Joined 6 years, 3 months, 4 weeks, 1 day, and 8 hours ago.

[SpliffMasterFlex]

I've been following since the beginning, PoM fill us in a little bit with what's been going on!!

[smokebreaks]

I'm sad now. So BBMC didn't invent the internet, or the seed biz, or er play a vital part in PoM's life or the conception of Overgrow, oh nvm

Well, I dunno. Did you?

[bubbabush]

So you know how when you click on a link on Facebook then exit it a linear feed of similar themed links sometimes pops up underneath it? Well, this afternoon I clicked on a link titled "Ex FBI agent explains 8 ways to spot a Liar," and when I exited it, this was the first link in the linear feed below it:

http://www.copblock.org/142161/variety-jones/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Which itself was full of many links, the first of which led to POM's recent post in this thread about his latest adventures.

~•~

[Lrus007]

yes has been the shit pile of look e loo's since he posted.
i even see a few old members popping up. welcome back.
maybe a few will stick around and make some good threads.
irwin has already showed a growing thread. things are looking up.
Lrus007

[CryptoSensu]

So, I'm just going to put this here:

Thomas Clarke was/is a published author and wrote several books. Believe it or not, the guy actually did write a couple of titles, but I'm not going to out his pseudonym. I do know that his publisher is still re-posting his old articles.

PoM (or smokebreaks), could you share this with us? I'm dying to read this!

And the rest of your story, of course. Hope everything's ok.

[Plural of Mongoose]

So, I'm just going to put this here:

Thomas Clarke was/is a published author and wrote several books. Believe it or not, the guy actually did write a couple of titles, but I'm not going to out his pseudonym. I do know that his publisher is still re-posting his old articles.

PoM (or smokebreaks), could you share this with us? I'm dying to read this!

And the rest of your story, of course. Hope everything's ok.

Trust me CryptoSensu, the book you're really going to want to read is the one I haven't written yet, eh.

Now, it's been over a week since I called out AUSA@SDNY Serrin Turner, exposed one of rogue FBI agent Diamonds schemes, and attempted to have someone from the DOJ contact me so I could turn myself in.

Cue <crickets>

So gimme about an hour and a half here, and I'm going to have something to say about that.

[CryptoSensu]

Trust me CryptoSensu, the book you're really going to want to read is the one I haven't written yet, eh.

Now, it's been over a week since I called out AUSA@SDNY Serrin Turner, exposed one of rogue FBI agent Diamonds schemes, and attempted to have someone from the DOJ contact me so I could turn myself in.

Cue <crickets>

So gimme about an hour and a half here, and I'm going to have something to say about that.

Eheh! Sure you don't want to give away your pen name so that I can make my own opinion?

[Plural of Mongoose]

It's been quite a while now, we're over the one week mark since I made the post with the emails to Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Mr. Serrin Turner. Not a peep out of SDNY yet. So all you guys thinking that it really cannot possibly be that hard to turn yourself in, please take note. It can, in fact, be that stupidly difficult to turn yourself in. Also, for all those that suggested the problem was because I had sent an email, and not some other form of contact, riddle me this? Does anyone out there possibly believe that Mr. Turner and the SDNY office could possibly NOT be aware of the existence and content of those emails now, over a week after I posted them? There certainly doesn't seem to be any good reason that I have yet to be contacted, now does there?

However I have a theory. Mind, this is not your run-of-the-mill government conspiracy theory. It's actually based more up Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. I'm going to call this my "Government-Cluster-Fuck-Hot-Potato" theory. I was reading the ICE News Release (Which in full support of the "Government-Cluster-Fuck" portion of my GCFHP theory, was apparently posted by a time traveler the day before the bust, on October 1, 2013.) https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/hsi-seizes-biggest-anonymous-drug-black-market-website-and-assists-arrest-operator-and which in the first paragraph states:

...seized and shut down Oct. 2 by special agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) pursuant to a seizure warrant obtained by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

Wow, that certainly looks like a lot of chefs stirring that broth. But wait, there's more! The final paragraph hands out even more plaudits, and we end up with well over a dozen different agencies and offices involved...

