7.Closing Argument — Defense

MR. DRATEL: May it please the Court?

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for listening. Thank you for paying attention thank you for being here sometimes in weather that was inclement and difficult. So we really appreciate it, and it is a reflection on your recognition of how important this case is for Mr. Ulbricht.

This will be my last chance to speak to you about the case. The government is going to get another opportunity after I'm done, and I'll talk about that towards the end of my closing statement.

Obviously, in a trial that's lasted this long with as much testimony and documents as have come in, I am not going to be able to talk to you about everything. I'm going to pick items and concepts that illustrate why Ross Ulbricht is not guilty of each and every count in the Indictment; why the government has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, as it must do, each and every element unanimously to all of you, to each of your satisfaction, and the other counts in the Indictment.

Some of this stuff has been technical. Some of it may be a little technical during my summation. But as I told you in opening, the fundamentals, the foundation of all of this is common sense. It's your life experience. It's what you know and what teaches you, from the evidence in this case, that Mr. Ulbricht is not guilty.

I talked about this in my opening. It is apparent from everything we've heard in the case. It is that the Internet is not what it seems. The very first witness, a government agent, assumed multiple identities on the Silk Road site. Multiple. As many as a dozen. So he had dozens of accounts that he was controlling. No one realized that the usernames had changed when he assumed an account. No one realized when he created an account that he was law enforcement. He never took a lesson. He didn't know anything about computer technology, necessarily, more than the average person. He was able to do it, just like his colleagues. He said they all had accounts. All of them were operating accounts.

The Internet permits, and thrives on, to a certain extent, deception and misdirection. They were never caught as law enforcement operating undercover. In all of the posts that they did and all of their interaction here on Silk Road -- the buyers, sellers, administrators, moderators, all of that. You heard Michael Duch talk about his wariness of customers because he agrees, you never know who precisely is on the other side of that computer screen.

Even Agent Der-Yeghiayan, during cross-examination, recalled that there was a period of time where he was so convoluted in his own mind that he didn't quite know who was supposed to be who. He said who's on first. And he was a person who knew the inside of it, that he was playacting, that his colleagues were running accounts. He even knew that and he couldn't keep track.

You don't even know if any of the screen names that the government has pointed to, that any of them, is a separate person. They could all be the same person and you wouldn't know. You can't conclude that here, I submit to you. You have no evidence that there are different people. They could all be Agent Der-Yeghiayan -- not that they're Agent Der-Yeghiayan, but just like Agent Der-Yeghiayan, they could all be the same person operating multiple usernames. Where is the proof that they are separate people? Where is the proof from the witness stand, from anyone who came in and said that was me, that was me, that was me? No. We don't know. You don't know. And you can't make a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt based on that.

Reasonable doubt, it is what protects us all. It protects Mr. Ulbricht. It protects us all in this system. It is the bedrock of the system. It requires the government to prove its case, to satisfy you beyond a reasonable doubt. The Judge will instruct you, reasonable doubt is a doubt that appeals to your reason, your judgment, your experience, your common sense. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt must, therefore, be proof of such a convincing character that a reasonable person would not hesitate to rely and act upon it in the most important of his or her own affairs. If you have such a doubt as would reasonably cause a prudent person to hesitate in acting in important matters in his or her own affairs, then you have a reasonable doubt and it's your duty to find the defendant not guilty. One of the fundamental principles in this case is that DPR and Mr. Ulbricht cannot be the same person. That's what the evidence, I submit, shows you. And the government hasn't proved beyond a reasonable doubt -- certainly, that's the burden -- that they're the same person. Let's just look at some of the evidence.

DPR starts February 5, 2012, with a post that says I'm announcing my name. By that time the only witness with firsthand knowledge, Richard Bates, has already testified that Mr. Ulbricht is already out of Silk Road by February 2012. They could talk all they want about documents -- and we'll talk about them -- that could be created, edited, moved. But their witness, the only person who actually knew Mr. Ulbricht, told you Mr. Ulbricht said it was sold as of November 2011. I submit to you it was even before that. That's just when they talked about it.

There is also just a difference in the way security is handled here so you can tell that Mr. Ulbricht is not DPR, and the evidence hasn't proved that to you beyond a reasonable doubt that they are the same person. First, if you look at Mr. Ulbricht from what we know, you have those posts attributed to him in early 2011. That's even before Silk Road starts, and then where he started he posts as Altoid, which is directly linked back to him.

Does that sound like DPR? The day of his arrest he's facing out the window with his back to the people in the library. He's already said in a chat that they've -- DPR has already said in a chat that they put in evidence to someone working for him, he said: The worst that could happen, your only vulnerability is someone coming behind and looking over your shoulder, which is exactly the position that Mr. Ulbricht was in in that library the day he was arrested.

Saving those chats, does that sound like DPR? You have to actually enable the chats to be saved. The government witness, Mr. Kiernan, testified to that. You actually have to choose to save all of the incriminating evidence. Does that sound like DPR?

Keeping a journal like that and then saving it on your laptop? A little too convenient. Does that sound like DPR? That's Government Exhibit 241. And we'll talk more about that, too.

