Yesterday evening, the prosecutors in the ongoing Ross Ulbricht case rested. Before doing so, however, a member of the team read out a long document that – on the face of it – appears to show Dread Pirate Roberts (Ulbricht? Karpeles? Someone else…?) Arranging the assassination we have read so much about in the media running up to the trial.
Now, the transcript that the prosecutor read out to be released, and it’s fascinating. From a third-party point of view, it does indeed look like DPR attempted to arrange not one but five hits on various, unnamed individuals. As a bit of background perspective, the conversation appears to be between DPR and a representative of the Hells Angels, during which DPR attempts to persuade the Hells Angels to sell large amounts of drugs on Silk Road, while also conceding that he wouldn’t mind being helped out with the blackmail situation (the situation that – supposedly – sits as the reason behind the hit).
Here are some of the highlights:
Redandwhite 3/25/2013 10:00: I was asked to contact you. We are the people friendlychemist owes money to. He tells us that you owe him money and a long boring story about some of this and some of that. As far as we are concerned – we gave him the product. Where it went and how does not matter. We hold him and him only responsible for the missing product/money.We don’t care if you stole it from him/borrowed it from him or anything. It was his responsibility to pay for it. He asked me to contact you anyways. What did you want to talk to us about?
Dread Pirate Roberts 3/26/2013 18:27: Sorry for the delayed response and thank you for getting in touch. We’ve had some technical difficulties the past 24 hours I’ve had to deal with. Just to be clear, I do not owe him any money, but he has told me his situation and wants my help…friendlychemist aside, we should talk about how we can do business. Obviously you have access to illicit substances in quantity, and are having issues with bad distributors. If you don’t already sell here on Silk Road, I’d like you to consider becoming a vendor.
Redandwhite 3/26/2013 20:08: That is interesting. How much is it possible to sell on here if we listed every product far cheaper than everyone else? We have a majority hold over most of the movement of products in western Canada (one of the main drug ports to North America)… We produce LSD/nBome/Ketamine/MDMA/Meth/GHB and import cocaine and heroin in massive bulk amounts…As it stands right now, there are people looking for him and since he has avoided our group, I’m not sure what will happen since he owes us money and is avoiding us.
Dread Pirate Roberts 3/27/2013 23:38: In my eyes, FriendlyChemist is a liability and I wouldn’t mind if he was executed, but then you’d be out your $700k. I don’t think he is going to come up with the money because he seems very desperate. I’m not sure how much you already know about the guy, but I have the following info and am waiting on getting his address:
Blake Krokoff
Lives in an apartment near White Rock Beach
Age: 34
City: White Rock
Province: British Columbia
Wife + 3 kids
Let me know if it would be helpful to have his full address.
Redandwhite 3/28/2013 9:01: Also, we have kidnapped friendlychemists partner Xin already and are on the hunt for friendlychemist.
Dread Pirate Roberts 3/28/2013 16:59: I understand, and that is great news about Xin.
Dread Pirate Roberts 3/29/2013 22:55: Hi again R&W…Blake (FriendlyChemist) is causing me problems…I would like to put a bounty on his head if it’s not too much trouble for you…
Redandwhite 3/30/2013 00:42: We usually tend to stay away from hits as they are bad for business and bring a lot of heat…As of right now, we don’t care about him because we retrieved more from Xin than what he took from us, and he also paid for it with his life…Usually we pay our hitters a percentage of what the person owes +/- how much they can retrieve.
Dread Pirate Roberts 3/30/2013 1:55: If you can find his location, that may be enough for me to scare him off. He is trying to blackmail me. Just let me know what you need to make this worth your while.
Redandwhite 3/30/2013 21:48: Price for clean is 300k+ USD Price for non-clean is 150-200k USD depending on how you want it done. These prices pay for 2 professional hitters including their travel expenses and work they put in.
Dread Pirate Roberts 3/31/2013 8:59 : Don’t want to be a pain here, but the price seems high. Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for $80k.
Redandwhite 3/31/2013 23:02: I received the payment. I appreciate the offer if bitcoins lower in value. We know where he is. He’ll be grabbed tonight. I’ll update you.
Redandwhite 4/1/2013 22:06: Your problem has been taken care of. They seized a bunch of stuff he had with him at the time as well.
There is much, much more, and it goes on to reveal DPR questioning Redandwhite about another 4 members, and then apparently paying 500K USD to have them killed. You can read the full transcript here.
The conversation closes as follows:
Redandwhite 4/15/2013 10:11: That problem was dealt with. I’ll try to catch you online to give you details. Just wanted to let you know right away so you have one less thing to worry about.
Fascinating, no? This looks to really incriminate whoever was involved so now I guess it comes down to whether defence have done enough to offer up reasonable doubt as to the actual identity of DPR.
What do you all think? Let us know!
Images courtesy of Wired