Silk Road Case: The Real, Untold Story. Is Karpeles Satoshi or DPR?
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Did anyone watch the latest documentary about Ross Ulbricht? It can be found on Youtube and it was created by the Free Ross organization.
I'm asking because I noticed some interesting allegations, besides all the injustice made during the trial. The injustice made towards Ross is well known (I think) by most of the people knowing details about the case; many of them were detailed also by xtraelv in his very interesting topic.
However, some unknown (at least for me) details were exposed in this documentary. Some are very unrealistic (such as the suspicion about Mark Karpeles being Satoshi, which I find as being actually a delusion, but nobody knows the truth), but some raise questions though... Besides, the film details the idea of Karpeles being also DPR, not just Satoshi.
- For example, at the beginning of the documentary (between 0:04 and 09:22), is stated that first mention of SR was made here, by the user silkroad, inside the topic Silk Road: anonymous marketplace. Feedback requested
(which is correct). Jared Der-Yeghiayan, the first investigator of SR (who never mentioned how he found out abour SR's existence), found out that the site mentioned in the topic (silkroadmarket.org) was only a surface web platform which was informing the users about how to use Tor and how to access the real SR on Deep Web. Der-Yeghiayan found that silkroadmarket.org was registered with XTA.net, a domain server owned by a company of Mark Karpeles named Mutum Sigillum. As you already know, Karpeles is the ex-owner of the defunct Mt. Gox. At this point started the suspicion that DPR (the new owner of SR, after Ross handed him the site) is the same person with the owner of Mt. Gox.
- By that time, according to Ross' statements, he was no longer the owner of SR. He declared that he was overwhelmed and, after finding a guy who helped him a lot with the site, he agreed to pass him the ownership. This guy's nickname was DPR (Dread Pirate Roberts) and he is (was) suspected to be Karpeles.
- From here, things become even more interesting: Karpeles bought Mt. Gox about same time when SR was launched. In the documentary is raised the suspicion that Karpeles may be Satoshi (which I doubt) and that he would have all the reasons in the world for opening SR, as he would place there the BTC earned through Mt. Gox and vice-versa. Besides the interesting coincidences, there is also an absurd allegation - that Karpeles was also the owner of BitcoinTalk, information given to Der-Yeghiayan by a secret informant, who previously was hired by Karpeles. This idea appeared after another coincidence noted in the film, as it follows: the SMF platform, used for BitcoinTalk site, was used also for the discussions forum hosted on SR. Besides, due to the rarity of SMF being used in forums, the fact that it was used on both BitcoinTalk and SR raised investigator's suspicion, determining him to consider even more that there is a same owner for both, meaning that Karpeles could be Satoshi.
Example of similarities UI-wise between the sites:
- Coming back to Ross and to how the investigation started (32:00 - 34:46): it is stated that the govern used a "parallel construction" in order to frame him and to make him look like the real DPR. To be more specific, an IRS agent (Gary Alford) found on BitcoinTalk a post containing Ross's email, which was written before the thread found by Der-Yeghiayan (mentioned above). Practically, Der-Yeghiayan found the topic Silk Road: anonymous marketplace. Feedback requested, which was posted on March 1st, 2011 by the username silkroad, while Alford stated he found a post made by the user altoid on January 29th, 2011 (without specifying the name of the topic). The documentary says that Der-Yeghiayan couldn't have found this post during his investigation because it didn't exist. Alford claimed he found the respective post being quoted by another forum user in a discussion about SR (I could not find this post, although I searched it). Afterwards, Alford mentioned a real post of altoid, from October 11th, 2011 (which I found to be IT pro needed for venture backed bitcoin startup), where an email was stated: "rossulbricht at gmail dot com". And from here, the govern was led to suspect Ross being behind SR.
However, claims the documentary, this information could be planted by Karpeles (the alleged owner of BitcoinTalk) or by any other user with high level of access. Besides, the way that Alford found the respective email is compared with "finding a needle in a haystack the size of the Internet" (which I totally agree). With other words, from all the people trying to find information about SR owner, Alford only managed to find this email address. From here started the idea that the information was planted. Because if someone with high access would have made the respective post in the name of Ross then handed the information to Alford, everything looks more realistic.
The entire documentary is very interesting, but, however, its first 35 minutes are the ones raising the questions detailed in current topic. Could Karpeles be Satoshi and also DPR? Another aspect, not mentioned in the documentary, but known inside the forum, is that Karpeles also performed an audit over BitcoinTalk. Maybe this aspect would have raised even more suspicion in the documentary.
In the end, I want to mention that I found very interesting the entire film, which brings new details about Ross's case, about the unbelievable way the judge treated him or about the sabotages that some secret agencies / agents performed towards other agencies / agents. I recommend everybody to watch it, it's a must see documentary!