Keeping your PGP keys in a file named "Key," something that's supposed to be secret, something that's supposed to keep -- that's something that is supposed to enable you to communicate in an encrypted fashion. There are a lot of blinking neon signs in this case that have been created to incriminate Mr. Ulbricht, and I submit to you DPR wouldn't do any of that.

BitTorrent, a program, a peer-to-peer file sharing program for people on the network, on the Internet. At the time that he was arrested Mr. Ulbricht is on a program that connects him to other people on the Internet. The photos that we put in as Defendant's G and Defendant's H show that he is connected to nine people. That he uploaded the Colbert Report. There were nine peers on his system, nine people connected to an open port on his computer. Think about that from the point of view of Internet security, computer security, when you've seen from government witnesses, one after the other, talk about hacking tools and what can be done when someone gets access to your computer. I will talk more about that, too.

They had said he had a thumb drive of the entire site. Why do you have it on your laptop if you have it on a thumb drive if you want to be secure? What's the purpose? Would DPR do that?

Let's look at DPR for a second on that issue. You had a long -- first of all, in the seller's contract, which is Government Exhibit 121B, it says -- basically, it is all about security. It is how to keep your -- the vendors had to keep them secure, how to keep their customers secure about destroying addresses and identifying information and all of that packaging and all of these things to make sure that everyone is secure on the site and that this security is paramount for DPR. You had a law enforcement professional, Agent Der-Yeghiayan. You had many of his colleagues -- he doesn't even know how many around the world -- in the United States, and he said, around the world, who were on that site trying to identify DPR. He got on that site first -- the first time he went on that site was October of 2011. Two years. Did DPR give away anything to him? No. He was an administrator. He was inside. By August of 2013, he was inside. He took over an administrator account. He had direct communication and private chats with DPR. Still, this law enforcement professional, who is all over the Silk Road site, thousands of hours on the site, could not get any personal information about DPR.

I submit to you -- and I'll talk more about this as I continue, but I submit to you that that in and of itself and the Cirrus chats, which is Agent Der-Yeghiayan, for a three-month period, prove that those other chats, that pretend to have personal information about Mr. Ulbricht, are phonies. Maybe not in the entirety in the sense that they are not Mr. Ulbricht, but they're DPR's, but that they're edited, sprinkled with facts about Mr. Ulbricht's life that are out there and available not only in the public but to anyone who would have access to his computer and his accounts.

Look at Government's Exhibit 936, which is the redandwhite friendly chemist, series of chats. I read some of that yesterday. There is one section where DPR gives redandwhite advice. We will put it up there for you. Where he gives redandwhite various concrete detailed advice about how to scrub metadata from a photo image so that it could be sent without revealing incriminating information.

Look at Mr. Ulbricht's computer. Look at all the metadata the government showed you. Metadata, of course, that can be edited, as the government witnesses acknowledged.

It is not the same person. It is not like a person who has two contrasting character traits that don't seem to go together. It is not something like a virtuoso player who can't boil an egg. It's not a virtuoso piano player who can't play Happy Birthday. That is what this really is when they talk about security, when they talk about DPR, what they are trying to say about Mr. Ulbricht. It doesn't fit. It is a little too convenient.

Now, one of these chats -- and the government talked about it in summation earlier -- that said "told two people." Well, in fact, whoever wrote that chat didn't know that there were more than two people involved in this whole thing. Whether all of them had to do with Mr. Ulbricht or not is unclear. But I submit to you, they put one of those people in there because they didn't know about a couple of others that Mr. Ulbricht had been in contact with at the early part. So, for example, they put in someone named Jessica, and that's 240C. Let's show that.

Well, he talks in a chat. There is a journal that says "I went out with Jessica and I told her I have secrets and I'm so stupid. I trust people."

That's one. Bates would be two. Mr. Ulbricht's real girlfriend, Julie Alan, would be three. A woman with the Facebook post, that's four. That's not two.

Just to give you an another example of how easy it is or how convenient it is to say something and then to try to make something of it by putting together facts that don't fit, which make an assumption that doesn't fit beyond a reasonable doubt. If I say to you "beaches," do you think Thailand? So you have to say Thailand in return? That's the first guess? He's in Australia at the time, Mr. Ulbricht.

They want to create the person or persons who created those chats, they wanted to create this as if it were somehow connected to Mr. Ulbricht's life.

Now, how do we know that DPR was not Mr. Ulbricht? Well, first of all, like I said, Mr. Bates told you. And then Mr. Ulbricht leaves for Australia for six months in October of 2011. Then in April of 2013 there is evidence that DPR has changed again. That's from Agent Der-Yeghiayan.

And, by the way, he had been on that site from October 2011. But he doesn't know anything, by the way, about the beginning of the site. No one knows anything about the beginning of the site. There are no witnesses, there are no documents, there is no anything about Silk Road in terms of transactions or anything like that from the beginning of the site. We haven't heard any evidence of that.

Now, with respect to a timeline for 2011, I think it's important to look at the timeline for 2011. If you look in March -- February, March and April, there is a lot of conversation between Bates and Mr. Ulbricht about programming. And of course we know that the site was launched around that time. But then that part drops off after June. And there are things that happen in June. You heard this morning, the Silk Road site in its current form, June 18, 2011, with that first post from the Silk Road site that they were down for a little bit, and then they're back up. It sounds like a transition.

