# FBI seizes Silk Road and Arrests Founder



## Rory (Oct 2, 2013)

FBI seizes Silk Road' black market domain, arrests owner

Published: Oct 2, 2013, 07:48 PM

Authorities have arrested a man in San Francisco, California accused of operating an underground website that allowed users to purchase guns and drugs from around the world using encrypted, digital currency.
Ross William Ulbricht, also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday for his alleged involvement in the Silk Road online marketplace, according to court papers published this week.
A sealed complaint dated September 27 was unearthed by security researcher Brian Krebs in which Ulbricht is accused of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.
According to prosecutors, Ulbricht aided in the trafficking of controlled substances from January 2011 up until last week. The authorities say that the narcotics moved through the Silk Road site include 1 kilogram of heroin, 5 kilograms of cocaine, 10 grams of LSD and 500 grams of methamphetamine.


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## AnaSCI (Oct 2, 2013)

And to think the DarkNet and Dread Pirate Roberts were suppose to be untouchable and unable to be located!


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## Rory (Oct 2, 2013)

AnaSCI said:


> And to think the DarkNet and Dread Pirate Roberts were suppose to be untouchable and unable to be located!



Yeah. But this case brings to mind  other possible flaws. The indictment should be interesting once it's made available.


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## Rory (Oct 2, 2013)

It's out. 39 pages. 

http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf


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## Ironbuilt (Oct 4, 2013)

Well that sucks!


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## swolesearcher (Oct 4, 2013)

awwww  silk road was cool


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## AnaSCI (Oct 4, 2013)

Paying that supplier $150k for the murder is going to seal his fate. Even if it never came to pass and as I was thinking when reading it that he was probably talking with the same group that just burnt him for that money pretending to be someone else. But just the fact that his intent was trying to have the person murdered is going to get him.


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## AnaSCI (Oct 4, 2013)

I guess their competitor sites will be getting an extreme boost in business coming. There are still 3-4 of those sites out there going. Wonder how long before the Feds get to those?


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## gabe walker (Oct 4, 2013)

For someone who took steps to remain anon, he made some serious mistakes early on that F'd him from his LinkedIn page, soliciting IT guys using his real name, posting his real pic/name , then ordering fake ID's from china and sending them to his residence.. A lot of stupid in a short period of time , " oh hey officers you can buy those on this real cool website called silkroad." Wtf! How about " not mine, don't know what your talking about, contact my lawyer."

Wonder how much was done by NSA , and FBI cyber crimes, and worked backward through archived online data and how much was done by his own doing....  Tor,  and bitcoin are not a guarantee of anonymity... Sounds like the fed's were testing their capabilities and simply made an example of him and what they can now do..


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## AnaSCI (Oct 4, 2013)

gabe walker said:


> Wonder how much was done by NSA , and FBI cyber crimes, and worked backward through archived online data and how much was done by his own doing....  Tor,  and bitcoin are not a guarantee of anonymity... Sounds like the fed's were testing their capabilities and simply made an example of him and what they can now do..



I believe this is probably how it worked. Using the NSA as the DEA does to work the case backwards to get the bust. Overreaching and illegal constitutionally but he was very foolish none the less. Also it is too hard to ever implicate the NSA involvement in any wrong doing as has been proven with the DEA operations.


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## WesleyInman (Oct 4, 2013)

There are conflicting reports of value..One report says about 1-10 kilos of drugs ONLY were sold on this site..

While others report that he assisted in over 1.6 billion in transactions and profited over $80 million dollars.  And I am not exaggerating these claims, look it up if you do not believe this as being reported.


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## AnaSCI (Oct 4, 2013)

WesleyInman said:


> There are conflicting reports of value..One report says about 1-10 kilos of drugs ONLY were sold on this site..
> 
> While others report that he assisted in over 1.6 billion in transactions and profited over $80 million dollars.  And I am not exaggerating these claims, look it up if you do not believe this as being reported.



Yes but wasn't the numbers for various services, not just the drugs that were purchased by the Feds (which were the 1-10 kilos). 

SilkRoad offered drugs, guns, computer assistance, child pornography, documentation, etc, etc. Anything you could image you could purchase there at one time or another.


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## gabe walker (Oct 4, 2013)

AnaSCI said:


> I believe this is probably how it worked. Using the NSA as the DEA does to work the case backwards to get the bust. Overreaching and illegal constitutionally but he was very foolish none the less. Also it is too hard to ever implicate the NSA involvement in any wrong doing as has been proven with the DEA operations.



