Posted on 07/10/2014 2:05:45 PM PDT by mgist
Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts won’t be getting his case dismissed
By Sam Reynolds on July 10, 2014
A bid to get the case thrown out due to the technical definition of money laundering is denied.
Bit coins Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts won’t be getting his case dismissed.
The former proprietor of the drugs and vice bazaar known as Silk Road has suffered a major legal setback, after a US court denied his defense’s request to have the case dismissed.
The federal charges against Ross Ulbricht, better known by his online handle Dread Pirate Roberts, include money laundering, running a criminal enterprise, narcotics conspiracy and conspiracy to commit computer hacking. In the state of Maryland he has been indicted for one planned murder.A lawyer representing Ulbricht had sought to have most of the charges thrown out because of technicalities and lack of overall evidence connecting Ulbricht to Dread Pirate Roberts which is particularly important when painting him as the ringleader or mastermind of the operation.
One of the arguments presented by Ulbricht’s defense team is that Ulbricht can’t be charged for money laundering, since Bitcoin itself does not universally fall under the legal definition of money, thus, since Ulbricht dealt exclusively with Bitcoin, he was not laundering money.
“[The charge of] money laundering, is defective because it fails to allege sufficiently an essential element of the offense – that Mr. Ulbricht engaged in, or conspired to engage in, ‘financial transactions’ – as Bitcoin, the alleged ‘payment system that served to facilitate the illegal commerce conducted on the site,’ does not constitute either ‘funds’ or a ‘monetary instrument, either of which is a necessary component of ‘financial transaction,” Ulbricht’s attorney wrote in an earlier filing.
Unfortunately for Ulbricht the presiding judge on the case, US District Judge Katherine Forrest, said that Bitcoin — despite not being classified as a currency — counts as a “medium of exchange” and legal boundaries exist for a variety of interpretations for what constitutes money laundering.
“There is no doubt that if a narcotics tra
nsaction was paid for in cash, which was later exchanged for gold, then converted back to cash, that would constitute a money laundering transaction. One can launder money using bitcoin,” she wrote in the filing.
The trial is expected to begin in early November.
As for Silk Road, it remains in operation headed by another “Dread Pirate Roberts”.
The interesting part is that there are rumors that “Feds Hijack Silk Road Case in Bid to Dismantle Internet Freedom”
The last guy fighting the governments attack on internet freedom wound up dead. Aaron Schwartz was 14 when he co-authored RSS and later helped found the company that would become the social media website Reddit. “Internet activist Aaron Swartz was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment, authorities said Saturday. He was 26.”
Internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz was “killed by the government,” his father told mourners Tuesday during his son’s funeral in suburban Chicago.
Government using charges against Ross Ulbricht as trojan horse to pass chilling laws that would make website owners criminally responsible for users’ actions
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
July 8, 2014
The federal government is preparing to use the case against alleged Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht as a trojan horse to eviscerate Internet freedoms and make website owners criminally responsible for their users’ actions, setting the precedent for chilling new laws that would drastically change the face of the world wide web.
Drugs and money “laundering”, both are CIVIL RIGHTS, NOT CRIMES.
If you think otherwise, you are part of the problem of “progressive” American statism.
You’d think a guy that bright would know you need to be an Obama bundler to stay on the right side of biz cops....
Internet freedoms are rights, Drugs and Laundering Drug Money are deadly crimes, and if you think otherwise you have duped by the Wall Street Bankers laundering Billions and benefitting from money that came from the suffering of children and families.
Drugs destroyed China. They fund terrorism.
Drugs are used in warfare to break down societies. Addiction is directly associated with supply.
Millions of dollars are spent to dupe people like you into believing otherwise. Heroin was always a part of the social engineering planned to legalize heroin.
http://www.aim.org/special-report/the-hidden-soros-agenda-drugs-money-the-media-and-political-power/
Russia, Iran, and China are all slave nations with epidemic drug addiction rates. Russia has admitted to over 500,000 deaths, since 2000, from Afghan heroin.
http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?pg=10&id=505009
The cartels are in charge FRiends, take care of your families.
Any guy who adopts a Princess Bride character as his screen name is asking for trouble.
>Russia, Iran, and China are all slave nations with epidemic drug addiction rates.
They have high drug addiction due to being slave states, not the reverse.
(19th Century China was compelled to buy British opium, hence the Boxer Rebellion.)
>Addiction is directly associated with supply.
And supply is associated with demand. Welcome to Econ 101. Economics was one of my best subjects.
You are part of the problem.
This could be your daughter, or your sister, you sick freak. How could anybody think this is ok?
Heroin has reached epidemic levels in Obama's America and that is no accident. The lucrative drug trade has bought more national Presidents than Wall Street. All of Latin America could be considered Narco Nations. Again, it is no accident.
The horrific toll of America's heroin 'epidemic" http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26672422 America's Heroin Epidemic -BBC 2014 State Department Reports Hezbollah Increasing Drug and Terrorism in South America 2013.
http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/exporting-terror-in-americas-backyard/
"There has indeed been a “marked resurgence” of Iranian state sponsorship of terrorism over the past 18 months. But as the new Nisman report drives home, here’s an even more disturbing fact — Iran has run intelligence networks in the United States’ backyard to “sponsor, foster and execute terrorist attacks” for decades."
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/03/world/americas/iran-latin-america/
"Criminal plans" by Iran could be under way in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago, the report said.
