• nomy@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      He was never charged or convicted of those charges, he’s innocent of that.

      • LengAwaits@lemmy.world
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        19 hours ago

        Well, you’re half correct. He was charged in Maryland for attempted witness murder, but the charges were dropped once he’d been sentenced so harshly in New York. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, and there’s plenty of conspiratorial debate about them.

        I strongly doubt that the prosecution would have brought the charges if they didn’t have traceable evidence (through blockchain transaction records, undercover police chat logs, and data seizure) that coins, sent to an undercover agent for the purposes of murder, originated from wallets that were owned by Ulbricht. You can read more about one of the employees Ulbricht allegedly tried to have murdered (Curtis Green, who was sentenced for his own crimes) here and here.

        You’re right, though, he’s technically innocent as the charges were dismissed. Perhaps it was all a huge setup/honeypot but the truth of whether or not he sent the coins should be discoverable with enough due diligence scouring the blockchain records. Intent matters, even though it didn’t end up getting tried in this instance.

        • nomy@lemmy.zip
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          18 hours ago

          You’re right, I should’ve said never convicted. There’s a ton of conspiracies around it all, was he actually the first Dread Pirate Roberts or was it actually a title passed down? At the time everyone was saying parallel construction but in hindsight he was probably just sloppy. It was a really exciting time.