Definitely, when the DEA instruct their agents to never disclose information passed on by NSA, to deny Project Hemisphere, and retroactively build a false cases from the beginning, it's very suspect...

All of his mistakes would have amounted to some dude behind a comp doing some fantasy role play on minecraft unless they knew what, who, and where they were looking... even the fake ID incedent could have been explained as ignorance, novelty ID's, etc.

This was on the whole small time, up to 10 kilos total, really? Billions of dollars to develop the fastest computers in the world with sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms, capable of brute force attacks on encrypted data, and this is it... If anything it shows how vulnerable Tor is..


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## gabe walker (Oct 9, 2013)

FBI is now making arrests of individuals who used Silk Road to sell drugs. Two in sweden, four arrested in the UK and two from Washington state area. They apparently used a GPS tracking device to monitor the two as they made up to 30 package deliveries/pickups in the WA arrests.


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## AnaSCI (Oct 9, 2013)

gabe walker said:


> FBI is now making arrests of individuals who used Silk Road to sell drugs. Two in sweden, four arrested in the UK and two from Washington state area. They apparently used a GPS tracking device to monitor the two as they made up to 30 package deliveries/pickups in the WA arrests.



Do you have a link to the arrests?


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## gabe walker (Oct 9, 2013)

Silk Road drug busts: 8 more arrested

LONDON (AP) — Authorities in Britain, Sweden, and the United States have arrested eight more people following last week's closure of Silk Road, a notorious black market website which helped dealers to sell drugs under the cloak of anonymity, officials and media said Tuesday.

In the U.K., the country's newly-established National Crime Agency warned that more arrests were on the way.

Most if not all the arrests took place within a couple of days of last week's capture of Silk Road's alleged mastermind, Ross Ulbricht, in San Francisco, suggesting that authorities may now be busy unraveling the network of drug dealers who made fortunes peddling illicit substances through the site.

Britain's National Crime Agency said it had seized millions of pounds (dollars) worth of bitcoins, the electronic currency used on the site, and the agency's director general, Keith Bristow, said in a statement that other online drug dealers should expect a knock on their door.

"These latest arrests are just the start; there are many more to come," he said.

Silk Road gained widespread notoriety two years ago as a black market bazaar where visitors could buy and sell hard drugs using bitcoins, a form of online cash which operates independent of any centralized control. A so-called "hidden site," Silk Road used an online tool known as Tor to mask the location of its servers. While many other sites sell drugs more or less openly, Silk Road's technical sophistication, its user-friendly escrow system and its promise of near-total anonymity quickly made it among the best known.

Officials say the black market website brokered more than $1 billion in sales before the FBI collared Ulbricht at a public library on Oct. 1. In its complaint, the bureau said it had managed to copy the contents of the site's server — something one expert said would likely provide international authorities with detailed information about the site's dealers.

"Any large sellers on Silk Road should be very nervous," said Nicholas Weaver, a researcher with the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley and the University of California, San Diego.

Silk Road's eBay-style customer review system means that months' worth of sales history are now in law enforcement hands, Weaver said in an email, while the traceable nature of bitcoin transfers means the FBI "can now easily follow the money."

Britain's Crime Agency said its arrests were carried out only hours after Ulbricht was detained. It called the suspects "significant users" of Silk Road and described them as three men in their 20s from the northern English city of Manchester and a man in his 50s from southwestern England.

U.S. authorities have charged two people in Bellevue, Washington, a city just east of Seattle, after identifying one of them as a top seller on Silk Road. He was arrested on Oct. 2, while his alleged accomplice turned herself in the next day.

In Sweden, two men from the coastal city of Helsingborg were arrested on suspicion of distributing cannabis over Silk Road, the local Helsingborgs Dagblad reported Tuesday. The newspaper did not say when the pair had been detained.

Britain's Crime Agency, which became operational only this month, said the arrests sent a message to criminals that the anonymity touted by sites like Silk Road is an illusion.

"The hidden Internet isn't hidden and your anonymous activity isn't anonymous," it said. "We know where you are, what you are doing and we will catch you."


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## Rory (Oct 9, 2013)

gabe walker said:


> Silk Road drug busts: 8 more arrested
> 
> LONDON (AP) — Authorities in Britain, Sweden, and the United States have arrested eight more people following last week's closure of Silk Road, a notorious black market website which helped dealers to sell drugs under the cloak of anonymity, officials and media said Tuesday.
> 
> ...



