Alleged Silk Street ‘murders-for-hire’ service provider strike with narcotics, revenue laundering expenses

James Ellingson allegedly dealt cocaine, LSD, ecstasy and cannabis on Ross Ulbricht’s Silk Highway marketplace, and recognized additional than $500,000 well worth of bitcoin from Ulbricht to carry out a sequence of murders which he could possibly not have finished, Manhattan federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Ellingson, who allegedly applied the alter egos “redandwhite,” “MarijuanaIsMyMuse” and “Lucydrop” on the market, was billed with narcotics-trafficking conspiracy, narcotics-importation conspiracy and income laundering conspiracy. If convicted, he could face lifetime in prison.

Federal prosecutors painted Ellingson, 47, as a male who exaggerated his impact and his abilities, noting that he “claimed to have control above most drug trafficking in Western Canada.” Ellingson initially achieved out to Ulbricht in 2013 to explore somebody who experienced threatened to leak drug-trafficker and buyer details, the prosecutors explained.

“I would not intellect if he was executed,” Ulbricht allegedly wrote to Ellingson. “I would like to put a bounty on his head if it can be not much too considerably difficulty for you.”

A “thoroughly clean” get rid of would charge Ulbricht “300k+ USD,” Ellingson allegedly wrote in reaction. “Price ranges spend for 2 qualified hitters together with their vacation costs and operate they place in.”

Federal prosecutors stated you can find no proof that Ellingson at any time carried out the murders Ulbricht allegedly paid out him for.

“A thumbnail of a deleted photograph purporting to depict a man lying on a ground in a pool of blood with tape above his mouth was recovered from Ulbricht’s laptop computer just after his arrest,” the prosecutors’ assertion mentioned.

Ulbricht, who was sentenced to daily life in jail in 2015, has consistently insisted that he is innocent. Silk Highway was seized and shut down by the FBI in 2013.