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$13M in Bitcoins traced back to Silk Road kingpin Ross Ulbricht
Alleged Silk Road kingpin Ross Ulbricht is on trial at a Manhattan, NY court, facing charges of conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking, conspiring to commit computer hacking and conspiring to commit money laundering, amongst others.
Earlier in the trial, Ulbricht’s legal team admitted that he was the founder of darknet marketplace Silk Road, but stated that he did not control many of its operations. Then a few days later, the same legal team accused Mark Karpeles, the former CEO of the now defunct Mt.Gox Bitcoin exchange service, as the operator and owner of Silk Road, not Ulbricht. This was backed by evidence obtained by the Department of Homeland Security, which suggested it also believed Karpeles was the man behind Silk Road’s operations.
So is Ulbricht in the clear? No, as new evidence arose from the trial on Thursday.
Former FBI special agent Ilhwan Yum, who personally worked on the case, told the court he was able to trace 3,760 Bitcoin transactions over 12 months which ended in late August 2013. The transactions were traced back from Silk Road’s servers to Ulbricht’s Samsung 700z laptop, which was seized when he was arrested in October 2013. According to Yum, he was able to trace 700,000 Bitcoins along the Blockchain from the marketplace to what they deemed as Ulbricht’s personal wallets. At that time, the Bitcoin traced was worth a total of $13.4 million.
When asked by the prosecutor if the transactions were one-to-one transfers, Yum insisted: “Yes, direct, one-to-one transfers.”
Ulbricht’s defense attorney, Joshua Dratel questioned Yum’s involvement in the analysis of the Bitcoins. Dratel queried whether Yum did all the analysis himself, or if someone else put in most of the work. Yum admitted that he only put in 40 hours of analysis while cryptologist Matthew Edman performed 60 hours. Dratel motioned for Yum’s testimonial to be struck as hearsay, but the motion was denied by Judge Katherine Forrest, who ruled that Yum was sufficiently involved in the analysis.
The trial continues.
photo credit: btckeychain via photopin cc
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