Just saw this myself. Definitely looks like governments are going to start flexing a bit....


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## beadhandBP (Oct 11, 2013)

An SR ain't the only one I worked with a few people offshore who was bragging about this site an how they would get there dope from them but they have 2 others now since SR shut down my concerns are the bit coin payments I know sum sources use this as payment an AAS was sold on there to so wat that says about our INT folks?


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## PRIDE (Oct 11, 2013)

Those other sites are going to start getting hit soon too. Also on the boards I see another Operation Raw Deal coming shortly.

Time for everyone to prepare again because it is going to happen and the all of the cheap ugls are going to be going down. The only ones that are going to be left are the old school guys again.


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## AnaSCI (Oct 12, 2013)

Silk Road commemorated with special edition ecstasy pills | The Verge

A drug dealer is keeping the memory of digital black market Silk Road alive with specially-printed ecstasy pills. "To pay our respect to DPR and to forever remember the legacy that was Silk Road we have made a small batch of special units," reads a message on the online storefront for TheHeineken, which sells an array of narcotics. "DPR" refers to Dread Pirate Roberts, the man behind Silk Road. Last week the FBI arrested Ross Ulbricht — who the agency alleges is Dread Pirate Roberts — and shut down the marketplace. Ulbricht has denied all charges.

Since the shutdown a number of other sites have moved in to fill the gap left by the Silk Road, including Sheep Marketplace, where the specially-marked pills are being sold. The tablets are emblazoned with Silk Road's camel logo on one side and the initials "SR" on the other, and the seller notes that "We will offer this limited batch only in small quantitys for a limited time" [sic]. It seems drug dealers know the allure of limited editions just as well as video game publishers; just don't expect a behind-the-scenes DVD with your purchase.


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## rAJJIN (Oct 13, 2013)

As soon as I heard about the "Dark web" at what it was all about....
I knew it was not a place to be jacking around. Child Porn, Heroin, X,
hackers and any other sick or twisted or Smuck thing you can think of.

Not a good place for a bodybuilder to go unless he want un needed attention.
I was warned to not even be googling the name.


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## fitnesskatz (Oct 14, 2013)

*fitnesskatz*



AnaSCI said:


> I guess their competitor sites will be getting an extreme boost in business coming. There are still 3-4 of those sites out there going. Wonder how long before the Feds get to those?



they blackhole them so fast its crazy man,,,ive been using that orbot on my droid you can download from tor it acting crazy last night so my wife and i was looking at some this shit on there which lot of it really sick the child porn and that bs but it still lot there but they blackholed five different url's in just few mins,,,


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## Phoe2006 (Oct 14, 2013)

I think plenty of us are in the same vote T and just steer clear if those sites due to the ramifications that come along with some it the sites domains and servers. Ie child porn makes me sick and all those looking at it or participating in it should be out to death


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## moparfreak360 (Oct 14, 2013)

Any place that even shares the same sentence as child porn, I'm going to steer clear of. Sounds like a place for sickos....not to mention if you want drugs who needs to go online? Every county has a dealer! Lol


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## AnaSCI (Oct 14, 2013)

Lessons from Silk Road: don't host your virtual illegal drug bazaar in Iceland | The Verge

When it comes to protecting your virtual black market from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), some countries are better than others. As it turns out, Iceland is probably not where you want to be. While the country may have protected WikiLeaks from the Americans, it's not harboring the recently busted illegal drug bazaar Silk Road. The Reykjavik Metropolitan Police have confirmed that they handed over data on the Silk Road at the request of American authorities.

It's unclear how much information Iceland turned over, but the FBI claims two Silk Road servers were based there. Icelandic police say the site was actually hosted there. Since Iceland does not have a formal Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) with the US, it appears that the FBI negotiated a special one-time agreement in order to get the data.

It still looks like the bulk of the information that broke open the case did not come from Iceland, however. The complaint says "an image of the Silk Road Web Server was made on or about July 23rd, 2013, and produced thereafter to the FBI" as a result of a request made to a foreign country under a formal MLAT.

That image, or bit-for-bit copy, of the Silk Road server gave authorities access to private messages between the Silk Road's owner and other members of the site. It was instrumental in seizing the site and arresting Ross Ulbricht, the man police allege was behind the Silk Road.