Now, you know from Mr. Bates also that Mr. Ulbricht had another project going on before Silk Road and in the beginning of it, Good Wagon Books, through the early part of 2011. Also, the government pointed out 240B this morning, but 240B also says no commissions at the beginning. You don't have a single piece of evidence that Mr. Ulbricht was responsible for any commissions.

Mr. Ulbricht was never a conspirator, as charged in the Indictment. He is not a conspirator at all. There is no agreement here. There is no evidence when that seller's account contract came into being on the site. Again, we don't have anything from the site until later on in 2011, after he's already gone from it.

MR. DRATEL: No evidence of when an escrow system was set up on the site, no evidence of Mr. Ulbricht set up an escrow system.

Now also on that timeline as we get through 2011, we see that it's only in October of 2011 that Agent Der-Yeghiayan starts to monitor the site and that November 11, 2011, Mr. Bates testified that Mr. Ulbricht tells him I've already sold it to someone else. Mr. Ulbricht leaves for Australia four days later for six months.

Now, there's a chat in April of 2013 that the government did not discuss in its submissions, Government Exhibit 1004, it's between Mr. Bates and Mr. Ulbricht. Okay. If we can blow up the first part. April 2013, baronsyntax, this is Mr. Bates: Did you see slashdot last week.

Mr. Ulbricht: Negative.

Mr. Bates: There was something posted on Friday that you might have found interesting.

I'll take a look. Thanks.

And then it says -- this is Mr. Ulbricht -- in April of 2013: "glad that's not my problem anymore," with a smiley face.

It says afterwards: "I have regrets, don't get me wrong...but that shit was stressful."

That's the only chat the government doesn't want you to believe, the only one that an actual witness came in and told you that he participated with Mr. Ulbricht. Not a single other chat is verified in any other way that Mr. Ulbricht was a participant. That one we know happened, and that one is the one the government doesn't want to talk about. It's the only government witness that ever met or spoke with Mr. Ulbricht until July of 2013. Won't talk about that interview with Agent Critten who testified.

Now, the chat in October of 2011, the government showed that today as well, but the one that says are you doing anything besides the site for a job, well, in fact, we put in the rest of the chat, which is R57, and it's all about the bitcoin exchange site that Mr. Bates and Mr. Ulbricht are working on at that time. Throughout the summer, Mr. Bates' testimony - again, a live witness telling you what happened, not a document created on the Internet, on a computer that anyone can do at any time - he testified that throughout the summer of 2011, they were working together on a bitcoin exchange website that people would go to and be able to synthesize prices and availability in the market.

Mr. Bates said he was working on the code. There was a contract that Mr. Ulbricht had sent him that was never signed, but they got as far as a contract to be partners in this. And in R57, it's all about the bitcoin site. It's not about Silk Road he says. Nobody talks about the site. That's a presumption. I submit to you that based on the rest of the chat, it's not a valid presumption. It's not a presumption that permits you to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that they're talking about Silk Road, but it doesn't come up anywhere in the chat.

There's also an Altoid post, posted by Altoid on the bitcoin forum chat, Government Exhibit 306, in which, again, this is a post where Mr. Ulbricht is asking for advice about a bitcoin exchange. That's what the post is about. It's October 2011. It's at the very same time. That's what he's working on at that time. He didn't even change his address from the earlier Altoid post from early 2011. You know why? Because Silk Road -- he wasn't worried about security at that point but Silk Road was in his rear-view mirror. He was already out of it.

Now, Mr. Ulbricht's background: Physics degree, Master's of Material Sciences from Penn State University. There was a chat where something about the laws of gravity that was said in a way as if you have to be a physics major to know that gravity is a law of physics. I don't know what the other purpose was to try to make that kind of a leap for you. Agent Shaw, the government's last witness -- not Agent Shaw, Mr. Shaw, I'm sorry -- said the first commission charge was May 16, 2011. There's no proof that Mr. Ulbricht was still involved at that time. He also didn't know -- couldn't tell you -- understand he had access to the entire server, all of these transactions. Look at what he went through to make those charts. He could not say when the first heroin sale was, could not say when the first cocaine sale was. We have no evidence of when any drug sale was made on Silk Road before that date. Talk about proof, not just taking a line and then extending it because it seems like it could have happened that way or it should have happened that way or it might have happened that way; it has to have happened that way beyond a reasonable doubt.

The changes in Silk Road over time, again, transitions, changes. We talked before, the site shut down in 2011, it was split from the Marketplace and the forum as two separate sites at that time. Big changes. I submit to you it's part of that transition from Mr. Ulbricht to the person he sold it to. The forgeries don't start until August of 2011. And again, in October of 2011, there's more activity, there's more shutdown, there's more transition. The URL changes at the end of 2011. DPR becomes -- is announced in February of 2012, a new commission schedule in January 2012.

Silkroad.org, remember that thing, that advertisement that takes you from the open web to Tor, that's not renewed. That is registered in March of 2011 and in April of 2012, it's not renewed. It's now owned by a guy in China who has nothing to do with it. It was not renewed. It was only up for a year.

