You're overestimating ross. He used his personal email to advertise silk road. I'm sure he was also dumb enough to pay for the hit through a bank transfer.
Let's get real, the guy was a fricking idiot.
If he was such an idiot, then he would have never created such a sophisticated market place and saved it from the FBI and hackers for more than a year. The FBI tracked him after years of monitoring. They spent millions of USD trying to track him. But for a long time he evaded those who tried to outsmart him. He was caught after a bug in the TOR browser exposed his IP. He was probably
smarter than anyone in this forum.
The people who usually call him out as an idiot are the ones thinking that they are smarted than him. They think that if they were in his place they wouldn't get caught (with so much money).
Smarter than anyone? Definitely no. He just has excellent 'computer skills'. The word smart is complicated and usage is often wrong. Is a person really smart if they run illegal activities knowing that they would spent a part of their life behind bars?
Anyhow I do believe there was a setup involved. One of the rare mistake that he made is using that TOR browser.