The case was investigated by HSI Baltimore; HSI Chicago; HSI Attaché London and Singapore; U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP); the DEA's Baltimore District Office; USPIS Washington Division; the U.S. Secret Service, Baltimore Field Office and the IRS Criminal Investigation, Washington, D.C. Field Office. Assisting in the investigation were the U.S. Attorney's Offices for the District of Maryland, Southern District of New York and the Northern District of Illinois; the FBI; and the U.S. Department of Justice's Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section.

Consider the implications. All those Three Letter Agencies scrambling for "credit", "publicity" and funding. (Those government email docs that Dratel filed when he was trying to get an appeal for Ulbricht—based on the interference of Force and Bridges in the investigation—show there was obviously a great deal of TLA infighting over use of CI's, and what TLA gets credit for what, as they went along, including what office would get what part of the credit, etcetera. They did not work and play well together, at all.) There were hundreds, if not thousands of government agents learning the ins and outs of how the Dark Net Markets work. All those agents looking at that massive flow of untraceable, virtual, digital "cash". Untraceable "cash" flowing in a massive torrent through those DNMs. Think of the temptation. All that untraceable digital currency. Just out of their reach. Or actually, not quite out of their reach...

The two crooked federal agents that did get caught made virtually every fucking mistake in the book and yet it still took forever for the TLAs to bring Force and Bridges to "justice". And what a justice it was.

Note, the Force plea deal says the government will be destroying the evidence in his case, since they've managed to wrap it all up, nice and snug, and Force agreed to irrevocably plead out. Hmmm... I'd be curious what forensics could pull off his computer that they didn't put in that plea deal. Also, the original indictment said there were PGP encrypted messages that Force had sent/received that they couldn't decrypt. How in the world could they agree to a plea deal without getting the passphrase for the PGP key he used for those messages? What is in those messages, and who else was he talking to? What messages / conversations did Force have with what other parties?

Destroying any evidence on the completion of a plea deal with Force seems to be nothing more that a good excuse for them to bury what likely would be embarrassing to the DOJ, the government and that massive pile of TLA's on a major scale.

To think that because Force and Bridges did some stupid things that the DOJ stumbled upon, and to assume that they'd managed to nail the only two crooked dudes in that whole mish-mash of government agencies absolutely beggars belief. Yeah, these two fools working out of Baltimore may have accidentally broke a shitload of laws, abused their positions, faked court documents and subpoenas, and stole a million and a half bucks or so, but hey, those were the only two individuals, out of the massive number that were exposed to the massive temptations, that succumbed to any temptation. Honest. Just the two of 'em. Investigation done, case closed, and with a pretty sweet sentencing deal for two guys who abused their positions of trust and responsibility in oh so many felonious ways.

Only 2 agents *ever* succumbed to temptation, therefore "Diamond" cannot possibly exist. (Insert "LA-LA-LA-LA I can't hear you," here.). So, if all the TLAs pretend Diamond doesn't exist, the problem will just go away, right? And they're doing a damned fine job of pretending that Diamond either A) didn't *really* break any laws, or B) Diamond isn't a federal agent, and none of our concern. Also, that Clark guy bothering us to turn himself in, he'll likely just give up and stop bugging us any day now. Let's just wait him out, shall we.

So far as I can tell, the only DOJ-type response to everything I've posted so far was to Motherboard. See http://motherboard.vice.com/read/fbi-is-investigating-whether-a-crooked-agent-harassed-variety-jones

“We are aware of the allegations made by Variety Jones and have forwarded them to the appropriate office for review,” an FBI spokesperson told Motherboard in an emailed statement. “The FBI takes claims of employee misconduct seriously as we are an agency with the mission of upholding the law."

Which when I read, I thought "Hey, cool, it's not just me with problems with the FBI, this Variety Jones guy is pissed at them too!"

I made my identity *very* clear in my emails to Mr. Serrin Turner...

Subject: Indictment and extradition
Date: 11 May 2015 16:20
From: "Scott Hoffman" <zybose@Safe-mail.net>
To: serrin.turner@usdoj.gov
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

09 May 2015

Serrin Turner
Assistant United States Attorney
U.S. Attorney's Office
Southern District of New York
1 St. Andrew's Plaza
New York, New York 10007
U.S.A.

by email: serrin.turner@usdoj.gov


Sir,

My name is Thomas Clark.

