Casefile True Crime - Case 76: Silk Road (Part 2)

Episode Date: February 17, 2018

[Part 2 of 3] As The Silk Road continued to expand, problems started piling up for Ross Ulbricht, AKA The Dread Pirate Roberts. With business booming and concerns that law enforcement were lurking on the site, Ulbricht created an emergency ‘To Do List’ in case he ever came under real danger of getting caught. It read: ‘Encrypt and backup important files on laptop to memory stick; destroy laptop’s hard drive and hide/dispose; destroy phone and hide/dispose; find place to live on Craigslist for cash and create new identity.’ --- Episode narrated by the Anonymous Host Researched and written by Victoria Dieffenbacher  For all credits and sources please visit casefilepodcast.com/case-76-silk-road-part-2

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For suggested phone numbers for confidential support, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website. When Ross Ulbricht, aka Dread Pirate Roberts, got the offer from a new user named Knob to start a new site called Masters of the Silk Road for major dealers, he was already having his own discussions with Variety Jones about different ways they could expand. Some ideas they had were Silk Digital, which would sell downloadable products like stolen software and hacking software. Silk Pharma was another idea, which would focus on prescription medication. And last but not least, the Armory. Guns had created problems on Silk Road ever since they first appeared. A large part of the community weren't happy that guns were for sale.

As detailed in the book Silk Road by Arlene Ornsby, one user stated, While I support the right of someone being able to have a single shotgun for self-defense, I'm not comfortable with the idea of automatic and semi-automatic weapons being made available to anyone with the money to buy them. Just because we support the rights of people to put what they like in their own bodies doesn't mean that we are evil people, in spite of what the government would often have the general public believe. A poll was created titled, Would you like to see the sale of guns removed from the Silk Road? The vote was split at around 50-50. Many users started adopting a signature under their posts that read,

No guns on Silk Road. Even Tony 76, the former respected seller who had played the great 420 sales scam, stated that guns would be the downfall of Silk Road. He said it would bring unwanted attention from law enforcement. Author Nick Bilton outlines in the book American Kingpin that Variety Jones had tried to warn Ross that guns were not a good idea for business. At first, as was his nature, Variety Jones said it in a sarcastic and almost joking way. The way he put it was that it was better to remove the guns so Grandma can come here for her cheap Canadian farmer meds and not trip over a Glock 9mm. Then Variety Jones became more direct with Ross and told him guns would scare off a lot of clients.

That's why they started discussing the possibility of opening up a separate site for guns so the complaints from Silk Road users would stop. The first option they had in mind was to name the site Silk Armory to continue on with the Silk brand. But Variety Jones said it didn't sound right, so they settled for the Armory. Ross used code and programming from Silk Road to make the new website. He made a new logo, which was the letter A with wings. Once they launched the Armory, they realised that the implications of having a website for weapons were a lot more complicated than having a website for drugs. With Silk Road, drugs could easily be shipped through the mail and sellers constantly thought of new ways to stay ahead so the drugs wouldn't be detected. But shipping guns was a different matter altogether, but wasn't that easy to hide guns in the mail.

Ross considered this and posted on his Facebook wall asking if anyone knew someone who worked in the shipping sector. One of his friends on Facebook asked why and Ross answered that he had a new startup idea. Ross and Variety Jones knew they were a target for law enforcement, but the reality was they had no idea if they were on anyone's radar or not at that point. Just to be safe, Variety Jones decided he would head to Thailand where he said he had hidden before and where he had dirty cops working for him. Ross decided to leave Austin too. He moved to San Francisco. He had been contemplating a move for a while and coincidentally a friend of his, Renee, asked him to move to San Francisco with him. Renee said they could work on building a startup business together and Ross could stay in the apartment with he and his girlfriend. Ross accepted, but before leaving he had to have another discussion with his ex-girlfriend Julia.

Ross had told his old programming friend Richard that he sold Silk Road and no longer had anything to do with it, but he hadn't had that discussion with Julia yet. So Ross messaged Julia through Facebook and arranged a meeting. Ross asked her if she'd told anyone else about the site apart from Erika. Julia apologized again for ever telling Erika to begin with and assured him that she hadn't told anyone else. Then Ross told her that he had given Silk Road away. It had caused him too much stress and the only reason he'd kept it for so long was because he liked the power that came with it. But now he was finished. Someone else was running it. Julia believed he's lie and thanked him for giving it up.

Ross said they probably wouldn't be seeing each other again for a long time because he was leaving town. And that was that. In the summer of 2012, Ross left for San Francisco. Almost as soon as Ross arrived in San Francisco he had an altercation with Variety Jones. It wasn't their first altercation either. They previously had a disagreement over the great 420 sale and giveaway. The person who won the prize had bought a lot of heroin and practically overdosed on it. Variety Jones didn't think it was a good idea giving him the money for the prize as he was trying to get clean.

But Ross laughed it off and said they should give away a prize to rehab for the next contest. They also had a disagreement over the selling of heroin itself. Variety Jones hated heroin and he didn't want to profit off of it. But Ross saw things differently believing it wasn't up to him to stop someone from doing what they wanted to do. But their latest argument was a more significant one. Variety Jones wanted co-ownership of Silk Road. He said they could do things one of two ways. Either they went 50-50 or Variety Jones would take Silk Road for himself.

Ross couldn't believe what he was hearing. He told Variety Jones to bring it on if he wanted because he wasn't going to give in to his demands. Variety Jones was already making $60,000 a month for his services and that's where Ross was leaving it. He wasn't giving away equity. After some heated discussion, Variety Jones accepted Ross's decision and didn't try and make a play to take over Silk Road. Their discussions then moved on to another topic, security. They were both well aware the authorities might be watching their every move. At that point in time they hadn't come face to face with anyone suspicious.

But they wanted to be ready in case they ever did. Already some months prior, Ross implemented secret questions with each of his employees. Ross gave each employee a question and a specific answer to that question. The only people who knew the question and the answer were Ross and his employee. If Ross got the wrong answer to his question, he would immediately shut down the account of being an employee. Ross then adopted another condition for his employees. If someone wanted to work for him, he or she would have to provide some sort of ID. This could be a driver's license or a passport.

