Hi all,
I hope you're all well and enjoying summer.
It's very quiet in here?! Are you all just busy?
I thought I would drop in for my bi-annual check up into PoM news.
'Not sure if anyone cares about this really, but a while ago I was speculating that PoM was also St Exo / DPR2 on Silk Road/ Silk Road 2. It turns out that he was not, and that the person who was has been tried in the UK courts and sentenced. He's the reason that SR2 admin Defcon got off so lightly, he most probably agreed to testify at Sx Exo's trial but there have been reporting restrictions in the UK in place for the past five years or whatever while the trial was on progress so none of us knew that St Exo had been caught. He was busted in his home town Liverpool in the UK and was only 23. I really thought he was older. Totally vile and disgusting piece of work he is, you can read the news articles online if you're interested in this part of the SR saga. Here is one:
https://coinspice.io/news/alleged-silk- ... -4-months/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Anyway! What's interesting to me is that without the St Exo connection that PoM basically just gave Ulbricht advice and had his ego fluffed in return by a fairly n00bish stoner kid. Other than act as an older, more experienced advice giver/ Agony uncle type PoM really didn't do all that much by the looks of it. I suppose we'll learn more during his trial.
He wasn't a dealer, he didn't program or develop the site, he just gave Ulbricht advice (really terrible and ridiculous advice at times) and helped with things like hiring developers and writing up the text for competitions etc for the forum. So it's terrible really, just from poking his nose in and meddling here and there he's now up on conspiracy charges, so he faces some awfully stiff charges and a long sentence (most probably) yet he didn't even sell on the site?! I mean, he just came along once it was all up and running and poked his nose into Ulbricht's IMs. He even tried to hint to Ulbricht "who he was" one day, I remember reading some of their chats that were posted online and the silly old sausage said to Ulbricht (I just went and looked this up on another site): “I was, and am, Plural of Mongoose,” he wrote. “Folks who know and love me, it's Mongoose.” - Lol, again with the ego tripping him up. Ulbricht had no idea who or what a Mongoose was, but apparently it later helped - in part - the 3 letter agencies to figure out who he was when they were dotting i's and crossing t's.
We really do live in a crazy world.
What I wondered was, have any of you written to him or do you have any other updates? I hope he's doing ok. He must be pretty traumatised.
Gwern, who moderates the Silk Road subreddit, said there's nothing in any of the recent files on Pacer about Diamond etc. Maybe he made that up for attention or to try and put the feds off from prosecuting and ending up with yet another trial with corrupt agents. Who knows what was going through his mind. That shit about Mrs Ulbricht being kidnapped was pretty twisted, that poor woman has been through enough.
I have no doubt that PoM has lots of faults - as we all do - but I don't believe that he should end his days in a US prison. He should be writing his long-winded tales from a bungalow in Thailand with a spliff hanging out of his mouth. It's such a sad end to his story. I suppose we will have to wait until 2020 to find out how it all ends.
Worse, knowing what I know of PoM, which admittedly isn't much, all I know is from reading his posts here, his ego most likely won't allow him to cop a plea deal in return for a guilty plea. So if he goes to trial, like Ulbricht did, he will just end up with a horribly long sentence.
This summer Ulbricbt tried to claim that his lawyer at his trial was incompetent because he didn't ever explain to him that he would have been better off just pleading out.
Copy and paste:
In June, Ulbricht submitted a declaration in New York in which he claimed lawyer Joshua Dratel advised him badly about his prospects of winning at trial if he pleaded not guilty:
“Trial counsel recommended I reject the government’s offer because the sentencing exposure was too great, there was nothing to be gained by pleading guilty, and nothing to lose by going to trial…Trial counsel never told me that 97% of all federal defendants plead guilty because most defense attorneys…typically consider going to trial too risky and…likely to result in a harsher sentence (the “trial penalty”) if the defendant is convicted…I was not told that in 2012 and 2013…90% of those who went to trial were convicted at trial…I was not informed that fewer than 1% of federal criminal defendants in the United States were found not guilty in 2012 or 2013.”
I totally believe that Dratel was a shit lawyer for Ross. This article below says it all really.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/201 ... stigation/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Seems crazy that PoM is going that same route, but maybe he knows he's screwed anyway so fancied a final hurrah and some press attention before he does his time. I will watch with interest - it seems mad to think that his initial 6 years, 3 months, 4 weeks etc ago post here will have been made very nearly six years ago by the time he has his trial. If I've understood correctly, Ross had his doxx on his seized laptop along with everyone else's so it seems strange that this has all taken so long to unfold. I expect a few more twists before all this is done.
Right, that's my rambling over for now. To sign off I will use a couple of his favourite smilies.