Now, I have yet to hear from the FBI, or anyone else, for that matter. But I do expect that the FBI will investigate themselves, they have an Office of Professional Responsibility that exists for that very purpose. But, as the Roman poet Juvenal once asked, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Who will watch the watchmen? In a case such as this, the obvious choice is the OIG.

Actually, to any of those folks who thought I was joking when I <waved> at the folks from OIG in a previous post; the Office of Inspector General ain't no laughing matter. They sit at the very top of the food chain in the United States Department of Justice. Now, some people scoff at the OIG 'cause they have no teeth, they cannot enforce changes or bring charges, etcetera. What they can do is report to Congress, and release their findings to the public; they'll tell both your parents, and your friends at school, what you've been up to in your room on Saturday mornings. Hoo boy, nobody wants that. There's some dedicated people at the OIG, and they deserve much respect for the thankless job they do.

To give you an idea of what the OIG can do when they put their minds to it, just a few days ago it was revealed that both the FBI and the DEA are under review by the OIG for the (illegal) use of NSA (illegal) mass surveillance telephone metadata, and using that information for (illegal) parallel construction, where they lie (illegal) about the true source of the information, even to the courts. Which is illegal, eh.

The Justice Department is investigating the FBI’s use of information taken directly from mass surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA)’s collection of telephone metadata.

The yield of that NSA spying program was described by a judge as a “staggering” amount of data when the agency's ability to collect it was struck down as illegal in court earlier this year. The program was resumed in June and will run until at least December.

Another ongoing Justice Department investigation is examining the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)'s use of “parallel construction.”

Parallel construction is a controversial investigative technique that takes information gained from sources like the NSA's mass surveillance, covers up or lies about the sources, and then utilizes them in criminal investigations inside the United States. The information was passed to other federal agencies like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The technique was described as “decades old, a bedrock concept” by a DEA official.

Critics at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) described the technique as “intelligence laundering” designed to cover up "deception and dishonesty" that ran contrary to the original intent of post-9/11 surveillance laws.

Both the FBI and DEA, which operate under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department, are under review by the department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). The details of the NSA’s mass metadata collection program were first publicly revealed in 2013 by contractor Edward Snowden. The DEA’s use of parallel construction was revealed by Reuters a few months later.

Clicky hereto read the rest of the news item.

Yeah, having the OIG investigate you is like walking downstairs in the morning to see: a Sixty Minutes news team at your front door with your business accountant in tow; your 17 year old daughter in the living room talking to Maury Povich and six Chipendales male strippers; your wife sitting at the dining room table with a divorce lawyer and Oprah; and to make the start of your day complete, beside the now-empty coffee machine is a letter announcing that Comcast is now the exclusive cable and internet supplier in your area.

So what is likely going to appear to happen is the FBI's OPR, and the DOJ's OIG are going to investigate. The problem now goes back to the "Hot-Potato" portion of my "Government-Cluster-Fuck-Hot-Potato" theory. See, under the GCFHP theory, they aren't going to do much more than say, "Hey, we gotta look into this Diamond fella. Now, nobody wants to touch *that* hot potato. No need to take it too seriously, it's just some guy on the internet that got a bit of publicity, so we have to at least expend a minimal effort doing a wee bit of investigation." The Cluster-Fuck part of it is further reflected in standard government inertia. Remember yer high school physics, eh. Objects at rest pretty much want to stay at rest.

'Cause they certainly don't want to follow things to their logical conclusion - the Hot Potato part of the theory, again. If the claims about Diamond are even considered as possible, then all that follows is not what they want to deal with. This can't be a mere lone rogue agent. Safe houses in Singapore? Two pairs of Russian/American tag-team thugs scouring Thailand? Taking down Dark Net Markets, and extorting high volume dealers? Nobody at the DOJ wants to even consider that they may just have a serious problem going on. Hot potato, indeed.

(BTW, the Russians make perfect sense as partners for DOJ rogues. The DNM scene has rapidly expanded to include carders and associated fraud, and the Russians own that segment of the market; just check out some of Brian Krebbs investigative pieces concerning the Russian carder scene. Throw in the fact that, by law, Russia won't extradite their citizens to the US, and the advantages of joining forces with them become clear. Call it a criminal Perestroika movement, and it was damn near inevitable, when you think on it.)

