A damsel in distress. Plural of Mongoose Update.

[Jesús Malverde]

Tex, Smed, and some guy going by ~S running the SR back end it looks like. Whoever those guys are.

[smokebreaks]

Well, now that it is all there for the world to read I especially liked the part about them soon to be having "icmag.com" and can only imagine "The Cannabis Revolution" they had envisioned.

It makes total sense to me that Mongoose would take the plea, because he's probably been promised a far more lenient sentence than what resulted with RU's taking it to trial, the verdict and the proverbial tossing away the key for life.

[Munchy]

Tex, Smed, and some guy going by ~S running the SR back end it looks like. Whoever those guys are.

'nuff said about that... hopefully this goes without saying, but the topic of "those guys" identities is NOT open for further discussion.

[DD Ramone]

After reading through all that, it dawns on me that I have never seen a more ridiculous claim vis-à-vis the 4th Amendment. What comes to mind is 'Grasping at Straws', or just a ruse to get a quick and possibly short sentence on just one out of the six charges that he has pleaded guilty on - and hope for just a 20 year stretch or less.

He claimed to be the owner of many businesses that he did not own, and to be many people that he was not, and now we see his lies tripping him up some, since his Thai statements don't match with his newly developed revelations .

III. THERE WAS NO FOURTH AMENDMENT VIOLATION Clark seeks suppression of the Icelandic Server’s contents on the ground that the server
was searched without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment. (Def. Br. 13). As the defendant acknowledges (Def. Br. 13 & n.18), he bears the burden of establishing that the search and seizure of the Icelandic Server violated his own Fourth Amendment rights and that suppression
is the appropriate remedy.
Clark fails to establish any Fourth Amendment violation, much less a violation warranting
suppression, for at least four independent reasons. First, as a fundamental threshold matter, the
10 The defense’s Notice of Motion states that the date of this production was July 31, 2019. That is a typographical error; in fact, it was produced a year earlier on July 31, 2018.
Case 1:15-cr-00866-WHP Document 39 Filed 12/12/19 Page 20 of 55
15

Fourth Amendment does not apply “to the search and seizure by United States agents of property
that is owned by a nonresident alien and located in a foreign country.” United States v. Verdugo
Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 261 (1990). Clark, a Canadian citizen who resided in Thailand at the time
of the search and seizure of the Icelandic Server in Iceland, did not establish any voluntary
connections to the United States, much less the substantial connections necessary to invoke the
Fourth Amendment’s protections. Id. at 265. Second, the Icelandic Server was searched by
Icelandic authorities, to whom, as Clark concedes (Def. Br. 19–20), the Fourth Amendment and
its exclusionary rule do not apply. Third, as Clark apparently concedes (Def. Br. 20), any seizure
and search of the Icelandic Server by foreign authorities was reasonable. The foreign search
doctrine squarely controverts Clark’s baseless suggestion that a warrant is required to review a
copy of lawfully obtained and previously imaged foreign evidence once it crosses the United States
border. Fourth, even if Clark’s novel argument were accepted, the exclusionary rule would not
apply because the law enforcement officers acted in good faith based on then-existing binding law.

Well, now that it is all there for the world to read I especially liked the part about them soon to be having "icmag.com" and can only imagine "The Cannabis Revolution" they had envisioned.

It makes total sense to me that Mongoose would take the plea, because he's probably been promised a far more lenient sentence than what resulted with RU's taking it to trial, the verdict and the proverbial tossing away the key for life.

[smokebreaks]

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess the judge doesn’t hand down a 20 year sentence.

My best guess? At 4.5+ years already, he gets out on time served for the single conspiracy charge.

We’ll see what the judge comes up with at his sentencing.

I’m also going to say that I think his ego and delusions of grandeur were his own worst enemy.

The one thing that really floored me about this whole silk road scheme was on the night I had met Mongoose as I was headed back to the US from having had traveled the actual Silk Road we spent the night drinking in the pub discussing Harrod’s business model.

All the world over, Harrod’s is renowned as the ultimate department store.

For those that haven’t been, it’s a cool “store” but it isn’t a “department store” like one would find in the states. It’s more of a shopping mall in that the retailers lease space in the building to sell their wares, where the landlords not only take a floor rent, but they also take /charge a percentage of the sale.

I’m not quite sure how he managed to pull this off but true to his modus operandi it was ultimately a rip off of someone else’s business model that saw them make and lose a fortune.

[DD Ramone]

Surely the Judge will know that DPR got life without parole, and now PoM claiming that he was part or half owner of SR, without any real binding proof of it, no proof of any ownership at all, looks like DPR controlled all the money coming in, and paid for and controlled all the servers and paid employees including PoM, even paid PoM to pay other people working on the site, and so PoM was more of a foreman than anything else, who was trying to get half ownership of SR off DPR.