Runa Sandvik, who works on the anonymizing network Tor, has been trying to figure out which country handed over that server image. She initially ruled out Iceland because it does not have an MLAT with the US. Various Silk Road content was also hosted in the US, Latvia, and Malaysia. Latvia and Malaysia are both MLAT signatories. If the request was indeed made under an MLAT, it looks like the image either came from one of those countries or another that has not been revealed yet by the FBI.

Another possibility is that the FBI's complaint erroneously claimed the request was made under an MLAT, when the reality was less formal. Either way, future virtual drug kingpins now know that Iceland is no safe haven.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said that Malaysia is not an MLAT signatory; that is incorrect. Malaysia and the US signed an MLAT in 2009.


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## AnaSCI (Oct 16, 2013)

Accused Silk Road boss just hired a high-profile national security lawyer | The Verge

Ross Ulbricht, the man accused of running the underground drug website Silk Road, has finally hired an attorney to represent him on charges of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, and computer hacking conspiracy. Ulbricht was represented by a public defender at first, but friends and family have managed to find a hotshot lawyer to take the case: Joshua Dratel, a New York-based attorney who has built his career on cases related to national security.

Dratel has defended more than 30 accused terrorists, including David Hicks, an Australian who was arrested in Afghanistan and detained at Guantanamo. He also represented an accountant convicted of working with al-Qaeda and one of the men charged with the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa. His background defending some of the most unsympathetic targets of government prosecution, along with his strong belief in personal freedom and opposition to the security state, made him a natural choice for Ulbricht's defense.

Reached by The Verge this morning, Dratel says he has not spoken to his client yet. Ulbricht is still sitting in jail in San Francisco waiting to be transferred to New York, where the major charges against him have been filed. No court dates have been set yet. Dratel is unsure of whether he will also defend Ulbricht on separate charges filed in Maryland, which are expected to be tried next. In court in San Francisco, Ulbricht denied that he was the Dread Pirate Roberts, Silk Road's pseudonymous owner-operator.

"It's too early to really start piecing together," Dratel says. "Other than that he's not guilty."


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## AnaSCI (Oct 18, 2013)

Silk Road's main competitor shuts down indefinitely | The Verge

Black Market Reloaded, the digital black market that was the largest competitor to the recently-busted Silk Road, just announced it's closing and refunding users' money. In order to deal with the influx of Silk Road refugees, Black Market Reloaded spun up some virtual private servers (VPS) hosted by a third party. According to a Black Market Reloaded administrator, one of the VPS administrators leaked the site code — a huge security breach that could compromise the owner's identity.

"This means I can't operate anymore," admin backopy wrote to users. As for when Black Market Reloaded might relaunch, he answered "early 2014 at best. I said one month, give or take, but it looks like I'll take about 1 month to do a clean close at the current site, after sorting disputes and all that that's left." Attempting to visit Black Market Reloaded now redirects to a forum.

Black Market Reloaded was known as the more hardcore version of Silk Road, selling guns in addition to illegal drugs. It was growing fast even before the FBI seized Silk Road. But it seems the golden age of illicit marketplaces, the class of outlaw stores protected by the anonymizing network Tor, may be coming to an end. Black Market Reloaded is actually the third high-profile marketplace to fall in less than two months: Atlantis Market closed before Silk Road.

It's all on you now, Sheep Marketplace.


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## Little Man (Oct 18, 2013)

All interesting stuff.  I never went to any of these sites because I have no need for drugs or guns. I also thought most of it would be scams.


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## AnaSCI (May 30, 2015)

Ross Ulbricht, creator of the underground website Silk Road, which let users anonymously buy and sell anything from drugs to hacking tutorials, was sentenced Friday to life in prison after he made a tearful plea for leniency.
Ulbricht, who is 31, was convicted in February on seven counts ranging from money laundering to drug trafficking. He could have been sentenced to only 20 years.