So, the grand sum total of what actions I think the DOJ is going to take in light of all this, is...

<crickets>

They're pretty much sitting around, hoping against hope that Diamond & Co. will catch up to me sooner rather than later. If I was to have a nice fatal base jumping accident, all this would just go away very nicely, thank you very much.

<crickets>

Now, I don't think that's going to happen, and not just because I don't base jump. If the SDNY folks had got back to me over twenty weeks ago when I first reached out, I wouldn't have had to go public. Because I did have to go public, the SDNY has not just made it far more difficult to investigate, Diamond is now seriously on the defensive. That's going to make it much more difficult for him to locate me and reach out and touch me.

One of the questions that I've been asked a lot this last week, is, "What type of a deal do I think I can make with the government on this whole Diamond issue?"

None.

I'm not looking to make a deal on this Diamond issue; I don't want to make a deal on this Diamond issue; I'll run away screaming like a 16 year old girl at a Justin Beiber concert if even offered any kind of a deal on this Diamond issue. A deal on the Diamond issue is a non-issue.

I reached out to the DOJ through Mr. Serrin Turner for two reasons.

1) To inform the DOJ of Diamond and his plans, and prevent innocent people being hurt. Not to make any type of deal. Job done.

2) To turn myself in for the service of any indictment for my they may have laying around, and to mount a vigorous defense of any charges I may be facing. I do believe that any case they think they may have had will end up being a cake walk to defend, all things considered.

There is a nasty, nasty game that is being played out right now, and I have no intention of being a pawn in all of it.

So, it has now been over twenty weeks since I first emailed Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Mr. Serrin Turner, offering information on Diamond, and to be contacted to arrange to turn myself in. It has been over a week since I posted excerpts from those emails, and released details of the scheme that Diamond was attempting to involve me in. The DOJ is obviously well aware of the situation, commenting to internet news sites that have covered the story.

And I have yet to get any response whatsoever.

So, once again, for clarity...

My name is Roger Thomas Clark, I can be reached by email at zybose@safe-mail.net, and I wish to make arrangements to safely travel to the United States and turn myself in to be served with any indictments that may be pending. If I have been mis-informed, and there aren't any sealed indictments waiting for me, well great! Drop me an email and let me know, either way.

I really cannot be much clearer and direct than that.

Finally, in closing let me clear up last thing.

I know it's disappointing to many of you out there, but --cwt definitely does NOT stand for Christopher W. Tarbell. Sorry about that.

There are some people that work at some TLA or another that definitely do know what --cwt stands for, but I doubt they're going to leap up and let the folks at Motherboard know what that is.

There are also a few sharp people that I've been communicating with this week that also have a pretty good idea what --cwt stands for, and no less than three of them nailed it, perfectly. Damn, Diamond is *not* going to be pleased about this...

In the upper stratosphere of the worlds financial and commodities markets, folks that deal in large amounts of Swiss bullion will tell you that "--cwt" stands for One Hundred Weight of '.999 Fine Pur Gold'.

Now, I have to go feed the goddamn crickets.

[Shazaam]

Now that kinda shit just pisses me off.

Bad enough the bankers and politicians never hafta bother with followin the law.

Readin about bent feds getting sweetheart deals it just to much.

The bastards swore to uphold teh law, and they outta know whats against the law more than anyone else.

Fact is, when law enforcers go sour, they ought to get at least 2-3 times the time of anyone else. Since they break the laws they enforce on others. Fuck em and put em away forever.

Who else gets a deal where the evidence is burned by the enforcers? They must be connected or have some real dirt on someone else.

Dammit, thats just wrong.



And I notice ya still aint finshed the other story...

[Plural of Mongoose]

Well, just got some great news!

Apparently, one of the darknet .onion bookies has the odds at 7:2 against me making it to the US alive.



Man, I'd luv to get me some of that sweet, sweet tax-free online action.

Of course, the only problem is, which side of them odds do I take?

<skips off to dig fer change in the back of the couch>