There wasn't just about wanting to know who worked for him, it was also a guarantee for himself. His employees were starting to handle more and more responsibilities and some even had access to Bitcoin accounts. So now, if someone decided to steal from him, he would have their name and address. He made it clear to his employees that was the purpose of providing the ID and that he wasn't someone to mess with. Along with these new employment conditions, Ross took care of security on his laptop. Earlier that year, he'd bought a Samsung laptop. The problem was, he hadn't encrypted it at all. Variety Jones had recently discussed a case on the news. A man who was leaking information to WikiLeaks had been arrested and his computer was very easily accessed by the FBI

because he used the same password to log into his computer and for the encryption. Ross and Variety Jones both agreed this was very stupid. If he had used different passwords that were both strong, the FBI might not have been able to get into his computer so easily, if at all. Ross was adamant that he wouldn't make the same mistake. Variety Jones told him to set his laptop to do two things. One was to shut down automatically if it hadn't been used for a certain amount of time. And second was to install a kill switch. A kill switch automatically shuts down the computer with the press of a predetermined key on the keyboard.

Variety Jones explained that this was essential because if the FBI came after him and approached him in public, catching him off guard, he would just need to press one key on his laptop and it would shut down. And if he did his encryption right, the FBI would never be able to access his computer because they wouldn't have his passwords. Therefore, they would have no proof against Ross. Ross did as Variety Jones told him and made those two changes on his laptop. Ross asked if he should store all of the Silk Road files on the cloud. That way, they wouldn't be on his computer at all. But that would make working on the side a lot slower.

So Variety Jones instructed Ross to keep the files on his computer, but to make sure he encrypted every single one of them. After this encryption process, Ross made another change to his computer. He partitioned the hard drive. This meant that his computer was separated into two parts. One part would be for Ross and his personal life, and the other part would be for the Dread Pirate Roberts and Silk Road. From that moment on, Ross completely respected the different sides. He never did anything related to his personal life on the Dread Pirate Roberts side, and he never did anything related to Dread Pirate Roberts or Silk Road on his personal side.

Lastly, Ross wrote down a list on his computer called Emergency. It was a to-do list in case he ever felt he was in real danger of being caught. The items he wrote on the list were encrypt and backup important files on laptop to memory stick, destroy laptop's hard drive and hide dispose, destroy phone and hide dispose, find place to live on Craigslist for cash and create new identity, name and backstory.

All of these steps were taken while Variety Jones went to mingle once again with the dealers and buyers on Silk Road. But this time, he wasn't getting a gauge for dissent and mutiny. He was mingling to see if any law enforcement representatives were lurking on the site. In the meantime, by October 2012, one year after he'd started his investigation, Jared Duryagin from Chicago Homeland Security Investigations Team had gotten quite far. He was working in what was essentially a team of one.

The few others knew what he was doing and helped him here and there, but mostly, Jared did it all by himself. He had now seized over $2,000 worth of information He had now seized over $2,000 envelopes containing drugs. They were neatly classified in his office and with his profiling system, he managed to identify and link certain drugs to sellers on Silk Road. He was able to make several arrests by doing this. Once he had the sellers in custody, he made them hand in their Silk Road accounts

and Jared took them over. He then entered the site and pretended to be them. Jared never planned on making sales of his own and unlike Carl Force from the Baltimore DEA office, he never tried to contact the Dread Pirate Roberts. He didn't believe that would work. What he was interested in was building his Silk Road profile further and understanding more about the site.

What Jared believed would work and what he had been trying to do from the beginning was to try and get in the shoes of the people who were using Silk Road. To try and think like they did. And this is exactly what he did when trying to figure out who the Dread Pirate Roberts was. Since the seller accounts had shown him more about the community but not much more about the Dread Pirate Roberts, Jared went to the best source available, the Dread Pirate Roberts forum posts.

The Dread Pirate Roberts had posted many messages and those messages had evolved over time. At the beginning, when he was the Silk Road administrator, the messages were simpler or stuck mostly to whatever announcement he had to make about the site. But as time passed and when he changed his name from admin to the Dread Pirate Roberts, the messages got longer and had more of a revolutionary idea behind them. The Dread Pirate Roberts spoke more and more about the poor role of the government

and how Silk Road would never fall into the hands of it. Jared knew the Dread Pirate Roberts was a well-read individual. He even managed a book club in the Silk Road forums. He selected a book each week that the Silk Road community could then discuss. Knowledge was power and reading was one of the best ways to increase your knowledge, the Dread Pirate Roberts said. The books focused on agorism, counter-economics, anarcho-capitalism, Austrian economics, political philosophy, freedom issues and related topics.

As a way to try and understand how the Dread Pirate Roberts thought, Jared read the books. However, he found them very dense and he didn't agree with libertarianism. To him, it felt like a set of beliefs put together designed for the sole purpose of not having to take responsibility for your actions. But the books did help him to continue building a profile on who the Dread Pirate Roberts could be. So far, Jared's theory was that the Dread Pirate Roberts was very educated. He didn't seem rich, but he didn't seem poor either.

So most likely he belonged to the middle class. And although he was completely against the government and spoke about a revolution, money and profit was definitely a motivation. One more important conclusion Jared had was that the Dread Pirate Roberts was young. Jared concluded this based on the wording in his forum posts. The words he used and the way he spelt them had looked to Jared like someone young was behind them. While Jared was analyzing the Dread Pirate Roberts forum posts, he was informed that an agent from the DAA who was working with the homeland security team in Baltimore

was chatting with the Dread Pirate Roberts regularly. This was of course Agent Carl Force who was posing as Knob on Silk Road. Jared was initially frustrated about this fact, but then he saw the positive side of it that would give him further conversations to analyze. Jared asked for the chat logs between Knob and the Dread Pirate Roberts, but when he got the logs, he felt alarmed by what he was reading. He noticed immediately that Agent Carl Force in his Knob persona was trying to play friends with the Dread Pirate Roberts.

He was trying to gain his trust, but by doing so, he was giving away too much information. Carl had gone as far as telling the Dread Pirate Roberts that he should have alternate passports made with a new identity and he should look for a new place to live that was far from US laws and regulations. Jared was right to be alarmed because Ross was taking Knob's advice and doing exactly that. In November 2012, Ross flew to Dominica, an island in the Caribbean. Ross had done his research and found that it was one of the best places he could escape to.

There were two main reasons. The first was that in Dominica, you could buy citizenship with an investment of $75,000 and the second was that it was a tax-free country. One of the main worries Ross had was that by exchanging his bitcoins for cash, he would draw suspicion. His account was getting larger and larger and the value of bitcoin itself was growing as well. As good as that was from a financial perspective, it also posed a problem. Ross had no idea how to remove money from his bitcoin account without getting asked the question. Where did all that money come from?

But in Dominica, he didn't need to justify his income to the government so Ross travelled there to have his citizenship expedited. While he was travelling, Silk Road suffered from another hacking attack. When Ross got to Dominica, he had no option but to do what the hackers asked to hand over $10,000 worth of bitcoin. After Ross gave them the 10 grand, the hackers realised they could ask for more so before stopping the attacks, they demanded a further $15,000. Again, Ross found himself with no other option.

