The curious case of Francis Rawls.

[Jehanne]

I'm going by information cited in the article. Didn't mention anything about a frame job. Do either of you have a source stating that he may have been framed?

Or did I miss something?

I am not saying that he was framed; only that such is possible to do.  He was using Freenet, a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network where users share files, many of which are illegal, such as movies, music, etc., but some are legitimate, such as software.  The police join the network (or, "swarm"), also, with specialized software that tracks certain files by their hashes, or checksums, and then correlates those files back to certain users via their IP addresses, using sophisticated statistical algorithms, heuristics, etc.  Over time, they can tell which users are sharing which files by the files' signatures (just Google SHA256 for more information).  And, so, they get a court order, raid the person's residence, seize his/her computer, etc.

For users who are using Tor, the cops' job becomes more difficult.  In those instances, they have to locate the physical location of a hidden server, seize it and then install malware on it, which the user then downloads, and upon executing, sends his/her IP address over the "clearnet" to a FBI computer, which then records it, along with a bunch of other incriminating information.  However, for users running Tails and who are blocking JavaScript, such attacks have never been effective, having only been successful against Windows users so far, but with the recent patches within the Tor Browser, such attacks may now be a relic of the past.