Roger Thomas Clark, a 61-yr old Canadian who acted as the mentor to the Silk Road founder and administrator Ross Ulbricht has been sentenced by a New York judge to spend the next 20 years in jail.
Clark who had the online aliases of “Plural of Mongoose”, “Variety Jones”, “VJ”, and “Cimon” was sentenced by Judge Sidney H. Stein in Manhattan in the Southern District of New York to serve 20 years in jail, followed by 3 years supervised release, and a forfeiture of USD$1,606,150 for his crimes.
Clark had previously filed a guilty plea in 2020.
Intense investigation
Clark was arrested in December 2015 in his home on the island of Koh Chang in Thailand after a police investigation which started with the arrest of Ross Ulbricht (A.K.A. Dread Pirate Roberts) back in 2013.
Ulbricht was arrested in a San Francisco library with his laptop open logged in to the Silk Road admin page. During investigation of the laptop, police found a photograph of Clark along with a 2011 journal entry paying tribute to Variety Jones’ influence on Silk Road.
“He has helped me better interact with the community around Silk Road, delivering proclamations, handling troublesome characters, running a sale, changing my name, devising rules, and on and on,” .
“He also helped me get my head straight regarding legal protection, cover stories, devising a will, finding a successor, and so on. He’s been a real mentor.”
Extracts from Ross Ulbrichts’ Notebook
The evidence from Ulbrichts laptop led investigators to suggest that Clark was Variety Jones, and that he had advised Ulbricht “on all aspects of the [Silk Road], including how to maximize profits and use threats of violence to thwart law enforcement,” according to a press release issued after Clark’s arrest in Thailand.
Arrogance towards police
After his arrest and imprisonment in Bangkok Remand Prison, Clark gave an interview to journalist Sam Cooley. The following is an excerpt from that interview…
“Guilt is a technical term,” Clark said, adding that he won’t be taken by the FBI the same way Ulbricht was in 2013. “They don’t have shit on me. I’m not going [to the US]. It’s an impossible circumstance.”
Sam Cooley – ARS Technica
“They might have caught Ross with his notebook opened, as they claim, but they found my three notebooks closed and encrypted,” Clark added, claiming his home was raided without a warrant on the Thai island of Koh Chang in December 2015.
“Forensics could spend 30 years trying to decrypt those hard drives and still not get anywhere; so in a way, those hard disks are a headache,” he said. “The longer they need to open them, the longer I can relax here in Bangkok
Mentorship
It’s easy to see why Ulbricht called Clark his mentor. During the time that the Silk Road was in operation, Clark advised Ulbricht about many things including:
- Security vulnerabilities in the Silk Road website code
- Technical infrastructure of the Silk Road hosting environment
- Rules which governed Silk Road users and vendors
- The promotion of sales on Silk Road, including the sales of drugs
- A cover story to make it appear as though Ulbricht had sold Silk Road
- The hiring of a programmer to help improve and maintain the infrastructure of Silk Road
- Information gathering to counter law enforcement’s efforts to investigate Silk Road
- How to protect the Silk Road criminal empire, including the hiring of a hitman to murder a staff member who was suspected of stealing approximately $350,000 in Bitcoin from the site. The murder attempt was unsucessful, but Ulbricht still paid the hitman $80,000 for the job.
What was Silk Road?
The Silk Road was a website available on the Dark Web through the Tor network which was operational between 2011 and 2103.
Launched by Ross Ulbricht under the alias Dread Pirate Roberts, the website initially was only available to sellers who paid a subscription fee bought at auction to offer goods and services. As the site grew in popularity, a static seller fee was introduced.
During its short time in existence, the site amassed over 115,000 customers and over 3,000 sellers generating USD$13M in commission, and USD$213M sales – of which USD$183M were from the sale of drugs.
The success of the Silk Road was mainly due to the fact that it was the only site at the time to conduct transactions exclusively via cryptocurrency – mainly Bitcoin.
What’s in a name?
Ulbricht’s use of the alias Dread Pirate Roberts was taken from the fictional character in the book (and later film) “The Princess Bride” by William Goldman.
In the story, Dread Pirate Roberts is feared across the seven seas for his ruthlessness and sword fighting prowess, and is well known for taking no prisoners. He is also known for espousing libertarian ideals and criticising regulations.
The mythical pirate is actually multiple individuals who pass the name and reputation to a chosen successor once they are wealthy enough to retire.