He had to pay up. Once the hacking attacks were over, he continued with his plans in Dominica. One of the conditions in order to get citizenship was presenting recommendation letters from people who had known him for a long time. So Ross asked some of his friends. They knew he was constantly searching for start-up opportunities and when he explained the tax-free opportunities in Dominica, it made sense to them. They weren't suspicious at all.

While Ross took care of the paperwork, he also searched for other alternative places to escape, just in case. Variety Jones had told him not to settle for one, but to search for two or more places to escape to. Ross was interested in Costa Rica, Thailand, where Variety Jones was, and a few places in Europe. But he didn't like the idea of having to hide, possibly for years, and he also didn't like not being able to talk about Silk Road or its problems to anyone in real life. From the book American Kingpin, Ross told Variety Jones, The worst part is that I have no one to talk to about this stuff with. It just bounces around in my head.

Variety Jones answered, Best advice I can give right now is plan on a few years without emotional attachments. Exes can put you in jail for life. The one thing Ross took solace in was a new feature he introduced to Silk Road, Silk Road's movie night. He set a date for everyone in the community who wanted to take part. They all downloaded the same movie and watched it at the same time. The movie he chose was a V for Ventada, one of his favourites. He saw a lot of similarities between the movie and Silk Road, and he posted the following quote from it.

People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people. When Ross finished completing the paperwork in Dominica and he was sure that his citizenship application was in process, he returned to San Francisco. Upon his return, he found himself with many more problems. The hacking attack that occurred when he was flying to Dominica had forced his programmer to shut Silk Road down for two days. During those two days, buyers and sellers became increasingly worried that Silk Road wouldn't return at all. Many wondered if the Dread Pirate Robots had left with all of their money. Their fears were alleviated once Silk Road went back online, but that wasn't the end of it.

Many theorised that the Dread Pirate Robots wasn't the same Dread Pirate Robots anymore. Sometime prior, as part of local security measures and contingencies, the Dread Pirate Robots announced that he would try and change his writing style in his posts so that it would become more undetectable. But this backfire, as many suspected it wasn't the same Dread Pirate Robots anymore. They thought it was someone else completely. Silk Road's movie night became criticised too. Many believed that the true Dread Pirate Robots would never post a link to a torrent site to download a movie because it would go against the very strict security measures he was claiming to keep.

Other scams continued to take place as well. One which many users fell for was the Hidden Wikipedia scam. Someone had changed the link to Silk Road on the Hidden Wikipedia page and replaced it for a link to a clone of the Silk Road page. The clone site looked exactly like the real thing. The difference was that the clone site asked you to enter your PIN code for your Bitcoin wallet to log in. So when a person entered their PIN code on the clone site, they soon had their Bitcoins stolen. Another scam came in December 2012.

Someone changed some of the images on the seller's accounts and added a quick buy button. The quick buy button redirected the person to a Bitcoin address where they had to send their money to make the quick buy. But it was a complete scam. These scams brought endless complaints. But by the end of December 2012, Ross was able to get things back to normal and focus on what was important. Expanding. The armoury proved to be a bad decision. There wasn't a single sale of a gun, so we closed it down.

He temporarily allowed for guns to be sold on Silk Road again, but due to backlash, he removed them and said they wouldn't be returning to Silk Road. Around this time, other new listings started to appear, as detailed in the book American Kingpin. One of Ross's employees sent him the following message. So we have a vendor selling cyanide. Not sure where we stand on this. He's not listing it as a poison, but it's only the most well-known assassination and suicide poison out there. LOL.

Ross requested a link to the listing. The seller had written that cyanide was perfect for cleaning gold and silver and could even be used to treat leprosy. And with every sale of cyanide, he would throw in a free copy of an e-book called The Final Exit. A Guide to Suicide. Ross decided to allow this listing. Soon after, one of his employees sent him this message. Question for ya. Do we allow selling kidneys and livers? The seller said in the listing that the entire operation would be consensual.

Ross replied, Yes, if the source consents, then it's okay. Morals are easy when you understand the non-aggression principle. One of the first things a person read when they entered Silk Road was the following message. You may be shocked to find listings here that are outlawed in your jurisdiction. That doesn't mean Silk Road is lawless. In fact, we have a very strict code of conduct that if given a chance, most people I think would agree with. Our basic rules are to treat others as you would wish to be treated.

Mind your own business, and don't do anything to hurt or scam someone else. In the spirit of those rules, there are some things you will never see here, and if you do, please report them. They include child pornography, stolen goods, assassinations, and stolen personal information. Just to name a few. So Ross wasn't against the selling of organs or body parts. In fact, he thought if other sellers followed through, there might be a good way of expanding the business. Body parts and organs went for a much higher price than drugs. A kidney alone could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But Ross's main goal for expansion was implementing the masters of the Silk Road idea that had been proposed by Knob. The offshoot site from Silk Road that would focus on bulk drug sales. He had been going back and forth discussing the idea with Knob over the last few months. And it was finally about to happen. Knob wanted to do a test buyer, and Ross found a buyer for a kilo of cocaine. The delivery of coke was arranged for January 2013. Ross waited anxiously to see if the delivery was a success. But Knob had other plans.

The Baltimore Homeland Security Investigations Team had formed a task force called the Mako Polo Task Force. And their biggest asset was DEA agent Carl Force, who was posing as Knob on Silk Road. Carl was once again acting without authorization in relation to his masters of the Silk Road idea. He was continuing to play by his own rules. His conversations with the dread pirate Roberts took place on Torch Hat, and they were recorded and monitored by the Mako Polo Task Force. Although they didn't approve of his idea to set up the masters of the Silk Road site, there wasn't much they could do about it. The plan was already in action. Carl said he was just playing the friend card with the dread pirate Roberts.

But Jared from the Homeland Security Office in Chicago wasn't the only one who was questioning what information Carl was giving away. They talked about nearly everything, including sometimes personal experiences. But it was the information about drug smuggling that Carl was giving to the dread pirate Roberts that most concerned the Baltimore Task Force. For example, Carl explained how to avoid the mail system completely with large quantities of drugs by doing dead drops. Dead drops involve a dealer leaving drugs at a location like a hired locker, then the dealer would provide the combination code to the buyer. The buyer would take the drugs and leave the money inside the locker. That way, both dealer and buyer could make the transaction without ever needing to meet face to face. Carl was also telling the dread pirate Roberts that he loved him, to stay safe, and he even wished him good night.