U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest was clear that she was making an example of Ulbricht in part to deter others from committing similar crimes.
"There must be no doubt that no one is above the law," Forrest said. "You, as the defendant, have to pay the price."
She said anyone considering following in Ulbricht's footsteps needs "to understand there will be very serious consequences."
Rejecting Ulbricht's request for mercy during the nearly three-hour hearing in Manhattan federal court, Forrest said of Silk Road, "It was carefully planned life's work. It was your opus. You wanted it to be your legacy and it is."
The judge also addressed the 97 letters that had been written to the court by Ulbricht's family and supporters seeking leniency.
Forrest acknowledged that Ulbricht didn't fit the profile of a typical criminal, but said she had no interest in making a judgment "on which of you to know" -- the Ulbricht portrayed in the letters or the convicted criminal standing before her.
The judge also said there was "no doubt" that Ulbricht paid for murders of those who had threatened Silk Road. Prosecutors had charged Ulbricht with commissioning six murders-for-hire but those charges were dropped and there is no evidence that these murders were ever carried out.
Forrest ordered Ulbricht to forfeit $183 million.
Earlier in court, Ulbricht made an emotional appeal to Forrest for leniency, insisting he wasn't a greedy person and asking for a second chance.
"I wish I could go back and convince myself to take a different path," he said. "I've ruined my life."
lyn kirk ulbricht
The Ulbricht family leaving court Friday.
Ulbricht, a college grad from Penn State, explained that he created Silk Road to empower people by providing them with "privacy" and "anonymity."
Ulbricht also apologized to the family members in court of two people who had died from overdoses from drugs they had purchased on Silk Road.
Richard, a father from Boston whose son, Bryan, who was identified only by his first name, died after using drugs bought on Silk Road read a letter he'd written to the court. "I strongly believe my son would be here today if Ross Ulbricht hadn't created silk road," he said.
Related: Bitcoin fallacy led to Silk Road founder's conviction
Silk Road was a first of its kind -- an unregulated online marketplace where buyers paid using Bitcoin, an electronic currency that is hard to trace. In the three years before it was shut down, it facilitated over 1.5 million transactions totaling $214 million.
Before Friday's hearing, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara painted Ulbricht as a kingpin of a drug trafficking enterprise who made things easier for drug buyers and sellers.
"Ulbricht bears responsibility for the overdoses, addictions, and other foreseeable repercussions of the illegal drugs sold on Silk Road," Bharara wrote in a letter to the judge. "It does not matter that he did not personally handle those drugs; neither would a traditional kingpin."
Ulbricht, who has been jailed since his arrest in October 2013, never testified at his trial. He expressed his remorse in a letter to the judge.
"If I had realized the impact my creation of Silk Road would ultimately have on the people I care about most, I never would have created Silk Road," Ulbricht wrote. "I created it for what I believed at the time to be selfless reasons, but in the end it turned out to be a very selfish thing to do."
Ulbricht's lawyer, Joshua Dratel, said he would appeal the case.


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## chrisr116 (May 30, 2015)

Damn...life?


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## srd1 (May 30, 2015)

Little harsh if ya ask me....life without parole wtf


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## Phoe2006 (May 30, 2015)

srd1 said:


> Little harsh if ya ask me....life without parole wtf




Well their were hitman you could hire and murders that were supposedly linked to Silk Road


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## chrisr116 (May 31, 2015)

Phoe2006 said:


> Well their were hitman you could hire and murders that were supposedly linked to Silk Road


I didn't know that.  Ok..now it makes more sense.


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## srd1 (May 31, 2015)

Makes more sense now but still he didnt play a direct part in the things on there did he? I mean he created a place were illegal shit could be facilitated but would that be like the ceo of at&t going to prison cause drug dealers and hitmen used at&ts  network to make calls to do their business?


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## Marshall (Jun 1, 2015)

I would imagine at some point in the appeal process it will get reduced.


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## K1 (Jun 2, 2015)

srd1 said:


> Makes more sense now but still he didnt play a direct part in the things on there did he? I mean he created a place were illegal shit could be facilitated but would that be like the ceo of at&t going to prison cause drug dealers and hitmen used at&ts  network to make calls to do their business?



No bodies found but they have messages from him paying for at least 9 hits on people (I believe it was 9)?!

Also there were inner circles of that site where you could actually buy children...Imagine someone kidnapping your child and paying some asshole to sell them on their site...I bet none of you would be thinking that a life sentence was being too harsh then! 

I think most of us look at this from a roid user/seller's perspective...We need to look at it from an entirely different level...This guy was making millions, hundreds of millions off of dealing with the lowest forms of illegal activities possible!


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## srd1 (Jun 2, 2015)

Holy shit had no idea! Selling kids wtf....fuck a life sentence take him outside the courthouse and put a bullet behind his ear and be done with him.


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