Silk Road: Last Man Standing Should Expect the Worst
The lawyer who defended Peter Nash, one of the three men indicted on charges of conspiracy to distribute narcotics, commit computer hacking, and commit money laundering in the Silk Road has hinted at a no mercy sentencing for the third accused person.
Andrew Frisch says 27-year-old Irishman, Gary Davis, an alleged Silk Road admin, is unlikely to avoid a “severe” prison sentence as the last of the three men to face charges with no new information to reveal to the US police.
Nash, Davis and Andrew Jones were the three arrested moderators of Silk Road — a site that distributed large amounts of drugs such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and LSD to buyers’ mailboxes.
Nash aka SSBD, a 42-year-old former Brisbane resident dodged a potential 12-year prison sentence for his role in the $250-million deadly drug trafficking website. He was extradited from Australia and sentenced to 17 months in prison.
Jones aka Inigo admitted to the charges and agreed to be a witness against the site’s founder, Ross Ulbricht, but was never called to testify and is currently under house arrest awaiting sentencing.
Ulbricht has since been sentenced to life in prison in May 2015 for five sentences: one for 20 years, one for 15 years, one for five and two for life. All are to be served concurrently with no chance of parole.
Davis has been fighting against being extradited to the United States since 2014. A High Court judge ordered Davis to finally surrender himself to the U.S. to stand trial though his defense argued that he would not receive the proper care required for his Asperger’s syndrome while awaiting trial in the special housing units in the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
On August 19th, his new appeal request to overturn the judge’s decision was granted and Davis will have more time to prepare for his potential extradition.
Frisch said:
Gary would be the last person here, so if he is convicted he would presumably not have any new information to share on the case. The system is built around cooperation. Prosecutors want people to turn on other people so that they can build further cases. There is a handsome reward for that in terms of sentencing but not everyone is offered it.
The Southern District of New York has an aggressive prosecutors office and some very severe judges who give some very severe sentences. The very act of seeking extradition in this case is an aggressive act.
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