I'm asking because I noticed some interesting allegations, besides all the injustice made during the trial. The injustice made towards Ross is well known (I think) by most of the people knowing details about the case; many of them were detailed also by xtraelv in his very interesting topic.
However, some unknown (at least for me) details were exposed in this documentary. Some are very unrealistic (such as the suspicion about Mark Karpeles being Satoshi, which I find as being actually a delusion, but nobody knows the truth), but some raise questions though... Besides, the film details the idea of Karpeles being also DPR, not just Satoshi.
- For example, at the beginning of the documentary (between 0:04 and 09:22), is stated that first mention of SR was made here, by the user silkroad, inside the topic Silk Road: anonymous marketplace. Feedback requested
(which is correct). Jared Der-Yeghiayan, the first investigator of SR (who never mentioned how he found out abour SR's existence), found out that the site mentioned in the topic (silkroadmarket.org) was only a surface web platform which was informing the users about how to use Tor and how to access the real SR on Deep Web. Der-Yeghiayan found that silkroadmarket.org was registered with XTA.net, a domain server owned by a company of Mark Karpeles named Mutum Sigillum. As you already know, Karpeles is the ex-owner of the defunct Mt. Gox. At this point started the suspicion that DPR (the new owner of SR, after Ross handed him the site) is the same person with the owner of Mt. Gox.- By that time, according to Ross' statements, he was no longer the owner of SR. He declared that he was overwhelmed and, after finding a guy who helped him a lot with the site, he agreed to pass him the ownership. This guy's nickname was DPR (Dread Pirate Roberts) and he is (was) suspected to be Karpeles.
- From here, things become even more interesting: Karpeles bought Mt. Gox about same time when SR was launched. In the documentary is raised the suspicion that Karpeles may be Satoshi (which I doubt) and that he would have all the reasons in the world for opening SR, as he would place there the BTC earned through Mt. Gox and vice-versa. Besides the interesting coincidences, there is also an absurd allegation - that Karpeles was also the owner of BitcoinTalk, information given to Der-Yeghiayan by a secret informant, who previously was hired by Karpeles. This idea appeared after another coincidence noted in the film, as it follows: the SMF platform, used for BitcoinTalk site, was used also for the discussions forum hosted on SR. Besides, due to the rarity of SMF being used in forums, the fact that it was used on both BitcoinTalk and SR raised investigator's suspicion, determining him to consider even more that there is a same owner for both, meaning that Karpeles could be Satoshi.
Example of similarities UI-wise between the sites:
- Coming back to Ross and to how the investigation started (32:00 - 34:46): it is stated that the govern used a "parallel construction" in order to frame him and to make him look like the real DPR. To be more specific, an IRS agent (Gary Alford) found on BitcoinTalk a post containing Ross's email, which was written before the thread found by Der-Yeghiayan (mentioned above). Practically, Der-Yeghiayan found the topic Silk Road: anonymous marketplace. Feedback requested
, which was posted on March 1st, 2011 by the username silkroad, while Alford stated he found a post made by the user altoid on January 29th, 2011 (without specifying the name of the topic). The documentary says that Der-Yeghiayan couldn't have found this post during his investigation because it didn't exist. Alford claimed he found the respective post being quoted by another forum user in a discussion about SR (I could not find this post, although I searched it). Afterwards, Alford mentioned a real post of altoid, from October 11th, 2011 (which I found to be IT pro needed for venture backed bitcoin startup), where an email was stated: "rossulbricht at gmail dot com". And from here, the govern was led to suspect Ross being behind SR.However, claims the documentary, this information could be planted by Karpeles (the alleged owner of BitcoinTalk) or by any other user with high level of access. Besides, the way that Alford found the respective email is compared with "finding a needle in a haystack the size of the Internet" (which I totally agree). With other words, from all the people trying to find information about SR owner, Alford only managed to find this email address. From here started the idea that the information was planted. Because if someone with high access would have made the respective post in the name of Ross then handed the information to Alford, everything looks more realistic.
The entire documentary is very interesting, but, however, its first 35 minutes are the ones raising the questions detailed in current topic. Could Karpeles be Satoshi and also DPR? Another aspect, not mentioned in the documentary, but known inside the forum, is that Karpeles also performed an audit over BitcoinTalk. Maybe this aspect would have raised even more suspicion in the documentary.
I believe that this is how the attack was done: After the 2011 hack of the forum, the attacker inserted some backdoors. These were removed by Mark Karpelles in his post-hack code audit, but a short time later, the attacker used the password hashes he obtained from the database in order to take control of an admin account and insert the backdoors back in.
In the end, I want to mention that I found very interesting the entire film, which brings new details about Ross's case, about the unbelievable way the judge treated him or about the sabotages that some secret agencies / agents performed towards other agencies / agents. I recommend everybody to watch it, it's a must see documentary!