Didn't make any seizures before -- Agent Der-Yeghiayan did not start making those particular seizures until October of 2011. By the way, as he admitted on cross-examination, what was coming in, he has no idea whether it was from the Silk Road or not specifically. That's like saying I order a book -- I go on Amazon and I see a book, and then I go to another site and I like the price better or the shipping costs or whatever it is or I got points, I'm a member, who knows what it is, I buy it from the other site, but it's advertised on Amazon and when it comes from my house, it means it comes from Amazon? No. You have to prove that. There's no proof. We know there are multiple sites out there.

These people can be working directly -- he admitted all of that. Buyer and seller can be working directly. They can be working over email. They can be working over a variety of different ways. There's no proof that that whole room -- there's no proof that anything in that room that is Silk Road.

They tell you about assumptions and being careful about assumptions, and they're all after Mr. Ulbricht has left Silk Road even if they could be attributed.

The same thing, by the way, with Michael Duch. He was not even on the site as a buyer until October 2012, not as a seller until April 2013, well after Mr. Ulbricht is gone. You know, he has spreadsheets he said he actually worked on for this trial. And I'm sorry, do you believe a thing he said without some real corroboration, without some verification? Could you actually believe a thing he said for several reasons, one of which is at the time this is all happening he is doing, by his own account, a volume of heroin that probably defies reality, he's probably selling most of that that he says he's doing and he's probably selling it on the street. Second is, he's got a deal to get him out from under a life sentence, so I submit you can't take his word for anything without proof and not proof of a spreadsheet that he created. Do you know that what's on this spreadsheet is reliable? Can you trust it beyond a reasonable doubt in a matter of importance in your own affairs?

I want to look at the timeline again for the early part of 2013. A lot happens in the early part of 2013, the spring of 2013 in particular. First we have February 5 -- I'm sorry. I had the wrong date. The February 5, 2013 post of the chat where Ross says "Glad that's not my problem anymore, I have regrets, don't get me wrong, that shit was stressful," that's what he says to Bates, that's a chat that's in evidence, Government Exhibit 1004. Then in March on the 16th, there's a Stack Overflow, that site the gentleman came in where you ask computer questions, Stack Overflow, all of a sudden, Ross Ulbricht is on there asking a question and then 30 seconds later he changes his screen name to frosty. I mean, really? Really? Do you think DPR would do that? Get on your own name and then change it to the name that supposedly connects you, absolutely connects you to Silk Road? This is March of 2013.

March of 2013 is also when the denial of service attack occurs on the Silk Road site. March of 2013 is also when the FriendlyChemist/redandwhite sets of chats all begin. And by the way, with respect to those, I submit it doesn't really matter because it's not Mr. Ulbricht, but I submit that it's indicative again about the Internet. There are no people of the type they named there. Can you explain what those chats mean since those people never existed? Can you explain it? Can you explain it beyond a reasonable doubt?

Money was paid? We don't know where the money went. It could have gone anywhere. Who knows who was on the other side of that wallet. Did we hear evidence of that? No. It could have been a way for DPR to get his money out of Silk Road. Who knows? You can create an entire fiction, an entire fictional episode on the Internet, and you can sit here right now and not know whether it was real or not, much less beyond a reasonable doubt, and that's all the evidence in this case.

Let's keep going. In 2013, that's also the date of the first log entry of 241, Government's 241, that journal, that log journal. We have one for 2010, which is one entry of maybe a page; we have one for 2011, which is one entry, maybe a page; we have one at the beginning of 2012, January 1, 2012, "I'm going to start a journal," nothing else for 2012 and then all of a sudden in March of 2013, presto, we have this very detailed piece trying to correspond to things.

Also you heard -- March 26, you heard from Mr. Shaw. March 26, 2013, the SSH key, the security key to get into the site was modified to frosty@frosty. We don't know what it was before then. We do know there's another key that allowed someone else access at root@bcw. Any evidence about that, who that could be? No.

So Mr. Ulbricht, they want you to believe, on March 16, 2013 outs himself as frosty by affirmatively changing on the Stack Overflow site his name from Ross Ulbricht to frosty, his account name, and then ten days later, puts that as the SSH key for Silk Road. Does that sound like DPR?

You know what else happens in the spring of 2013, it's not on the timeline, but you just heard it today? It was the last thing that was read, and this is not a coincidence - that's when DPR learns that the investigations are for real; that's when he's paying for information; that's when he knows they're look at bitcoin exchanges; they're look at moderators; they're trying to turn all of his people against him. He knows the walls are closing in and it's time to implement an escape plan.

And what you have is a series of events that no one would do with respect to frosty@frosty -- and by the way, you heard from frosty@frosty with the SSH keys and they made it seem like it was something important when you heard it on direct, but on cross, it turns out you could do that from any computer. I could get on a computer right now and create a frosty@frosty SSH key. It's that simple and that fast. But in terms of speed, when you start it in March and you have until October, there's a lot you can do to frame somebody.

