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A major bitcoin investor has suddenly died, leaving behind a cryptocurrency fortune reportedly worth more than $2 billion. Mircea Popescu, a Romanian national, drowned last week off the coast of Costa Rica, local reports said. He was 41. Popescu drowned at Playa Hermosa, according to Teletica.com, which reported that Popescu was swept away by the current and died. His death has prompted questions surrounding what will now happen to Popescu's enormous bitcoin fortune. Popescu, a controversial figure sometimes referred to as "the father of bitcoin toxicity," is known for launching a "bitcoin securities exchange" called MPEx in 2012, according to...

@RepThomasMassie speaks out on the cruel and unusual punishment inflicted on Ross Ulbricht by the criminal justice system. Join Rep. Massie and more than 370,000 people demanding clemency from @realDonaldTrum at http://freeross.org. Watch this Video...

@RealRossU Tomorrow I’ll begin my 10th year in prison. I don’t know what to say. I screwed up. I ruined my life and caused a lot of pain. When I look back and see my many mistakes, I feel immense regret.

Julian Assange has had a stroke in Belmarsh Prison, his fiancee Stella Moris revealed last night. The WikiLeaks publisher, 50, who is being held on remand in the maximum-security jail while fighting extradition to America, was left with a drooping right eyelid, memory problems and signs of neurological damage. He believes the mini-stroke was triggered by the stress of the ongoing US court action against him, and an overall decline in his health as he faces his third Christmas behind bars.

In his final weeks in office before Joe Biden’s inauguration, President Donald Trump is weighing granting clemency to Ross Ulbricht, the founder and former administrator of the world’s most famous darknet drug market, Silk Road, The Daily Beast has learned. According to three people familiar with the matter, the White House counsel’s office has had documents related to Ulbricht’s case under review, and Trump was recently made aware of the situation and the pleas of the Silk Road founder’s allies. Two of these sources say the president has at times privately expressed some sympathy for Ulbricht’s situation and has been...

Earlier this week, the bitcoin community was shocked when a digital wallet containing roughly $1 billion in bitcoin...was emptied by an unknown individual. The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it had seized the wallet’s contents as part of a civil forfeiture case targeting the Silk Road. The government said it retrieved the roughly 70,000 bitcoins with the help of an unnamed hacker, whose identity is known to the government but who is simply referred to as “Individual X” in court documents. “Individual X” allegedly hacked the Silk Road’s payments system some time in 2012 or 2013. The government...

The coronavirus infection spreading across the United States prison system is throwing Ross Ulbricht’s confinement into sharp relief. Found guilty of seven charges including money laundering, conspiracy to traffic narcotics and computer hacking, the controversial founder of the Silk Road is currently serving a double life sentence plus 40 years, without the possibility of parole. As the pandemic worsens conditions for the nation’s large prison population, Ross spends 22 hours a day behind bars in Tucson, Ariz., where he’s currently being held. Outside visits are stopped so Ross’s mother, Lyn, and other loved ones, who work tirelessly for his release,...

Two former federal agents accused of stealing bitcoins have been charged with wire fraud, money laundering and related offenses, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement. Carl Force, a former special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Shaun Bridges, a former Secret Service special agent, were both part of a Baltimore task force investigating Silk Road, the online marketplace often labeled the eBay of the drug trade. Force was given the task of establishing communications with Ross Ulbricht, aka "Dread Pirate Roberts," the San Francisco man who has been linked to Silk Road. Ulbricht was convicted last month...

Ross Ulbricht was jailed for life after he was accused of being Dread Pirate Roberts who ran online black market site But his horrified mother Lyn claims there has been a miscarriage of justice and is fighting for his freedom In a revealing interview she described her 'gentle' son as an idylistic graduate with little money But she says he was branded as a cyber-criminals by a legal system that rode roughshod over natural justice

The convicted mastermind behind the world's largest online narcotics emporium has been sentenced by a federal judge to two terms of life in prison and three lesser sentences, USA Today reports. The judge also ordered Ross Ulbricht, 31, to forfeit $184 million dollars. The website made over $187 million before it was shut down in 2013. The government estimated that roughly $1.2 billion in illegal drug transactions took place on Silk Road. The judge said it was a "demand expanding operation" and that what Ulbricht did was thoughtful, as opposed to just being an economic experiment. She added that he...

Ross Ulbricht was a quiet nerd -- an Eagle Scout who never cursed. Then he became a libertarian, and he decided, "I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion." By coercion, Ulbricht meant force. He viewed laws against drugs as coercion -- government force that stops people from living the way they want. So he created a website called Silk Road. Silk Road let people buy and sell contraband -- mostly drugs -- using bitcoin. The site became successful quickly. It soon carried a billion dollars in transactions. Because Silk Road didn't use...

A former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent was sentenced today to 78 months in prison for extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice, which crimes he committed while working as an undercover agent investigating Silk Road, an online marketplace used to facilitate the sale and purchase of illegal drugs and other contraband.

A former US secret service agent has pleaded guilty to stealing over $800,000 worth of bitcoin during an investigation into online drug marketplace Silk Road. Shaun Bridges, 33, appeared in federal court in San Francisco and admitted to money laundering and obstruction of justice. Silk Road operated for more than two years until it was shut down in October 2013 having generated more than $214m in sales of drugs and other illicit goods using bitcoin, prosecutors said. Ross Ulbricht, Silk Road’s creator, who authorities say used the alias Dread Pirate Roberts, was sentenced to life in prison after a federal...