Didn't Ulbricht actually run the Silk Road? Did someone from the FBI persuade Ulbricht to do it?
I think they're talking about just the murder-for-hire. It may have just been undercover agents the whole time and no murders actually occurred.
Attempting to hire a hitman who turns out to be an FBI agent is still a crime, and likely not entrapment in the legal sense.
It was entrapment because federal agents posing as crime bosses were threatening Ross that if he didn't hire the hitman there would be serious consequences. He was manipulated and forced into the position he was in.
What you see as manipulation, someone else might see as a user of the DPR account revealing his true nature
> "I need his real-world identity, so I can threaten him with violence," DPR told RealLucyDrop.
> "I don't know how I feel about that solution," said RealLucyDrop
What about when his (non-FBI, now-convicted) right-hand-man Roger Thomas Clark convinced him to hire someone for murder?
Surely that can't be entrapment.
"Clark didn't comment on that murder-for-hire conversation—which he at one point claimed had been fabricated by Ulbricht but later conceded was real"
https://www.wired.com/story/silk-road-variety-jones-sentenci...