And then you have the May 2013 seizure of the accounts from Mr. Karpeles, and you heard that. You heard about Mr. Karpeles. By the way, Mr. Yum was able to do a very detailed bitcoin analysis in a week. Thousands of transactions. What if you had four, five, six months to work on a project like that? It's easy to create or edit chats and computer files and spreadsheets and all of that. You heard that. The prosecutor in summation said there's no break in the documents. How would you know? How would you know? You know you can get on a document, edit it, save it in a way that no one is going to know it was edited. Sophisticated people know how to eliminate, modify, manipulate metadata. You heard that, too: Metadata can be edited just like content and you saw evidence of it. You have a FBI computer scientist standing in San Francisco, California with a phone on Eastern Time. You have an FBI computer forensic examiner whose phone is 40 minutes off the real time. You can do any of this stuff manually. You can manipulate it all.

And it was easy to reconstruct Mr. Ulbricht's activities from Facebook pages, from YouTube, from access to his email account. Again, you heard about all the hacking stuff that goes on. It's a bit disturbing, all of them. Think if someone were trying to frame you. Even Agent Alford's searches that got him to the original Altoid posts on bitcoinforum talk and shroomery.org, those are regular Google searches he found those. Anywhere you find those. That was out there. It's easy to reconstruct this in a way that would frame Mr. Ulbricht. Not only can it be edited, it can be moved from computer to computer over the Internet. And Mr. Yum acknowledged that these bitcoin wallets can be moved from computer to computer. The addresses in a bitcoin wallet can be moved from wallet to wallet. It's not as if you know it was created there, it's not as if you know the money went in there when it was there.

Also, these text files, all these chats, all these spreadsheets, they are tiny files. They take no time to upload onto someone's computer without them knowing.

You know, trying to think of an analogy: If you saw footprints of a shoe in the snow and I said a-ha, here is Mr. Ulbricht's shoe, it fits, I submit to you, not unless you see him walking, you don't know who was wearing those shoes when he was walking. You don't know if they're a different pair of shoes. You don't know if it's someone on his shoes. And on the Internet, it's much worse. Remember, it has to be beyond a reasonable doubt, not a set of circumstances that sounds convenient. There are some metadata anomalies the government didn't even try to explain.

Let's look. Now, remember, Mr. Ulbricht was arrested October 1, 2013 at about 3:00 in the afternoon, Pacific Time. Let's look at Government Exhibit 250. There's a file on there called todo.txt and what's the time? 9:45 p.m. on October 1, 2013. How do you explain that? Now, by the way, with respect to Pacific Time, they wanted you to believe that the computer was set to Pacific Time on the conversations with cirrus before, not that day, but before they said what's -- this was during Agent Der-Yeghiayan's testimony: And what does it say? It says Pacific Time.

Let's look at 251, it's the same directory, it's the same document, todo.txt, the same time: 9:45 p.m., six hours after Mr. Ulbricht is arrested.

Let's look at 212A, again, Government Exhibit, a document called homepage.php, again, October 1, 2013 at 8:46 p.m. on October 1, 2013. How is that explained?

Now, let's talk a bit about Mark Karpeles. And as you heard, he was under investigation. You heard he had computer experience. He had computer expertise. He had resources. He ran the primary bitcoin exchange in the world. You heard he had confederates. You heard that his platform for some of his sites was the same as the Silk Road site, and it was a non-updated version that forum hosts don't use very much. It's MediaWiki 1.17.

You heard that he was the original -- that his companies were the original hosts for the Silk Road site, his hosting company. We know that also that web host -- there was testimony web hosts know their customers' activity very carefully, just like a GPS in a rental car, the same thing as bitcoin exchange -- bitcoin exchange owners and their customers' accounts. Just like in a bank, they know.

I submit to you he also had motivation because Silk Road was a major player in the bitcoin market, and look what happened after Mr. Ulbricht's arrest: The price went from 100 to $1,000 for bitcoin. Who profits by that? And you heard also about someone named Anand Athavale who Agent Der-Yeghiayan investigated, did a whole comparison, pages and pages, a comparison of language between those posts on mises.org that he linked to Mr. Athavale and DPR, the commonality. You can do that with anyone, same here with Mr. Ulbricht - you take pieces of people's lives and you can put them together in a way that makes it look like anything could happen.

By the way, with respect to Karpeles and Athavale, the government has never seen their electronic devices. They have never seen their computers or laptops or phones. These are people who don't live in the United States. Agent Der-Yeghiayan also told you that the government was under pressure to make an arrest in this case. They had the servers, the government had access to the Silk Road servers since July 2013. Think about it. They're letting the largest drug operation in the world operate from July 2013 through the end of September. You think there was pressure to make an arrest? All this money flowing out of the country to drug dealers overseas unrecoverable, drugs coming into the country, which they didn't capture, which they didn't seize. Think about those families, Michael Duch's customers. You think the government wasn't concerned about that that they needed to make an arrest? They needed to make an arrest. They wanted to shut it down. They needed to make an arrest.

Now, let's talk about computer insecurity, the hacking tools you saw. Slaves, botnets, things that allow you to get inside somebody's computer, keylog, there are all these things. You saw it in other aspects of the evidence, too. It gives you full access to computers.

It's interesting that Agent D'Agostino used eharmony.com as a way of stealing passwords and things like that. Well, we saw an okaycupid exhibit from Mr. Ulbricht. I'm not actually saying that things on Gmail are necessarily invented, though they might be, we don't know, but the point is, if you have access to that and you know when someone takes a trip, then you create a chat that says, oh, I'm traveling tomorrow, and you have no way of knowing when that chat was created and whether what's in that chat is real or not.

