Alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht (aka, Dread Pirate Roberts), has been indicted on three additional charges, including narcotics trafficking, distribution of narcotics by means of the internet, and conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent identification documents.
These will be added to the original charges of computer hacking, continued criminal enterprise, and money laundering.
Silk Road was the infamous illicit marketplace for criminals and black-market purveyors, bringing together buyers and sellers primarily for drugs (narcotics), but also malware (hacking) and using bitcoins for money laundering transactions. It was seized and shut down by the Feds last October.
Roberts plead not guilty on February 7 this year to the previous charges, and is expected to do the same with the new charges. His trial is set for Nov. 3 in New York federal court. Until then, he is being held at the New York Metropolitan Detention Center.
So far, the drug charges are among the most serious. According to prosecutors, Ulbricht was in charge of "the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet," "used by several thousand drug dealers and other unlawful vendors to distribute hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services to well over a hundred thousand buyers worldwide."
Specifically, they say they have evidence related to at least 1 kg of heroin, 5 kgs of cocaine, 10 grams of LSD and 500 grams of meth sold on the marketplace.
If they’re able to prove it, that makes him an international kingpin, profiting handsomely from drug sales and other nefarious activities. To explain the scale, the prosecution said that nearly a million registered users spent 9.5 million bitcoins (around $1.2 billion), generating 614,304 bitcoins (nearly $80 million) in commission for the Silk Road over the course of its run.
However, Joshua Dratel, Ulbricht’s defense attorney, has filed a 102-page motion to dismiss, asking for evidence to be rendered inadmissible because of illegal search and seizure on the part of law enforcement, thereby violating Ulbricht’s Fourth Amendment rights.
Missing from the charges is conspiracy to commit murder (murder-for-hire), part of a draft indictment that prosecutors did not ultimately bring forth, although they say he is linked to at least six instances of it. So, Dratel also made the request to drop prejudicial statements related to alleged murder-for-hire solicitations, saying the language violates Ulbricht’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights considering that it wasn’t included in the indictment.
“Accordingly, since there is no concrete link between the murder-for-hire allegations and the unrelated drug trafficking and other charges in this case, it is clear that all references to ‘murder-for-hire’ are irrelevant to the charges, and their inclusion in the Indictment is highly prejudicial to Mr. Ulbricht,” the motion states.
Ulbricht still faces one murder-for-hire charges filed in Maryland, in a separate case.
Dratel also filed a motion requesting a draft jury questionnaire for the trial, which asks, among other things, if potential jurors “have heard or read anything about Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road or the Dread Pirate Roberts,” if they could be impartial in a case involving murder-for-hire and narcotics charges, and if they have ever had their identities stolen.