When Carl supervised a question to these conversations, Carl simply answered that he needed to gain the dread pirate Roberts trust, and he was saying whatever it took to do that. Homeland Security and the DAA weren't the only agencies involved in the Mako Polo Task Force in Baltimore. It also included people from the Postal Service who helped track the drugs in the mail, and agents from the Secret Service to try and follow the money on Silk Road. Sean Bridges was a Secret Service agent working on the Task Force, and he desperately wanted to be the one to bring down the dread pirate Roberts. As did Carl Force. There was a lot of competition between the competing agencies. There was even competition between agents within the same agency. Everyone wanted to be the one to crack the case. It would be a career maker. This resulted in poor communication and exchange of information, but Sean Bridges and Carl Force decided to team up.

They came up with a plan to involve the NSA in the Silk Road case. They had heard that the NSA could get into any computer in the world, so they wanted their help. Sean Bridges had a contact in the NSA, and he managed to arrange a meeting with an analyst from the agency. Sean and Carl met up with the analyst, but didn't tell anyone else in the Mako Polo Task Force. The analyst explained to them that the NSA couldn't touch a case unless it was a threat to national security. So Carl and Sean came up with a new plan. They would buy explosives from Silk Road, which were for sale at the time, and that way they could prove that Silk Road was a threat to national security. Their idea was to buy pipe bombs and have them delivered to a secret government post office box.

But they aborted their plan when they realized that having bombs delivered in the mail could be dangerous and problematic for them. So that's when Carl Force decided to move forward with his masters of the Silk Road idea, and he asked the dread pirate Roberts to find a buyer for a kilo of cocaine. The price was $27,000. Ross asked one of his employees who went by the username ChronicPain to find a buyer. ChronicPain's real name was Curtis Green. Curtis found a buyer, and the plan was for the kilo of coke to be delivered to Curtis' house first. The dread pirate Roberts sent Nob at the address.

As soon as Carl got the address, the entire Mako Polo Task Force started moving. The delivery was set to take place on a Wednesday in January 2013. The entire Baltimore Task Force traveled 2,000 miles to Curtis' address in Spanish Fork, Utah. Carl had a contact in law enforcement there, and he asked to borrow a kilo of cocaine from their evidence room. Carl got the kilo, then arranged a priority mail package at the local post office. The plan was to do a controlled delivery. An officer would pose as a mailman. They parked the van outside Curtis' house. The rest of the Task Force, including a SWAT team, were parked around the block.

The delivery was made at 11am. Carl sat in a car across the street, watching the entire operation unfold. The officer posing as the mailman grabbed the package from the back of the van and left it at Curtis Green's front door. He then returned to the van and waited. A few minutes passed before the door of the house opened, and Curtis Green looked out from the doorway. He was in his forties and used a crane to get around. He stared at his surroundings and saw the white mail van still parked at the front. Then he stared at the package waiting for him on the porch.

He slowly walked towards the package, picked it up, walked towards the garbage can next to his house, and threw it out. Then he returned inside and closed the door. Carl watched Curtis' every move, and he didn't understand what was happening. He started communicating with the rest of the Task Force, and they tried to work out their next move. If Curtis didn't take the package, there wasn't much they could do. But before they could make a decision, Curtis Green opened the front door again. He walked back to the trash can, grabbed the package, and entered his house with it, closing the door behind him.

As soon as he closed the door, the Task Force made their move. The SWAT team went in first. They broke in the front door and yelled at Curtis Green to get on the ground. Curtis was taken by surprise. He had a pair of scissors in one hand. The package was open on the table, and part of his face was covered in cocaine. He immediately did as he was told, and dropped to the floor. The officers then started searching Curtis' house. Curtis was wearing a money belt attached to his hip, and it had $23,000 cash inside. In Curtis' basement, they found several computers that were all linked together.

They knew Curtis worked as a moderator for the Dread Pirate Roberts, but they soon discovered he had other responsibilities as well. Firstly, his computers worked to mine Bitcoin. The process is complex, but in simple terms, all of the transactions made with Bitcoin need to be verified by multiple sources. This verification process is called mining, and is performed by the distributed network of computers. Anyone can run mining software, and as a reward for doing so, they receive small amounts of Bitcoin. When Curtis was caught, mining could still be done on computers at home, or with several computers. But today, mining Bitcoins is a very expensive investment because the algorithms become more and more complex, and it takes expensive computer equipment to solve them. Apart from the mining of Bitcoins, the agents found out something else.

Curtis Green handled logins and passwords of Silk Road users, and he also handled the Bitcoins that were in Silk Road's escrow account. Secret Service Agent Sean Bridges was especially interested in this, as his role was to follow the money. While he got what evidence he could from the computers down in the basement, Carl Force started talking to Curtis. Curtis explained that the Dread Pirate Roberts had authorized him to control the Bitcoins. When a user paid for a product, the site guarded the money until the buyer was satisfied, and Curtis had access to all of that money. Curtis was arrested, taken to the local police station, booked, processed, and then released. He stayed hidden in his house in fear, certain that the Dread Pirate Roberts would realize that he wasn't on the site working like he ought to be. And soon enough, the Dread Pirate Roberts did realize.

When Curtis Green, or chronic pain as it was known on Silk Road, didn't log in the following day, Ross grew suspicious that something might have happened, since Curtis was the one receiving the killer of cocaine. With Ross's new safety measures he had put in place for his employees, he had Curtis's identification, so he did a Google search of his name. That led him to a website that showed recent arrests, and there, he saw Curtis Green's mugshot. But that wasn't the only thing that Ross found out. A few days later, he discovered that there was $350,000 missing from user accounts, and there wasn't much doubt as to who was responsible. Curtis Green was the only person who had access to that money. Initially, Ross didn't know what to do, but the more he thought about it, the more he felt that Curtis Green had the pay. Ross wanted the money back, and Curtis had to learn a lesson.

Ross consulted Variety Jones, and Variety Jones not only believed that Curtis deserved to get roughed up, but he gave the Dread Pirate Roberts a contact he had. There was a man from Ireland that went by the name Irish. He would travel to wherever he had to, and make someone disappear if needed. The problem was that Irish didn't know anything about technology or computers, so he wouldn't be able to use Curtis' computers to return the stolen bitcoins. Ross consulted another of his most trusted employees, and Nego. Nego offered to go to Utah himself and pay Curtis Green a visit, but Nego was the employee with most responsibilities on Silk Road, so Ross didn't want to risk having him away from the computer. Ross came up with another idea. A week after Curtis' arrest, DEA agent Carl Force arranged a meeting with him in a hotel room in Salt Lake City, Utah.

While posing as Knob on Silk Road, Carl had found out that the Dread Pirate Roberts knew of Curtis' arrest, so Carl arranged a meeting with Curtis. He took secret service agent Sean Bridges and a postal worker with him. Curtis showed up with his lawyer. They all sat down, and Curtis immediately began rambling, telling the agents that he was a good Mormon boy who hadn't committed any crimes before, and he'd just made a mistake. At one point in the conversation, his lawyer interrupted him and recommended that he confess everything he knew to the agents. The lawyer then left the meeting, leaving Curtis alone. Curtis continued rambling, but he didn't share any information that the agents weren't already aware of. At lunchtime, they took a break, hoping that Curtis would provide something useful after they ate.

