The man who allegedly founded and operated online black market Silk Road was denied bail on Thursday.
A U.S. magistrate judge also called Ross Ulbricht a threat to the community, and expressed worry that he might try and flee the country.
In his bail hearing held at Manhattan's U.S. District Court on Thursday, Ulbricht's long list of allegations widened, as prosecutors said he forked over hundreds of thousands of dollars for arrangements to have six people murdered through the website. According to the Wall Street Journal, however, the killings never occurred. Ulbricht was already up against a charge for having two other people killed who he thought might testify against him. The prosecution on Thursday said that they suspected Ulbricht had co-opted the killings based on "absolutely chilling" exchanges made on the Internet.
"It was not just a fantasy," prosecutor Serrin Turner said, according to the Journal. "It was $730,000 that this man spent to try to kill six people."
But Ulbricht's lawyer Joshua Dratel insisted that his client wouldn't run, nor pose a threat to the public. Dratel said that Ulbricht hadn't ever been arrested, while producing multiple testimonies and letters to the court that painted him as "loyal, responsible and kind."
Dratel also pointed out that the prosecution hadn't said that Ulbricht came in direct contact with the people and materials reportedly sold on the website.
The defense maintained that his client was a "regular person" who was not guilty.
"The evidence will establish that he is not the person who government says he is," he said a few weeks prior to Thursday's hearing.
29-year-old Ulbricht was arrested in San Francisco, Calif. in October. He was then transferred to New York, where the legal proceedings in his case have moved forward since then. Ulbricht reportedly headed up the Silk Road website, which FBI agents nabbed earlier this year. Users of the webpage could purchase such items as drugs and phony passports, the Journal reported.