You heard about PGP keys. I don't think the government went into it on summation, but again I won't be able to speak to you again, so I'm trying to anticipate, but there's nothing customized, nothing personal. It's spit out by a computer, you cut and paste. And you see people sending their public keys. Private keys can be sent the same way; they can be shared. That key was created in April of 2011, so Mr. Ulbricht could very easily have that key.

MR. DRATEL: With respect to computer manipulation, remember this peaceloveharmony discussion I had with Agent Der-Yeghiayan, there was someone named peaceloveharmony, a username at Silk Road, sitting on DPR's profile for hours right around the time that Mr. Ulbricht was arrested, like the day before, someone monitoring that account, not law enforcement because we know because it wasn't anybody on the arrest team because Agent Der-Yeghiayan asked. It wasn't anybody. Someone monitoring what was going on on DPR's account. We don't know who peaceloveharmony is. Can't find that out.

By the way, BitTorrent was still open, connected to the Internet, even after Mr. Ulbricht's arrest. If you look at G and H, you'll see that it goes from about nine megs up loaded to 26 megs uploaded by the time Beeson takes the photo later that night. It's uploaded -- it's been uploaded from four to five to six hours depending on how you count Mr. Beeson's clock.

And you heard about Live Capture. By the way, you heard also about the belt program, about the hacking stuff, that you can actually embed something that then disappears that destroys itself so that you can't even tell, but we don't even know that because the FBI crashed the laptop. They lost the RAM memory, and they acknowledge it. We'll never know what processes were running on that computer that day at that time.

Agent Beeson did not get even an MD5 Hash value, which is not the gold standard, obviously, because we know there are vulnerabilities with respect to that to try to make sure one file is the same file that you're looking at in terms of copying, but he didn't even do that until October 3rd. Mr. Shaw didn't get a hash value on the Silk Road servers for a week after Mr. Ulbricht was arrested, October 8. There is so much to question in this case, and when we come back from the break, I'll continue. Thank you.

MR. DRATEL: Thank you, your Honor.

I want to go to October 1, 2013, the date of Mr. Ulbricht's arrest, and recapping again what happened that day in the sense that Agent Der-Yeghiayan, acting as cirrus, saw that Mr. Ulbricht was online, not on the Silk Road site, but on Pidgin chat, separate and completely from Silk Road, engaged him in a conversation and asked him to get on the site. And as you saw during the prosecutor's summation, he said okay, I'll log on.

Now, there was a lot made of the mastermind page, but we found out from Mr. Shaw that if you log on as DPR, you automatically go to the mastermind page for the tech support panel, which is where cirrus asked Mr. Ulbricht to go.

By the way, we know that more than one person could have access to the Silk Road servers or log on as DPR as long you have the credentials.

Now, some other things we know, that during the period of a couple of days before Mr. Ulbricht's arrest, Agent Der-Yeghiayan noted, and Agent Alford, too, that DPR on the Silk Road forums and on the site was unusually quiet during those couple of days. And then you have Mr. Ulbricht out, talk about security, out in a public place using a public Wi-Fi when he could have easily been in his room at 235 Monterey conducting the business of Silk Road if that's what he was doing and he was DPR.

Now, want to go back to Government Exhibit 225B because, again, this is DPR in January of 2013 talking to scout, just to demonstrate how complicated it can get about identity, scout becomes cirrus, but it's still the original scout and cirrus, it's not yet Agent Der-Yeghiayan. That doesn't happen until July of 2013.

This is January 2013, this is scout, and DPR gives scout some advice and about -- if you go down further -- here, "There is nothing on your laptop for them to use." Nothing on your laptop for them to use; that's what DPR is saying, nothing on your laptop. Think about what was on Mr. Ulbricht's laptop. "And if you obscure your bitcoins properly," another security measure DPR is instructing, then it says "realistically, the only way for them to prove anything would be for them to watch you log in and do your work." And let's go further down, the third one in "Sure, someone could stand behind you without you realizing it." There's Mr. Ulbricht -- that's DPR. And there is Mr. Ulbricht in the library looking out the window with his back to everyone who walks in, including a squad of FBI agents.

Now, there was -- in the prosecution's summation this morning, he talked about the exchange between cirrus, who you recall at that time was Agent Der-Yeghiayan, on October 1, 2013 and Mr. Ulbricht about the bitcoin exchange: Did you use to work at a bitcoin exchange? Well, I submit to you that if he had been working with him all that time, he would have know that. He wouldn't have had to have asked that question. If he had been communicating with him for all those months, it indicates someone who is not familiar with cirrus as opposed to someone who is.