During the lunch break, Carl took out his laptop and logged into Silk Road. He wanted to speak to the Dread Pirate Roberts and see if he could find anything out about Curtis that he could use against him during the questioning. Carl was successful in chatting to the Dread Pirate Roberts during the lunch break, and they did speak about Curtis, but the conversation was nothing like Carl had expected. The Dread Pirate Roberts shared with Knob that he was pissed off to no end because one of his employees had stolen Bitcoins from him. Knob replied, who is it and where is he? Carl was shocked when the Dread Pirate Roberts sent him Curtis Green's ID photo. In fact, Carl looked straight at Curtis and said, you stole money from the Dread Pirate Roberts. Curtis didn't seem to understand what was happening, and he answered, no, you've got to be kidding me. I wouldn't even know how to steal a penny from him.

The Dread Pirate Roberts continued talking to Knob and asked him if he knew anyone who could beat Curtis Green up and force him to return the money. Knob told him he definitely knew people who could do that. The Dread Pirate Roberts asked how quickly Knob could take care of getting someone to Curtis' house. Knob replied that it shouldn't take too long at all. Carl closed his laptop and ordered the postal worker that was with him to fill the bathtub. He then explained to Curtis what was going to happen. They would pretend to torture him, but it would have to look real. They would drown him in the bathtub and Carl would videotape it to have proof for the Dread Pirate Roberts.

Carl knew it wasn't an attractive option for Curtis, but as he explained, it was either fake his torture or risk the Dread Pirate Roberts sending someone else to do it for real. Curtis was terrified of the Dread Pirate Roberts and he agreed to the fake torture. The postal worker pretended to be the torturer and Carl filmed it. The postal worker sunk Curtis' head into the bathtub over and over again. Carl was encouraging the torture in the background. But the Dread Pirate Roberts was having a change of heart. He had been conflicted on the best course of action to take ever since the bitcoins were stolen and now the torture of Curtis was actually taking place. He was questioning himself if it was the right thing to do. He raised his concerns with a variety of Jones who told him,

at what point in time do we decide we've had enough of someone's shit and to terminate them. That was the very option that Dread Pirate Roberts had been considering and it was good to hear that Variety Jones was thinking the same way. Dread Pirate Roberts passed the message on to Nob and Nob agreed to kill Curtis Green. The price they agreed on was $80,000, $40,000 up front and $40,000 after the job was completed. A week later, Nob sent the Dread Pirate Roberts a message. Their conversation is outlined in the book American Kingpin. Nob said, Green is dead and disposed of. I'll get your picture for proof of death. The Dread Pirate Roberts answered,

Okay, thank you. I guess they were unable to get him to send the coins he stole. Nob. They had to do CPR on him one time. Actually, the trick to torturing someone is keeping the guy alive. Died of asphyxiation slash heart rupture. After that message, Nob didn't get a reply back from the Dread Pirate Roberts, so we sent him another message. You okay? Dread Pirate Roberts responded, A little disturbed, but I'm okay. I'm new to this kind of thing is all.

That same day, Variety Jones tried to calm Dread Pirate Roberts by telling him, We're playing for keeps. I'm perfectly comfortable with the decision and I'll sleep like a lamb tonight and every other night hereafter. Dread Pirate Roberts soon received an email from Nob with a picture that showed Curtis Green's body. Ross looked at it for a few moments, Saved the picture to an encrypted folder on his computer and paid Nob the final $40,000. Ross believed that was the end of it. Curtis Green was dead. Except he wasn't.

Just like the torture had been faked, the murder had been faked as well. When Carl found out that the Dread Pirate Roberts had escalated to murder, he was already back in Baltimore. So he gave Curtis Green a call and told him how to fake his own death. He wouldn't need much, Carl explained, just the Campbell soup can. He told Curtis to go to the bathroom, fill the bathtub with water and sink his head in it. Then drink the Campbell soup and throw it up so it looked like blood had come out of his mouth. Finally, he would have to lie on the floor, look dead and ask his wife to take a close up picture of him with a cell phone. So the quality of the picture wouldn't be very good.

And that was the picture that Ross received from Nob one week later. After the audit hit, things didn't get any easier on Silk Road. It seemed like every other day there was some new problem, a security breach, a scam, a hacking attack or an extortion attempt. Like when the Dread Pirate Roberts received a message from a Silk Road user going by the nickname Friendly Chemist. Friendly Chemist told the Dread Pirate Roberts that he had hacked a known cell as account and he had a long list of real names and real addresses, all belonging to members of Silk Road. And he was threatening to make the list public. Friendly Chemist sent a few of the names and addresses to the Dread Pirate Roberts so he knew the threat was real. And he also told him that the cell as account he hacked was real Lucy Drops.

He even gave the password to that account. The entire story involving real Lucy Drop started with another user going by the name Lucy Drop. Lucy Drop was a seller with an excellent reputation with a lot of sales and a lot of loyal customers. But just like Tony76 had done in the great 420 sale and giveaway, Lucy Drop asked all buyers to finalize early outside of Silk Road's escrow account. A lot of buyers agreed, they never got their drugs and Lucy Drop walked away with about $100,000. Sometime later, a new user appeared on Silk Road with the name Real Lucy Drop. Real Lucy Drop claimed to be one of the people involved with the original Lucy Drop account. But he explained that his partner had fucked him over, stolen the computer along with the names and addresses of the buyers and then walked away with $100,000.

Now, the person behind this new account named Friendly Chemist who was extorting the Dread Pirate Roberts apparently was the same person involved with the original Lucy Drop account that ripped off his partner and pulled off the $100,000 scan. As outlined in the book Silk Road, in exchange for not revealing any names or addresses, Friendly Chemist asked the Dread Pirate Roberts for $500,000, explaining that he owed that amount to his suppliers. The Dread Pirate Roberts response was for Friendly Chemist to ask his suppliers to contact him directly to see if they could work something out. Soon after, the Dread Pirate Roberts was contacted by a new user going by the name Red and White. Red and White sent a message that read, I was asked to contact you. We are the people Friendly Chemist owes money to. What do you want to talk to us about? The Dread Pirate Roberts responded that he wasn't too sure how to sort this out, but he wanted to come to a conclusion that would benefit everyone. So if Red and White was having problems with a bad distributor, referring to Friendly Chemist, then they should start distributing themselves on Silk Road. Red and White replied they'd be more than happy to join Silk Road once they got the money that was owed to them.

