Roger Thomas Clark, a 62-year-old Canadian national, also known as "Variety Jones", "Plural of Mongoose", "VJ" or “Cimon” was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for distributing drugs through Silk Road.
However much more interesting was his relation with Ross Ulbricht. The court document revealed that the man was site's security consultant, PR adviser, and even a kind of executive coach and friend to the site's boss, Ulbricht.
Clark provided advice to Ulbricht on how to manage the administration of the market. Chat logs acquired by the LEA revealed that Clark advised Ulbricht to:
- Develop a “cover story” and change his username on the marketplace to make it look like he had sold Silk Road.
- Hire programmers to help in improving and maintaining Silk Road's infrastructure.
- Make security improvements including ensuring everyone on the marketplace used PGP encryption.
- Order a murder-for-hire against a Silk Road staff accused of stealing from the marketplace.
Ross described Clark in his secret journal as the he biggest and strongest willed character I had met through the site thus far. A real mentor.
Clark said that his work on the Silk Road had always been motivated by his political belief that drugs should be legalized, and the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of dark-web drug sales he helped to facilitate were safer than drug deals that took place in the physical world. He argued in his sentencing statement that the site helped reduce violence in the drug trade and that the Silk Road's ratings and reviews prevented the sale of adulterated drugs that would have caused greater harm.
Clark was arrested in Thailand on December 3, 2015. He was extradited to the US on June 15, 2018. Clark pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute narcotics on January 30, 2020. In addition to the 20-year prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein sentenced Clark to three years of supervised release and ordered him to forfeit over $1.6 million on July 11, 2023.
naked mugshot?