It was not entrapment. There is mention of undercover purchases and a controlled delivery by law enforcement, but these are not entrapment. Most of the evidence came from his own laptop.

Didn't Ulbricht actually run the Silk Road? Did someone from the FBI persuade Ulbricht to do it?

I think they're talking about just the murder-for-hire. It may have just been undercover agents the whole time and no murders actually occurred.

Attempting to hire a hitman who turns out to be an FBI agent is still a crime, and likely not entrapment in the legal sense.

It was entrapment because federal agents posing as crime bosses were threatening Ross that if he didn't hire the hitman there would be serious consequences. He was manipulated and forced into the position he was in.

What you see as manipulation, someone else might see as a user of the DPR account revealing his true nature

> "I need his real-world identity, so I can threaten him with violence," DPR told RealLucyDrop.

> "I don't know how I feel about that solution," said RealLucyDrop

What about when his (non-FBI, now-convicted) right-hand-man Roger Thomas Clark convinced him to hire someone for murder?

Surely that can't be entrapment.

"Clark didn't comment on that murder-for-hire conversation—which he at one point claimed had been fabricated by Ulbricht but later conceded was real"

https://www.wired.com/story/silk-road-variety-jones-sentenci...

This is not necessarily true. In Burdick v. United States it does say "an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it" but there is debate about whether it is binding of not.

Apparently, there is something in Lorance v. Commandant, U.S. Disciplinary Barracks that indicates that accepting a pardon does not imply guilt, but I am not very knowledge on that.

Yes the FBI had root or admin access to the Silk Road system and could have very easily changed or otherwise affected logs/record IDs that the technical case rested on. Two of the FBI agents on the case were later punished for corruption on the case.