The conversation between the two of them went back and forth for a few days until the Dread Pirate Roberts sent the following message. Friendly Chemist is a liability and I wouldn't mind if he was executed. Just after that message was sent, Friendly Chemist messaged the Dread Pirate Roberts and said he was giving him 72 hours before 5000 user details and two dozen seller identities were released. After getting this message, the Dread Pirate Roberts changed his tune with Red and White. He went from wouldn't mind if Friendly Chemist was executed to something more certain. He said, I would like to put a bounty on his head if it's not too much trouble for you. What would be an adequate amount to motivate you to find him? Necessities like this do happen from time to time for a person in my position. The adequate amount for Red and White ranged from $150,000 to $300,000, depending on the type of hit. Since Dread Pirate Roberts had just paid $80,000 for the murder of Curtis Green, he thought the price was a bit high and he asked Red and White if that was the best it could do.

Red and White said it was because given the timeframe Friendly Chemist had set, there wasn't much time before all those names got released. They agreed on a $150,000 fee. They settled on photographic proof, just like Ross had done with Curtis Green. But the problem in this case was that Ross didn't know who Friendly Chemist was in real life or what they looked like, so we gave Red and White some numbers to be written down on a piece of paper and placed next to the body. The following day Red and White reported back, your problem has been taken care of, rest easy because he won't be blackmailing anyone again, ever. But that wasn't the end of it. A few days later, Red and White messaged the Dread Pirate Roberts again to let him know some new information. When the men killed Friendly Chemist, they questioned him and he confessed that he was working with a partner in the blackmail and that partner was Tony76. Tony76, the seller who pulled the great 420 sale and giveaway scam on Silk Road users, walking away with about a quarter of a million dollars, the biggest scam ever pulled on Silk Road. Red and White added that Friendly Chemist had given up the real name of Tony76. Dread Pirate Roberts responded,

I would like to go after Tony76, if he's our man then he likely has substantial assets to be recovered, perhaps we can hold him and question him. Red and White explained there was a problem, Tony76 lived with three of his drug dealing partners and they were usually at home. Dread Pirate Roberts answered that he just wanted Tony76 to be hit, but Red and White offered to kill Tony76 and his three partners for half a million dollars. Red and White also explained that there would be more chances of getting back the stolen money and perhaps more that they didn't even know about if all of them were killed. Ross thought about it and at the end of the day he came to a decision. He gave the go ahead. One week later, Red and White told the Dread Pirate Roberts that the problem had been dealt with and he had one last thing to worry about. Ross had now paid for six murders in total.

Around this same time, the FBI's cyber crime division got involved in the Silk Road investigation. FBI agent Chris Tarbell had actually been considering going after Silk Road for several months, but he wasn't quite sure what the best strategy would be and he was still debating that when he received a visit from a DEA agent in the beginning of 2013. The DEA agent was from a team in New York. The New York team was conducting their own investigation, separate to the Chicago and Baltimore based teams. The agent explained that right after the Gorka article came out, Senator Schumer had given a very public announcement where he called on the DEA to shut Silk Road down. But there was a problem. The DEA knew how to run drug investigations, but they didn't know how to deal with computers and the deep web. Which was why 18 months had passed since Senator Schumer's announcement and the New York DEA team was still unsure how to go about the case.

So they finally made the decision to approach the FBI's cyber crime division for help. Tarbell and his cyber crime team listened to everything the agent had to say, and then they made their decision. They weren't going to assist the DEA with Silk Road. They were going to go after Silk Road themselves. On the face of it, the FBI's cyber crime division had the exact opposite problem to the DEA. They were fine with the technology side of things, but they didn't have experience in drug investigations. However, the New York DEA agent had mentioned something that got their attention. The leader of Silk Road, the dread pirate Roberts, was becoming more brazen in what was for sale. Before it was mainly drugs, but after that came firearms, explosives, and now, hacking tools.

The FBI's cyber crime team immediately checked what hacking tools were for sale. They found listings for keyloggers, banking trojans, malware applications, spyware applications, and much more. They knew that's how they would get inside the case. Tarbell called the higher-ups of the agency, presented his idea, and weeks later, he was given approval to open a case on Silk Road. The cyber crime team started analyzing Silk Road in detail, and they came to a conclusion. Their chances of catching the dread pirate Roberts and shutting down the site depended entirely on human error. The technology Silk Road used was strong. Both Tor and Bitcoin were built to help keep anonymity, and that was what made the case such a painstaking ordeal to anyone who crossed paths with it.

But they also knew that Tor, Bitcoin, and Silk Road were built and used by humans, and humans made mistakes. So that's what the FBI cyber crime division waited for. A mistake. And it came. Ross had been dealing with security problems on Silk Road ever since it started, and in May 2013, he had a major one. There was a coding error that made the IP address of the server go public. Ross immediately fixed the mistake, and soon enough everything went back to normal. The IP address of the server was no longer showing.

But Ross was worried that if anyone was watching at that precise moment, they might have noticed it. And he was right to be worried. The FBI cyber crime team were watching. Even though Silk Road was in the deep web, it was still housed by a server, and the code of that server had just been revealed. Chris Tarbell got to work locating it, and he found it a few hours later. It was in Iceland. If this server was the real Silk Road server, and it hadn't been encrypted or erased, they could have all the information they needed on Silk Road. Tarbell took that chance and travelled to Iceland.

He talked to the local authorities, and they said they would allow him access to the server. It was agreed that they would send a Tarbell a thumb drive containing all of the information on the Silk Road server. Tarbell received this in June 2013. He immediately showed the thumb drive to his computer scientist, Thomas Keenan. Keenan entered the thumb drive into his computer, and after a few seconds, they were looking at all of the folders that housed Silk Road. But they were all encrypted. Tarbell couldn't believe it. If the folders were encrypted, they would never be able to access them.

Like Variety Jones had said when he first told Ross to encrypt everything, if you have good encryption and a strong password, the FBI could never find you. Keenan tried every trick he knew to beat the encryption, but nothing worked. It looked like that was going to be the end of the server lead, until a few days later. Tarbell was talking on the phone with Assistant US Attorney Seren Turner from New York. Turner was aware of the server lead and Tarbell's trip to Iceland, and he asked him if there had been any advances in the investigation. Tarbell said there hadn't been because they couldn't get past the encryption. And Turner was confused. He asked why the passcode hadn't worked.

It was Tarbell's turn to be confused. What passcode? Turner explained that the authorities in Iceland had sent him a passcode for the encrypted files. For some reason, it wasn't passed on to Tarbell when he got the thumb drive. But now he had it. The passcode was, try to crack this NSA. All the one word. Tarbell quickly ended the call and went to see his computer scientist.

