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Is that why they never prosecuted the attempted murder? It sounds like entrapment.

That's the point people don't seem to be getting about anonymous reviews- if the review is more costly than the value it provides the seller, they won't do it, and it's fairly easy to make that the case. A separate enthusiast forum where the reviews are from people with a long history of high effort engagement is a good example of that. That's basically the idea behind crypto as well- making false transactions is more expensive than the value it could return.

The truth is no one knows why they didn't bring those charges, or the real details behind the evidence or what happened in those interactions. It's pretty much shrouded beneath things like: -DOJ released some details and screenshots, but -the FBI agents who were involved in investigating this topic were like arrested for stealing bitcoin from silk road or something, so their work is hard to find credible -general lack of clarity as to the identity of the person running silk road at the time this happened
>It sounds like entrapment

The law is murky and seems to hinge on the court's opinion on whether the person who committed the crime would have had they not been influenced by an officer. The police being the ones to start the conversation doesn't rise to the level of entrapment. The police deceiving you into wanting to commit a crime may rise to the level of entrapment if the courts find you wouldn't have done it otherwise (the example I found that illustrated this best was "Hey there's a warehouse full of valuables let's go rob it" isn't entrapment but "Hey this guy said he's gonna kill your kid you need to kill him first" probably does absent any reason to believe you would have killed him without being deceived first). My guess would be that the grey area, plus the relative ease with which they were able to secure a life sentence for the other charges, is why the murder-for-hire charges never went to trial.

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My understanding is that they did not charge him with the attempted murder because it was later found that both parties/witnesses (other than Ross) later turned out to be corrupt and financially benefitting from the situation (keeping his murder payment for themselves) and the Silk Road in general.

It made the situation...messy, to say the least.

Entrapment requires some coercive/persuasive force by the government to push you to commit the crime, the government is allowed to setup entirely fake scenarios and let you choose to do a crime.
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