Ilhwan Yum testified about bitcoin tracing and its limits, and the court denied a motion to strike his testimony. Brian Shaw presented reconstructed marketplace pages and account-attributed messages. Michael Duch completed testimony, an FBI agent demonstrated malware, and the court addressed disputed jury instructions.
Full day summary
Jury-instruction discussions outside the jury's presence left unresolved disputes over continuing-criminal-enterprise predicates and whether organizing vendors could satisfy the organizer requirement. The court retained the money-laundering funds definition and accepted the government's knowledge standard. Both sides agreed to separate venue determinations for each count. The court stated that venue required a preponderance of the evidence, while other elements required proof beyond a reasonable doubt; the defense maintained its contrary venue position.
Michael Duch completed his testimony. On cross-examination, he acknowledged that the government alone would decide whether he provided substantial assistance and disputed suggestions about his earlier accounts of drug sales and drug use. On redirect, he distinguished his prior conviction from possession with intent to distribute and denied dealing drugs before Silk Road. He also clarified that requiring customers to encrypt messages was his own precaution, not a marketplace requirement.
Prosecutors read chats about escrow enforcement. FBI Special Agent Vincent D'Agostino then described testing malware purchased through Silk Road. He said the software he tested performed its advertised functions but had not tested every program. A video received for demonstrative purposes showed a controlled Syslogger test capturing passwords, keystrokes, and screenshots using created accounts.
Former FBI agent Ilhwan Yum described server seizures and bitcoin tracing. He reported 3,760 direct transfers from Silk Road addresses to addresses in wallet files on the defendant's laptop, totaling 700,253.91 bitcoins, valued at approximately $13 million using transaction-date prices. He said these transfers accounted for almost 89 percent of incoming bitcoins. He could not directly link another 89,854 incoming bitcoins to Silk Road and had not analyzed indirect transfers. He separately identified outgoing transfers of 1,670 and 3,000 bitcoins from laptop wallet addresses.
On cross-examination, Yum acknowledged that wallets and addresses could move between computers and that ordinary user withdrawals could produce transfers from Silk Road wallets. He said Mathew Edmond typed the analysis code while both developed its logic. The court admitted the transaction exhibits over defense objections, denied additional preparation time, and later denied a motion to strike Yum's testimony. It treated the testimony as fact evidence and emphasized his substantive participation in the analysis.
FBI contractor Brian Shaw described reconstructing Silk Road on an isolated computer from recovered server material. His screenshot account, FBINY, was newly created. Admitted listing screenshots showed advertised offerings, not tests establishing that products or services worked. Shaw said the Dread Pirate Roberts account could access the Mastermind page in his testing, while four other tested accounts could not.
Shaw also explained database-message retrieval. Prosecutors read admitted messages about marketplace rules and identification-document orders; Shaw said the requested jurisdictions matched nine previously admitted IDs. Other correspondence attributed to DPR discussed threatened identity disclosures, threats of violence, and willingness for FriendlyChemist to be executed. These were account-attributed statements, not Shaw's firsthand account or proof that violence occurred. Shaw said identity information in the correspondence matched information displayed from a log file identified as recovered from the defendant's computer.