He gave him the passcode. And it worked. They were inside the encrypted files of Silk Road. On July 13, 2013, a deconfliction meeting was arranged by the Department of Justice. It had come to their attention that there were too many different agencies going after Silk Road, and none of them were cooperating with each other. There was Jared Duyagian from Homeland Security in Chicago. There was the Marco Polo Task Force made up of agents from Homeland Security in Baltimore. Carl Force from the DEA.

Sean Bridges from the Secret Service, as well as people from the Postal Service. There was the DEA in New York who were trying to make something happen. And now, there was the FBI's Cybercrime Division. Another agency was also represented at this deconfliction meeting. Gary Alford, who worked for the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS. When the New York DEA requested the help of the FBI Cybercrime Division, they also requested help from the IRS. Gary Alford got involved in the investigation and moved officers to join the New York DEA Task Force. Gary's job was to follow the money.

When Gary was added to the Task Force, he had never heard of Silk Road, but as soon as he started reading up on it, he became hooked. Like most of the people working on the case, Gary wanted to be the one to find out who the Dread Pirate Roberts was. He even had a theory about how he was going to do it, as detailed in the book American Kingpin. Gary was born in the summer of 1977, when a serial killer was terrorizing the city. A man nicknamed the Son of Sam. A huge investigation was launched to try and catch him, but there didn't seem to be any leads. That is, until an officer had the idea to go over all the parking tickets that were placed on cars near the murder scenes. He believed that the killer must have parked his car near the location of the murders, and during at least one of them would have forgotten to feed the parking meter and receive the parking ticket as a result.

The idea was considered unusual, but they went with it, and after going through thousands of parking tickets, they found a pattern. One man had gotten several tickets, and more than one linked him to the murder scenes. The officers paid him a visit, and he confessed to being the Son of Sam. Gary Alford believed that's the way they would catch the Dread Pirate Roberts, only instead of parking tickets, it would be through a trace he had left of himself online. Working with this theory, Gary followed everything the Dread Pirate Roberts had done, and like Chicago based Homeland Security agent Jared DeYagin had done before him, he studied the Dread Pirate Roberts posts on Silk Road. Gary started to build a profile, and he concluded that the Dread Pirate Roberts was very educated when it came to the United States political system, so he was very likely from the US. Gary found that in the early posts from the Dread Pirate Roberts, he would talk about how Silk Road was much safer than buying drugs in the street, where those people could rip you off or beat you up. Gary found to those lines curious. He also felt offended. He'd been born and raised in the housing projects in Brooklyn.

He grew up with many of the people that the Dread Pirate Roberts described in his posts, the people from the street who would rip you off or beat you up. Gary didn't agree with those views, and it was for this reason he thought the Dread Pirate Roberts was most likely white and from the suburbs. Afterwards, he drew up a list of people he believed could possibly be the Dread Pirate Roberts. Among them, there was a man who was outspoken and managed a web forum, a man who worked with Bitcoin, and a programmer who had libertarian views. He then came up with another theory. Adrian Chen was the Dread Pirate Roberts. Adrian was the author of the Gorka article that had practically launched Silk Road. Gary thought that maybe Adrian was the Dread Pirate Roberts and he'd written a piece for self-promotion. It made sense, since most people had never heard of Silk Road before the article existed, and Gary thought that if Adrian Chen was indeed the Dread Pirate Roberts, then maybe he had written something about Silk Road before the article. Gary went to Google and searched for the Gorka article again. He read it over and over, trying to find anything unusual or something he had missed before. The thing that stood out was that Silk Road's website didn't end in .com, but in .union.

So he went to Google again and tried searching Silk Road .union, which he hadn't done before. He also filtered the results. He said it so that only results from before June 1st 2011 would appear. That was the date the Gorka article was published. So if Adrian Chen had written anything about the site before then, the results would hopefully show it. Gary didn't get many results, but he did see something that he thought was interesting. A post on a forum called The Shroomery. Gary read the post that was from January 27th 2011. It was from someone who said that they'd casually come across a website called Silk Road, and they asked if anyone else had visited. Gary saw that the post was written by someone who called themselves Altoid, so he tried a new Google search. This time he entered Silk Road .union Altoid, which led him to another post. This time on the Bitcoin Talk forum.

In a thread about heroin, someone calling themselves Altoid was asking if anyone had heard of Silk Road. Gary couldn't get these posts from Altoid out of his mind. He contacted the managers of both forums and explained he was an agent from the government, and he needed the name and email address that was linked to the Altoid accounts. At first, he was told that Altoid had only left behind a fake email, frosty at frosty.com. But Gary insisted, and further checks showed that Altoid had actually used another email address when first registering his accounts. But he soon deleted it, and then entered the frosty address. Despite being deleted, the original email address used to create the Altoid accounts was still there. Ross Albrecht at gmail.com

Gary searched for Ross Albrecht on Google and found his LinkedIn account. Some things about Ross fit into his profile. Ross was white and from the suburbs, but he didn't have something that seemed vital for the Dread Pirate Roberts, a computer science background. Ross had been a physicist. Gary was far from convinced that Ross could be the Dread Pirate Roberts, but he still added him to his suspect list. So, at that deconfliction meeting held on July 13th between all of the different agencies investigating Silk Road, Gary Alford from the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS was excited to share what he had found. Luke Denboski presided over the meeting. He was the highest ranking official in the Department of Justice. Denboski explained that the main point of the meeting was to be open about everything going on in everyone's different investigations, so that the Department of Justice could make a knowledgeable decision on who should lead the Silk Road case. The ones who started were the Marco Polo Task Force from Baltimore.

Carl Force decided not to attend the meeting, but those who did spoke of Carl's arrest of Curtis Green. They didn't mention the full details, though. No mention that Carl was posing as Knob on Silk Road and actually talking to the Dread Pirate Roberts. They left that part out. But Denboski was already aware of that detail, so he asked the Baltimore agents about their undercover account. They said they couldn't talk about it because it was before a grand jury and was classified. Denboski was part of that grand jury. He was a major representative of the Department of Justice, the same department that made that information classified. He tried to get the Baltimore team to share what they had, but they weren't budging. Everyone wanted the glory. No one wanted to share information. Things got heated and a break was called to allow everyone to cool down. When the meeting resumed, Jared Duryagian decided to speak up. He was the Chicago-based Homeland Security agent who was basically running an investigation by himself.