And then the day of the arrest when the arresting officers go to Mr. Ulbricht's residence, and you heard, by the way, from Mr. Kincade this morning so I'm not going to go into it about Mr. Ulbricht's time there, under his own name living there, and the Government's Exhibit 130, those handwritten notes found in the waste basket. And we heard from Agent Der-Yeghiayan that as early as August of 2013 and then throughout September of 2013, the subject that's on those handwritten notes has already been discussed for six weeks by DPR in great detail. Does DPR sound like a guy who takes pages of handwritten notes? What we put in today may not have looked like anything, but that Exhibit M that we put in this morning through Ms. Prince, it's a to-do list. DPR knows how to make a to-do list on a computer. I submit to you that those handwritten notes are much more likely to have been notes that someone takes during a telephone call. It's also interesting how much in those last ten days shows up in these documents. The Amelia from OKC, who, by the way, has not been identified, poison oak, except for that "I'm sick," which, again, you could go find those emails and then create one in three seconds of typing, "I'm sick," to put it in there to match something that's part of Mr. Ulbricht's life. DPR and his confederates would be able to do that in a matter of seconds. But then it's only at the end when you see that in the last couple of entries, it's gilding the lily, it's a set-up, it's way too convenient, and you cannot rely on it beyond a reasonable doubt.

There's an instruction about withdrawal from a conspiracy, we're not relying on that. Mr. Ulbricht was never a conspirator at the beginning or at the end. Remember, that first -- that 240A: I want to establish a site where anyone can sell anything. Not a drug site, not an illegal site. Where anyone can sell anything. It sounds like Amazon. It sound like eBay.

And about the thumb drive, why wasn't that updated? It's about ten days old, the date on that one. I submit to you that's not because it's a backup from the computer; it was something that was uploaded into the computer, received by Mr. Ulbricht.

Now, a couple of concepts, bitcoin, Tor, I think they were demystified for you enough that you know that they're not synonymous at all with anything illegal. I think that was established to everyone's satisfaction.

Mr. Yum acknowledged that the bitcoin wallets and the bitcoin addresses -- excuse me -- that Silk Road was used and could be used as a wallet itself putting money in and out, putting money in and out. And if you look at those amounts of bitcoins, those were small amounts of bitcoins going into those addresses.

But the one thing he never did was where the money went, the 700,000 bitcoins going into Mr. Ulbricht's wallet -- in the wallets, the addresses, the ones that are on his computer; by the way, they're not, again, necessarily his. We don't know. We don't know. They're on the laptop the day he's arrested.

And they may come back and talk about metadata. We know metadata can be edited. Metadata can be manipulated, but where is the money? 700,254 bitcoins in; 144,000 there. There's no analysis of anything going out. There's no evidence of anything going out.

MR. DRATEL: Where is the money?

Now, that 556,000 bitcoins that are unaccounted for, if you look at -- that would be worth at the time of Mr. Ulbricht's arrest about $85 million. By November 22, 2013, six weeks later, they were worth a thousand dollars a bitcoin. Do you know what that comes to? $556 million. Would you spend 13 million -- would you spend 144,000 bitcoins, 19 million, to get 556 million? Would that be a sacrifice worth making, to put that on someone's wallet, if you could get away with the rest of it? And we know that November 22, 2013, from Mr. Yum, that there was a transaction of 195,000 bitcoins that was quickly broken up into three smaller numbers. Whose bitcoins are those? DPR's. Not Mr. Ulbricht's.

The government was absolutely correct this morning. They said who stores $19 million of bitcoins on a laptop? Exactly.

Also, there were 90,000 bitcoins -- 89,854, almost 90, not attributed to the Silk Road wallet. Some of them may say, well, they were from wallet to wallet, but we didn't hear how much. If there had been a significant amount, I'm sure you would have heard about it from the government.

No evidence of Mr. Ulbricht cashing out, ever. He's living with roommates for a thousand dollars a month, three different places. One place he is living with three people. Another place three people -- four people, rather.

DPR knew as of April 2013 that the bitcoin exchanges were being monitored. They were under scrutiny. Does Mr. Ulbricht, do we know that Mr. Ulbricht did anything during that time period with respect to his bitcoins? No. And wee know that he was a trader. We know from the Bates chats that he was interested in bitcoins. We know that he wanted to start a bitcoin site. We know that he was an investor and a speculator. And we know that bitcoin in 2010 was infinitesimal pricing, perhaps a dollar, maybe even less. So you could make money and then reinvest and reinvest and continue to make money. Think about even a price that goes from 60 cents to $60, think of what your return on investment is after a year, year-and-a-half period. At one point it went up to $250.

So we don't know who DPR is, but we do know who Ross Ulbricht is. You heard from four witnesses, three of them character witnesses.

The government says that those redandwhite chats, Government Exhibit 936, demonstrates that DPR would resort to violence to protect this site. Assuming that those are true at all, agreed. That's why, you know, that DPR is not Ross Ulbricht. Because one thing that the people who know him for his whole life know is that his reputation is for peacefulness and nonviolence. Challenge yourself. Look at the credibility of those witnesses. Assess the sincerity of those witnesses as to the honesty of those witnesses and their experience with Ross Ulbricht, which is real corporeal, like you and I speaking here today, not behind a computer screen, where you cannot tell who is who, when is when, or what is what.

You also know that Ross is a person who gets stressed out. It is the only evidence we have that's real. You heard that voicemail, Government Exhibit 1005, to Mr. Bates. I'm panicked. You saw 1004. Silk Road was too stressful. You heard Mr. Bates. Again, these are real witnesses, really experiencing things that actually happened. That he thought Ross was stressed out, that he thought Ross was overwhelmed.

