated to decriminalize all "hard" drugs.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-decriminalization-in-portugal-12-years-later-a-891060.html

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/portugal-drug-decriminalization/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-after-decriminalization-drug-abuse-down-by-half-in-portugal/

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/greenwald_whitepaper.pdf

The weed 'gateway to harder drugs' was debunked years ago, marijuana has been proven to actually alleviate withdrawal symptoms of alcohol and heroin addiction.

The problem nowadays is that cancer 'treatment' has become a $billion industry, it's not in their interest to 'cure' cancer.

Well I think that some drugs/drug combinations do help cancer patients, plus the fact that cancer is more or less certain to kill without medical intervention. While I agree that it is very sad that your grandmother was not able to beat her cancer, I would say that drugs are able to help patients beat cancer some of the time and that drugs are generally getting more effective of fighting cancer over time.

The list of non-lethal recreational drugs are very small. I would say that it probably both starts and ends with marijuana because AFAIK you cannot OD on marijuana, however it is something that will generally cause you to want to expand your drug usage into stronger, potentially lethal drugs. Drugs like cocaine and heroin can be almost instantly addictive and can be lethal in relatively small doses.

I am not sure how you could potentially monitor the really bad drugs as people could potentially have their friends who have no intention of using the drugs so they can have/use higher quantities.

It's possible I suppose. I don't really know if the drugs helped or not. I know they made her very sick to her stomach. The only drugs I know for a fact that worked were the pain meds. I think it was percodan that worked the best but it only really worked when she was high.

I don't think people should need to resort to illegally buying drugs online. The non lethal drugs should be legal to stop street crime and the really bad drugs should be offered to people through monitored programs.

Well I would think that it would be somewhat common for people who are not law enforcement to not want to specifically say they want to buy/sell cocaine (for example) out of fear that the conversation is somehow being recorded and/or that the person they are buying/selling to/from is no longer in that kind of business.

I would say that it would still be possible to convict someone who sold an undercover officer illegal drugs with a crime if the officer specifically asked the seller to sell them drugs, but would not be able to be gain a conviction on a selling/dealing charge (especially if the amount was small enough) as it would be difficult to prove they would have otherwise sold the drugs. The defense could argue that there was no prior intention of selling prior to the officer suggesting that he sell the subject drugs. The defendant would likely sill get charged with possession (or potentially possession with the intent to sell).

I would say it gets much more difficult when an undercover officer specifically asks someone if they want to buy drugs as it would be difficult to prove the buyer would have otherwise purchased the drugs had the officer not suggested them to do so. 

Imagine 

I think your definition of "suggests" is different from the legal definition. The under cover officer would generally ask/say things like "what do you have" or "what can you sell me" without specifically asking the dealer to sell an illegal item, however since it is the dealer's business to only sell illegal drugs he assumes the officer is referring to some kind of illegal drugs and proceeds with the sale
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Undercover officers quite routinely and explicitly offer to purchase specific drugs, or ask for them, or offer to sell them.  Think about it.  If a dealer could avoid undercover officers simply by only selling to people who uttered the right magic words, nobody would ever get busted.

In fact, an undercover agent who clearly used weird language would "sound like a fed" and in many contexts, would simply be killed on the spot.

The test of entrapment is not whether magic words are uttered, but whether the person was inclined to commit the offense already.  So for instance, a DeLorean, who never had anything to do with drugs until, in bankruptcy, he was repeatedly importuned by undercover federal agents to get involved in cocaine dealing, was acquitted based on entrapment.

It should also be noted that entrapment is an affirmative defense.  This means that, the prosecution having otherwise proved its case, the burden shifts to the defendant to prove the defense.

The critical factor in an entrapment defense is not magic words uttered by an undercover officer, but whether 1) the intent to commit the offense originated with the government; which then 2) persuaded the defendant to commit the offense (merely providing an opportunity is not entrapment); and 3) the defendant was not otherwise willing to commit the offense.  If the defendant raises these three elements, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that entrapment was not involved.

The very fact that most defendants, including these SR2 defendants, are already in possession of drugs in amounts sufficient to deal, possess bags and scales and other dealer paraphernalia, and/or are readily willing to and have the knowledge necessary to acquire contraband, all goes against 3).  That is, it's pretty solid evidence (if and when the government has it) that the defendant was predisposed to commit the offense.

Such a predisposition negates entrapment.

I am sorry for your loss. I would also think it would be funny to see a grandmother smoking from a bong (hopefully you were able to share a few good experiences from doing this). I would say that she would probably have been prescribed medical marijuana today.

Would you agree that the drugs that were given to her were at least designed to treat the cancer and would have potentially given her a greater chance of beating it then if she had not taken any drugs? Even though the drugs technically did kill her do you think the cancer would have killed her sooner if it were not for the drugs?

I do think that it is very sad that the medical profession essentially needs to resort to poisoning people with cancer to attempt to fight it. It just shows how horrible that cancer is