Before the meeting, the Baltimore Homeland Security agents warned Jared not to share any important information. They told him to stick to just the minimum because the FBI would be at the meeting and they would hear what he had to say, steal the info, pretend they came up with it, and take all the glory without giving Jared any credit. But Jared saw how that stance played out for the Baltimore team, so he decided to take a risk and share everything he had. Jared said that ever since October 2011, he had seized almost three and a half thousand packages. He explained how those packages helped him to make a profile by comparing the packaging and the drugs to the listings on Silk Road. This method had resulted in him identifying several Silk Road sellers and he gave them the option to face the courts or to hand in their Silk Road account. They all took the option of handing in their Silk Road accounts. Jared then accessed the sellers' accounts and pretended to be them. Everyone present at the Deconfliction meeting got a far greater understanding of how Silk Road worked thanks to Jared's presentation.

They were actually dumbfounded. Jared had led an investigation in Chicago practically on his own and seemed to have gotten further than anyone else. That was until the FBI spoke. The FBI broke the news to everyone in the room. We have the server. But they explained they hadn't had a chance to properly go through it yet. They needed more time before they could share what they had. Denboski said they could have more time and then asked if anyone else in the room had anything to share. Gary Alfred from the IRS didn't say a word. He had changed his mind. He didn't share anything he had found. He felt that everyone in the room seemed to be in competition with each other and what he had really didn't amount to much compared to the others. So he kept it to himself.

When the meeting came to an end, Denboski announced that the Department of Justice would analyze everything and then make a decision on who would lead the case. Around the same time the FBI opened the encrypted files from the Silk Road server, Ross Ulbricht moved. Ross was talking to Knob and Knob told him that he knew a corrupt agent involved in the Silk Road case that wouldn't mind giving away information for a price. Ross had previously mentioned how useful it would be to have someone from law enforcement providing information to them to help them stay ahead. Ross trusted Knob as he still believed he was a smuggler who had made millions and who had managed to stay off law enforcement's radar for years. So he wasn't surprised when Knob told him about a corrupt investigator he knew. The investigator, who Knob called Kevin, wasn't interested in justice. He was interested in profit. So he would be perfect to help the Dread Pirate Roberts stay ahead. Knob told the Dread Pirate Roberts he could communicate with Kevin using PGP, an encrypted email and messaging service.

Of course, there was no corrupt agent going by the name of Kevin. Carl had made him up. Carl was going to be the one selling the Dread Pirate Roberts information and that's why he needed to move to an encrypted chat. He couldn't have anyone on the Baltimore Task Force seeing what it was up to. But the conversation he had just had wasn't on encrypted chat. So Carl deleted the chat history mentioned in Kevin and on the reports he said there had been technical issues. Carl successfully erased all talk of Kevin and corrupt agents without anyone else from the Task Force noticing. Now, acting as Kevin, Carl wouldn't need to erase anything because it was all on encrypted chat. The Task Force wouldn't be able to see Carl's conversations.

Acting as corrupt agent Kevin, Carl explained to the Dread Pirate Roberts that he would give him information for a donation, which would cost $50,000 if the tip was good. What he told the Dread Pirate Roberts initially was that the FBI was now looking for him. Certain authorities had arrested Silk Road sellers and were accessing their accounts and the FBI had Silk Road's files from the server. Learning this information wasn't the only reason that made Ross decide to move. There was a lot going on. He still wasn't sure how much Curtis Green had shared about Silk Road before his murder. He had just ordered the murders of five other men as well, Silk Road users Friendly Chemist, Tony76 and three of Tony's partners. Plus, hackers were still getting into Silk Road and stealing money from him.

Now, with this new information Kevin had just given him, Ross thought it was time to make his emergency list a reality. Part of the list included destroying his laptop and phone, but Ross didn't believe matters had gotten that bad just yet. Destroying his laptop would mean destroying his access to Silk Road. He did believe matters had gotten bad enough to put the last lines of his emergency list into action though. Find a place to live on Craigslist for cash and create new identity, name and backstory. He found a room in a three bedroom house on Craigslist for $1200. The place seemed perfect since he would be subletting a room inside a house already owned by someone else. So there were no tracks leading to him, especially since he planned to pay in cash.

As for his new identity, he created one that wasn't far removed from who he actually was. He introduced himself to the other occupants of the house as Joshua Terry. Joshua was 29 years old and was from Texas. He worked as a currency trader and did some freelance IT work on the side. He recently returned from a trip to Sydney and he liked to keep to himself. He spent most of his time working on his computer. He emphasized the fact that he did a lot of IT work and he spent a lot of time on his computer so that his new roommates wouldn't grow suspicious. And start wondering what he was up to.

Ross made his new identity close to his own so he wouldn't forget any details. If he built a complicated persona, he ran the risk of tripping himself up. His new room was across town from where he was living in San Francisco with his friend Renee and Renee's girlfriend. It was far enough away that he wasn't worried about the people who knew him as Ross, crossing paths with his new roommates who knew him as Joshua Terry. One of the first things Ross did when he moved was order a fake ID in the name of Joshua Terry. Fake IDs were of course available on Silk Road, so that's where he went. At this point, there were one million users on Silk Road, so you could find just about anything. Ross ordered the fake ID, except he didn't order just one. He ordered nine.

On July 10, 2013, a Customs and Border Protection Officer working at San Francisco International Airport was going through packages and envelopes looking for anything out of the ordinary. He came face to face with a set of three envelopes that caught his attention. The three envelopes were from Canada, from three different addresses in Vancouver. There were three different senders listed on each envelope, Bert Harris, Cole Harris, and Arnold Harris. The three envelopes had the same shape, the same size, and the same handwriting. Sensing something was off. The Customs Officer completed a form that allowed him to open the envelopes, and when he did, he found nine fake identity cards. In the name of Joshua Terry. He emailed the Homeland Security Investigations Department in San Francisco, and an agent attended the airport to check it out. The Homeland Security agents saw the ID cards were addressed to the same person, and all nine of them had the same picture.

Only the picture had been slightly altered on each one, so the person looked slightly different. The agent visited the house where the fake IDs were headed, but when he arrived at 2260 15th Street, a man who didn't speak English opened the door, so the Homeland Security agent left with no answers. There was two weeks later, on July 26, 2013, that the agent realised he'd gone to the wrong address. He couldn't get the nine fake ID cards out of his head, and he had another look at the envelopes. That's when he realised they were addressed to 15th Avenue, not 15th Street. By this time, he was busy with something else, so he sent two other San Francisco Homeland Security agents in his place. As the two agents walked towards the front door of 2260 15th Avenue, one of them pulled out the fake IDs to have another look before asking questions. When they reached the door, the same agent was about to knock, when he saw a man standing on the other side of the door wearing nothing but shorts. There was the man whose picture was on the fake identity cards.

Ross Ulbricht froze. The two men in suits staring at him from outside the front door could only mean one thing. He managed to compose himself, and slowly opened the door. To be continued.