The trial of Ross Ulbricht just keeps getting weirder. Ulbricht is accused of being the founder of the online black market Silk Road and the court proceedings have been extremely unique due to the complicated, tech-world nature of the case. Not only is the New York Times reporting a conflict between the defense and prosecution over how emojis are presented as evidence but now, Ulbricht’s old OkCupid profile has been brought before the jury.
The prosecution is arguing that activity on the accused man’s dating profile actually lines up with a personal journal that was found on Ulbricht’s computer at the time of his arrest, proving that the journal was authored by Ulbricht. The defense claims that the journal was planted on his computer by some nefarious party attempting to set him up.
According to Motherboard:
But the entries in his journal, which mentioned his OKC profile and some dates he went on, line up perfectly with emails he sent.
A journal entry from 9/11/13 said that he got poison oak from getting trash out of a tree (what an environmentalist!) and also said “went on OKC date with Amalia.” The prosecution argued that corresponds with an email sent through OKC on 9/18, from Amalia: “see you tonight, I’m wearing a khaki shirt.” Then came an email from Ross to his ex-girlfriend, Julia—subject line “:(“—”I have a poison oak rash from head to toe. I wish you were here to comfort me.”
That doesn’t look good for the defense’s case but hey, there’s always the possibility that whoever was trying to set up Ulbricht had access to his OkCupid profile.
Further information gleaned from the account included the fact that the dating sites algorithm found Ulbricht to be more “drug-friendly than the average straight man his age,” and that he was looking for good start-up ideas. If found guilty, it would seem he did find a great idea. Or at least a temporarily profitable one.
(Image: OkCupid)