"They are more involved in the cocaine trade than ever before, and have greater access in the region due their allies in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and elsewhere," Farah said. " CNN 2013
http://www.kltv.com/story/23521413/first-cases-of-flesh-eating-drug-reported-in-az
In a healthy society, citizens would across the nation would have been warned. Federal agencies would be working overtime. In Obama’s America these alarming facts are buried, and no news is good news.
PHOENIX (CBS5) -
Banner’s Poison Control Center says the two first cases of people using a drug that can rot flesh have been reported in Arizona.
“We’ve had two cases this past week that have occurred in Arizona,” said Dr. Frank LoVecchio, the co-medical director at Banner’s Poison Control Center.
“As far as I know, these are the first cases in the United States that are reported. So we’re extremely frightened,” he continued.
The drug is known as Krokodil, and it’s extremely popular in Russia. Users mix codeine with hydrocarbons, like gasoline, oil or alcohol. The mixture is then filtered and boiled before being injected into the vein. LoVecchio says users end up injecting fuel into their bodies.
“They extract [the drug] and even though they believe that most of the oil and gasoline is gone, there is still remnants of it. You can imagine just injecting a little bit of it into your veins can cause a lot of damage,” he said.
In fact, what ends up happening is the flesh can rot from the inside out. Some users even develop sores that resemble alligator skin, hence the name of the drug.
“When [drug users] do it repeatedly, the skin sloughs. It causes hardening of their skin. It will cause necrosis,” explained LoVecchio.
LoVecchio believes the two cases reported in Arizona are linked, but he couldn’t elaborate on the patients’ conditions. He says he hopes the trend does not continue to spread.
“Where there is smoke there is fire, and we’re afraid there are going to be more and more cases,” he said.
Copyright 2013 CBS 5 (KPHO Broadcasting Corporation). All rights reserved.
Didn’t say drug addiction was a good thing.
But everything you describe, drug profits, narco-countries, even krocodil and meth as cheap and easily made substitutes for less available and less toxic drugs, are the result of your drug laws.
You are the drug problem and the main obstacle to reducing it.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the number of deaths from prescription narcotics (LEGAL) increased fourfold over the past 10 years. This coincided with a fourfold increase in the number of prescriptions written for powerful painkillers. Legalization increases supply and when you increase supply, you increase the use and misuse of deadly drugs.
Dirty Doctors, Russian Mafia Fueling Prescription Drug and Heroin Abuse in N.J., investigation finds
Drug legalization policies have only benefitted corrupt governments and mafia.
Amsterdam's legalization experiment has backfired. With the legalization of marijuana came an increase in drug addictions and dependency followed by illegal drug trafficking, human trafficking and crime. After a rapid influx of organized crime, the Netherlands has announced that it will ban foreigners from the country's pot shops starting in 2013.
Despite the lies mafia, money laundering bankers, and cartels paying millions to deceive you, drug decriminalization in Portugal has also been a failure.
As of 2007, Portugal was still the country with the most cases of injected drug related AIDS, and it was the only European country to show a significant increase in homicides from 2001 to 2006.
"With 219 deaths by drug 'overdose' a year, Portugal has one of the worst records, reporting more than one death every two days. Along with Greece, Austria and Finland, Portugal is one of the countries that recorded an increase in drug overdose by over 30% in 2005," according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.
As with the US CDC, the numbers are no longer being reported, or are changed for the convenience of policy.
4-fold what? Percentages without indexes are meaningless propaganda.
Ah, but overdoses in Portugal (pop. 10.5 million) 219 / 130% = +51 by legalization. How does that compare with the number of murders by drug cartels in Juarez, Mexico, alone? (pop. 1.5 million, 1500 murders per year)
How does drug legalization lead to more illegal drug trafficking? By being phoney. By over-regulation of the market. By high taxes to exploit fake legalization. In other words, by continuing to do everything true conservatives stand against.
"Prescription drug abuse is the Nation’s fastest-growing drug problem. While there has been a marked decrease in the use of some illegal drugs like cocaine, data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) show that nearly one-third of people aged 12 and over who used drugs for the first time in 2009 began by using a prescription drug non-medically."
Recent statistics can no longer be found from the CDC. They are cooking the numbers, which is exactly what happened in Portugal.
Dirty Doctors, Russian Mafia Fueling Prescription Drug and Heroin Abuse in N.J., investigation finds:
Everything is corrupt these days, I lived in South America and know a Narco Nation when I see it. Uncle Sam is on the cartel's payroll. There is no war on drugs. It is all a farce. Do you really believe the same Golliath Government that can monitor every conversation, and keystroke, has no idea what is going on? The DEA was in Colombia burning coca fields in the 80's, today they the DEA and Sinaloa are working together. Holder's ATF armed the Sinaloa, like the Obama admin. did the Taliban. Afghan's cash crop is out of control and so are the Islamic Radicals that profit from it.
Mexican Diplomat Says America Pretty Much Invited The Sinaloa Drug Cartel Across The Border
http://www.businessinsider.com/stratfor-the-us-works-with-cartels-2012-9#ixzz36vAJbBpS
CONFIRMED: The DEA Struck A Deal With SINALOA Mexico’s Most Notorious Drug Cartel (Sinaloa Drug Traffickers testified that the feds agreed they could traffic into Chicago) JAN. 13, 2014
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-government-and-the-sinaloa-cartel-2014-1#ixzz30wXEcHSl
Nothing the Government Tell You is Truth
The Truth About Chicago’s Crime Rates http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-crime-rates/
I know or suspect all that. You find the same duplicity in immigration, healthcare, environment, so-called trust funds, taxes etc.
And the bottom line is what Ronald Reagan said, that government (laws) is not the solution to the problem, government IS the problem.
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