If he does manage to convince the judge he had ownership, then you would think his sentence would be worse than if the judge thought he was just a mentor or foreman.

His whole case seems to hinge upon the court throwing most all of the evidence out due to it supposedly being inadmissible under his non-existent 4th Amendment rights.

*from DPR's chat log - DPR is 'myself', and PoM is 'cimon'

(2012-12-18 01:00) myself: yes, I am well. everything is running smoothly and smed [the chief programmer for Silk Road] is making good progress. did I tell you the latest milestone?

(2012-12-18 01:01) cimon: nope.

(2012-12-18 01:01) cimon: 1 billionth order?

(2012-12-18 01:01) myself: $100,000,000 annual sales at current rate

(2012-12-18 01:01) cimon:

(2012-12-18 01:02) cimon: One *really* frustrating thing is we can't be lording that about, posting over 7 million served, etc.
(2012-12-18 01:02) myself: that's ok

(2012-12-18 01:03) cimon: That is great news, how many vendors now?

(2012-12-18 01:04) myself: nearly 1k unique per week

(2012-12-18 01:04) myself: around 9k buyers'

Yep...it was all about the Benjamin's (BTC), even if it meant selling heroin to children, some who OD'ed and died, and I am sure their parents wouldn't want to see PoM ever walking free again.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess the judge doesn’t hand down a 20 year sentence.

My best guess? At 4.5+ years already, he gets out on time served for the single conspiracy charge.

We’ll see what the judge comes up with at his sentencing.

I’m also going to say that I think his ego and delusions of grandeur were his own worst enemy.

The one thing that really floored me about this whole silk road scheme was on the night I had met Mongoose as I was headed back to the US from having had traveled the actual Silk Road we spent the night drinking in the pub discussing Harrod’s business model.

All the world over, Harrod’s is renowned as the ultimate department store.

For those that haven’t been, it’s a cool “store” but it isn’t a “department store” like one would find in the states. It’s more of a shopping mall in that the retailers lease space in the building to sell their wares, where the landlords not only take a floor rent, but they also take /charge a percentage of the sale.

I’m not quite sure how he managed to pull this off but true to his modus operandi it was ultimately a rip off of someone else’s business model that saw them make and lose a fortune.

[smokebreaks]

since he pled guilty to one charge of conspiracy and that averts this trial, his case filings earlier in the month seeking to simply show he was in-fact an owner and therefore also afforded protections from illegal search and seizure based on discovery that the methods claimed were improbable, shows that the government offered a deal to settle before trial and he took it.

That deal eventually will be made public after his sentencing and it shows today that the government ain’t too concerned about the few deaths from something gotten in the post.

What makes no sense that Ross’ sentence seems especially harsh for someone who really didn’t do much of anything beyond write the original eBay for clandestine purposes.

He just owned the bazaar that hosted the sales, he wasn’t the vendor selling the wares?

Poor kid got fucked for being an innovator that fell in with the wrong crowd and it cost him his life too.

[DD Ramone]

Tsss, I do find it hard to think that they were innovators of anything, if all they did was copy ebay as a model, then allowed hard drug dealers to sell their wares on it, so making it possible for anyone with a BitCoin account to buy smack or crack amongst a whole myriad of other questionable drugs which did lead to some fatalities. In effect PoM and DPR initiated and profited from every transaction made on the SR site, so they were just as responsible for those deaths as the dealers who sold thru the SR site .

2. Application The foregoing principles compel the conclusion that Clark has failed to establish standing
in the Icelandic Server. Clark has not come close to establishing standing even if one accepts,
arguendo, Clark’s self-serving, uncorroborated claims in his Declaration that he was a part-owner of Silk Road—which directly contradict his prior testimony under oath in Thailand that he had no involvement in the website whatsoever.

As a preliminary matter, the comprehensive record developed through the Ulbricht trial
contains zero support for Clark’s claim that he was a part-owner. That record makes the following
points clear, among various others:

1. Ulbricht conceived of Silk Road, launched it in early 2011, and oversaw all aspects of its operation until his arrest on October 1, 2013.

2. Ulbricht leased, owned, controlled, and paid for every Silk Road server. In fact, the Ulbricht Laptop contained a spreadsheet (entitled “Servers.ods”) with detailed information about every server he used for Silk Road, including the location of the server, the type of server, the IP address, the email address and alias used to register the server, his password, when the server expires, and what he uses that server for (e.g., marketplace, forum, backup, active wallets, “tor relay,” etc.). This “Servers” spreadsheet contained notes about more than 40 “active” servers and more than a dozen “retired” servers.

3. At the time of his arrest, Ulbricht was accessing the Silk Road “Mastermind” webpage, the top-level administrative page for Silk Road. Forensic analysis of the Silk Road server showed that the “Mastermind” webpage could only be accessed using “Dread Pirate Roberts”’s account on the server, and could not be accessed by any of the other Silk Road staff employees.

