Roger Thomas Clark, an adviser to Ross Ulbricht, creator of the Silk Road darknet marketplace, has been arrested in Thailand. Clark faces extradition to the U.S. and charges of narcotics and money laundering conspiracy:
A man alleged to have helped run the notorious Silk Road drug marketplace has been arrested in Thailand. Canadian Roger Thomas Clark is said to have been a key adviser for Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. The US Department of Justice alleged that Mr Clark advised Ulbricht about the best way to run the site and how to evade the police. The Silk Road website was shut down in late 2013 following raids by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.
[...] The DoJ alleges that Mr Clark was a "high-ranking" operator on the Silk Road and was instrumental in helping Ulbricht run it. He gave advice about ways to improve the technology underpinning the site, boost sales and on the best way for Ulbricht to hide his real identity, said US authorities. Mr Clark was paid "at least hundreds of thousands of dollars" for this advice, said the DoJ in a statement announcing the arrest. [...] On the site and in other underground forums, Mr Clark is believed to have used several nicknames including "Variety Jones, "VJ", "Cimon" and "Plural of Mongoose".
From the DOJ press release:
CLARK repeatedly advocated the use of intimidation and violence to keep members of the Silk Road support staff from cooperating with law enforcement. In one such conversation, in which CLARK and Ulbricht discussed "track[ing] down" a certain Silk Road employee to ensure that he had not gone "[o]ff the rails," CLARK commented, "[D]ude, we're criminal drug dealers – what line shouldn't we cross?"
[...] CLARK, 54, a citizen of Canada, is charged with one count of narcotics conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years, and one count of money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Meanwhile, Shaun Bridges, a Secret Service agent who pleaded guilty to stealing $820,000 worth of Bitcoins from the Silk Road, has been sentenced to 6 years in prison.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 08 2015, @04:57PM
There's another concept in US law that would also be highly relevant: "Co-conspirator". If I'm sitting in a room with a group of guys going over detailed plans for a bank robbery and providing advice and helping them buy their AR-15's, and then those guys go and rob a bank, I'm legally guilty for whatever happened in that robbery. Even if it wasn't part of the plan: If I told them not to kill anybody, and one of them kills a cop, then I'm guilty of capital murder too.
This sort of thing can also fall under RICO, which was originally created to go after mobsters who had a similar role in the crimes that the mob was committing.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday December 08 2015, @05:03PM
Yeah, but co-conspirator has a higher threshold of evidence. You have to prove an agreement to commit a crime. From wikipedia: "Conspiracy has been defined in the United States as an agreement of two or more people to commit a crime, or to accomplish a legal end through illegal actions."
Material support is "You pay me for my entirely legal financial/programming/whatever skills and I overlook what you seem to be doing." And its reserved for only very serious organized crimes.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Wednesday December 09 2015, @12:45AM
See http://blog.simplejustice.us/2013/08/15/calculated-ignorance-is-not-an-acceptable-excuse/ [simplejustice.us] for a similar situation where someone (who perhaps is a bit more sympathetic based on their naive perspective of what they were involved in) was busted on conspiracy. I'm guessing this doesn't really contradict anything you're saying here, but rather it's an example of where law enforcement was motivated to build the case for conspiracy.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MrGuy on Tuesday December 08 2015, @06:14PM
Right, and that was my original point.
As I see it, some of their "charges" equate to "conspiracy to provide tech support" and "conspiracy to open a bank account." "Conspiring" to do things that aren't illegal doesn't in GENERAL make them illegal.
Conspiring to do things that ARE illegal, of course, is criminal. My concern was using "conspiracy!" to criminalize "people discussing doing things we don't like, even if they're not against the law" is dangerous precedent.