And then 2012, by the way, what's the message from Ross when Bates reaches out to him? Chillin'.

Look at the journal entries in 2010, 2011, full of crises and anxiety. Look at 2013, starting in March, that one that is 241. There is nothing like that in there. There is nothing from Ross except at the very end. They talk about Amelia and poison oak, which is stuff that you could get from his Gmail account in two seconds.

What about those IDs? Life on the lam. What did he ask KingOfClubs. Let's assume it is Mr. Ulbricht. It was delivered to his address. Domestic U.S. flights, life on the lam in the U.S. like that? Really. For a guy sitting on 700,000 bitcoins. That's safe?

He is asking, if you look at those -- look at Government Exhibit 935. He asks about the details -- and I read it yesterday so I want to go over it today, I spent time on it. But he asks about features of these fake IDs. Does that sound like DPR, or a novice? He asks about being held at customs. Do you have any problems with your customers? Does that sound like DPR, or a novice? He knew about all of that, and yet when Homeland Security, Agent Critten came to him, he spoke to him voluntarily, even though he did not have to. Does that sound like DPR, or a novice? Critten, by the way, had no idea that it was a Silk Road package.

Mr. Ulbricht volunteered the information about Silk Road when they said speak hypothetically about -- help us out. Speak hypothetically. Would DPR do that? Does that sound like DPR to you? To say, well, on Silk Road you could order anything. Imagine DPR doing that.

Now, Ross gave Agent Critten his valid Texas driver's license. He gave him an email address -- on Tor, no less. Imagine DPR doing that.

He said he was a currency trader. That's what Ross told him. And he admitted that he used a false name with his roommates at that time. Later on, when you heard that he moved to Crazy Cape after knowing that homeland security had come to him and he had spoken about Silk Road with them, he goes back to using his real name when he moves. Sound like DPR?

You heard about his travel. There is no evidence of anything going on, foreign-to-foreign travel, or anything like that. You saw the passports.

By the way, after the visit by Homeland Security, what does Ross do? Does he make travel plans? Does he leave the country? Are there bitcoin movements? Does he go underground? Live under an assumed name? No. The exact opposite. He does nothing.

And what did they find when they arrested him? Only -- the only passport was his. That's more than two months after his encounterer with Agent Critten. He didn't run. He didn't go underground. He didn't remove any bitcoins or any money. He doesn't do anything that one would expect someone like DPR to do. Nothing that would indicate the security-savvy, security-conscious DPR.

Agent D'Agostino gave you an example of how people get into other people's emails and get into their computer. You send an email that says "cute puppies" and you hope that people click on the link. Well, sometimes it comes from people you know. A pishing email. Would you judge that person you know based on that pishing email? Would you judge a person you know based on an email that says I'm stuck in a foreign country and I just got robbed, please send me a thousand dollars so I can get home? Would you judge that person on that email?

I submit to you that you cannot find proof beyond a reasonable doubt in this case -- there is so much at stake for Mr. Ulbricht, his future -- based on evidence that so easily can be fabricated, edited, distorted, moved and manipulated.

We experience with our senses. We make decisions based on our perceptions. And we employ our common sense based on facts you can rely on. We reach conclusions based on all of those elements. Yet, the Internet and the impenetrability of the computer screen deprives us of the ability to do that the same way we do "IRL," in real life. There is a reason that's a phrase, that is an acronym on the Internet, because there is a distinction between the Internet and IRL. We are here in IRL, and we have to make judgments based on IRL.

The Internet denies us the ability to say for sure what is a masquerade, what is truth, what is fiction, what is transparent, and what is hidden from us. With all this digital evidence of chats and journals and logs and private messages and bitcoin wallets, not a single witness, other than Mr. Bates -- you ought to have a look at that material -- other than Mr. Bates, not a single witness came in and said created by Mr. Ulbricht, that Mr. Ulbricht was the person on the other side of the screen, except, again, that day of the arrest, after he was lured back in, I submit to you, with a phone call about the rating system, with a thumb drive. Again, we don't have to prove anything. It's up to the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

Your common sense and your life experience will tell you this kind of evidence we've seen here cannot be trusted beyond a reasonable doubt. Think about yourself. Think about those close to you. Think about the definition of reasonable doubt in important parts of your own affairs, important decisions in your own affairs. Judge that way.

This case is not about a specific document here or there, because the entire process lacks integrity in terms of your ability to judge its reliability. That's what reasonable doubt is all about. Again, this is the last time I'll speak to you during the case. And because of that, I would ask you that when the government gets up again and speaks to you, that in your head you challenge the government on these issues. Where is the proof? Where is the reliability? Where is anyone who said that Ross Ulbricht composed those? Where is anyone that said they were composed on that laptop? Where is anyone that says when they were composed that the metadata isn't manipulated somehow. All we know is as easy as a keystroke.

Challenge the government in your head. Where is the proof beyond a reasonable doubt that can be relied on in a matter of such importance in your own affairs. I'm confident when you do that, and when you do that in deliberations, you will reach only one conclusion: Ross Ulbricht is not guilty on every count in the Indictment.

Thank you very much.