4. The Ulbricht Laptop contained a folder with his employees’ identifications, including Clark’s Canadian Passport. Ulbricht therefore knew “VJ”/“cimon”’s true identity. The Ulbricht-Clark chats contain no evidence that Clark knew Ulbricht’s identity. (Even now, Clark refers to Ulbricht as “DPR” in his Declaration.)

5. Ulbricht paid Clark in Bitcoin repeatedly, including payments of approximately: (1) $93,150 on or about November 16, 2012; (2) $50,000 on or about May 7, 2013; and (3) $57,000 on or about July 3, 2013.

6. The Ulbricht Laptop had a detailed accounting spreadsheet including repeated entries for “server rent,” “payroll,” and “commissions,” as well as sporadic entries for “bounties,” “420 grand prize,” and “pay off hacker.” There is never an entry that suggests that anyone else received a portion of Silk Road profits/commissions.

Case 1:15-cr-00866-WHP Document 39 Filed 12/12/19 Page 36 of 55

7. Ulbricht told the Silk Road community, “Whether you like it or not, I am the captain of this ship. You are here voluntarily and if you don’t like the rules of the game, or you don’t trust your captain, you can get off the boat.”

8. As Ulbricht wrote in his journal, Variety Jones (i.e., Clark) “convinced me of a server configuration paradigm that gave me the confidence to be the sole server administrator and not work with someone else at all.” (Emphasis added).

9. Clark deferred to Ulbricht for final decisions. For instance, as noted above, Clark recommended that Ulbricht commission a murder-for-hire because an individual had stolen from Silk Road. After Clark made this recommendation, Ulbricht said he wanted to think about it. Shortly thereafter, the following chat occurred:

Cimon: So, you’ve had your time to think. You’re sitting in the big chair, and you need to make a decision. Now, really, things could move fast in the future.

DPR: I would have no problem wasting this guy

Cimon: Well ok then, I’ll take care of it.

10. In the months that followed, Ulbricht commissioned four more murders-for-hire. Ulbricht did not even tell Clark before doing so.

since he pled guilty to one charge of conspiracy and that averts this trial, his case filings earlier in the month seeking to simply show he was in-fact an owner and therefore also afforded protections from illegal search and seizure based on discovery that the methods claimed were improbable, shows that the government offered a deal to settle before trial and he took it.

That deal eventually will be made public after his sentencing and it shows today that the government ain’t too concerned about the few deaths from something gotten in the post.

What makes no sense that Ross’ sentence seems especially harsh for someone who really didn’t do much of anything beyond write the original eBay for clandestine purposes.

He just owned the bazaar that hosted the sales, he wasn’t the vendor selling the wares?

Poor kid got fucked for being an innovator that fell in with the wrong crowd and it cost him his life too.

[smokebreaks]

Well after what happened with / to the dude who was running what I think was AlphaBay? getting caught in Thailand, winding up dead..
honestly if it were me, I don't think I would've been none to quick to tell the Thai authorities shit either... especially not if I was running the eBay of contraband from their country while I was on a tourist visa or whatever the hell he was doing.

I really don't see his case being anything more substantial than a single count of conspiracy which could carry a 20 year term, but in the land of the free with the most incarcerated populace and prison overcrowding being oh so prevalent, without prior convictions in the US for whatever reason, I'm pretty sure the judge will call into account the 4.5+ years he's been waiting for his "speedy trial" and respond accordingly.

I'm not familiar with the bench he's going to be before for sentencing and the history they may have but I know he's simply taking a plea to avoid a costly trial where much more is at stake as Ross' trial showed.

I'm pretty sure his legal team said straight out to take the deal because you don't want to be a spectacle of judicial ineptitude in the public eye.

Be it naivete or stupidity, Ross and his team made the unfortunate assumption that the US Dept of Justice operates fairly taking his case to trial.

You really can't hold them responsible for the use of the goods that were bought or sold on the site at least not any more so than you can hold a weapons manufacturer liable for the mass slaughters that occur in the streets. Industry gets away with murder all the time. Unless they can prove willful negligence.

In America, unless you're paying for your private attorney, out of pocket, you'd better take the deal.

At the end of the day, the Dept of Justice is paying the bills and you're basically nothing but a file to them.

Basic hard facts and truth here is that when the Office of the Prosecutor and the Criminal Defense are working, it comes out of the same budget, whether they are using a Public Defender or a Court Appointed Attorney, they are working together to move the case through the courts and a settlement without the need for the trial will make that day available on someone else's calendar so it is just procedure in the court's opinion to shuffle this off to the done pile and move on to something else.

If you're not taking the court appointed attorney, do keep some funds set aside for emergencies and maintain the ability to continually pay for a private defense that way you can actively string along the courts and effectively keep your ass out of jail.

Mongoose had neither.

[AGD]

Looks like PoM is not doing very well:
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov ... 2.51.0.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;