Unmasked: The Man Behind The Silk Road PDF
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Unmasked: The Man Behind The Silk Road Andy Greenberg, Ryan Mac, Kashmir Hill, Sarah Jeong and Susie Cagle Copyright 2015 Forbes. All rights reserved. Cover Design: Uyen Cao Edited by Annabel Lau, Miguel Morales and Jennifer Eum CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. THE SILK ROAD FOUNDER OF DRUG SITE SILK ROAD SAYS BITCOIN BOOMS AND BUSTS WON’T KILL HIS BLACK MARKET MEET THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS, THE MAN BEHIND BOOMING BLACK MARKET DRUG WEBSITE SILK ROAD AN INTERVIEW WITH A DIGITAL DRUG LORD: THE SILK ROAD’S DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS II. THE TAKEDOWN END OF THE SILK ROAD: FBI SAYS IT’S BUSTED THE WEB’S BIGGEST ANONYMOUS DRUG BLACK MARKET HOW DID THE FBI BREAK TOR? III. THE PIRATE WHO IS ROSS ULBRICHT? PIECING TOGETHER THE LIFE OF THE ALLEGED LIBERTARIAN MASTERMIND BEHIND SILK ROAD LIVING WITH ROSS ULBRICHT: HOUSEMATES SAY THEY SAW NO CLUES OF SILK ROAD OR THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS IV. THE CHARGES MEET THE SILK ROAD EMPLOYEE THAT THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS ALLEGEDLY TRIED TO MURDER DOES THIS $17 MILLION BITCOIN WALLET BELONG TO ALLEGED SILK ROAD CREATOR ROSS ULBRICHT? FBI SAYS IT’S SEIZED $28.5 MILLION IN BITCOINS FROM ROSS ULBRICHT, ALLEGED OWNER OF SILK ROAD ALLEGED SILK ROAD BOSS ROSS ULBRICHT NOW ACCUSED OF SIX MURDERS-FOR-HIRE, DENIED BAIL HOW A DELAWARE DOCTOR WAS LINKED TO SILK ROAD DRUG SALES ALLEGED SILK ROAD CREATOR ROSS ULBRICHT HIT WITH ‘KINGPIN’ CHARGE, ANOTHER 20 YEARS MINIMUM PRISON TIME V. THE TRIAL THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS ON TRIAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: ROSS ULBRICHT CREATED SILK ROAD, BUT A DIFFERENT DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS COMMITTED THE CRIMES “PEOPLE THINK THEY’RE HELPING THE DEFENSE, BUT THEY’RE NOT”: WHY NOBODY IN THE SILK ROAD TRIAL LIKES JURY NULLIFICATION THE DHS AGENT WHO INFILTRATED SILK ROAD TO TAKE DOWN ITS KINGPIN WAS MT. GOX CEO THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS? THE DHS ONCE BELIEVED IT. SILK ROAD JUDGE: TOR BROWSER IS “MUMBO-JUMBO TO MOST PEOPLE ON THE JURY RIGHT NOW” THE DREAD PIRATE’S DIARY THE DREAD PIRATE’S CONFIDANTE HOW ROSS ULBRICHT’S DEFENSE WAS DERAILED SILK ROAD TRIAL CLOSING ARGUMENTS: “THE INTERNET PERMITS DECEPTION AND MISDIRECTION” JURY FINDS ROSS ULBRICHT GUILTY OF RUNNING SILK ROAD MARKETPLACE POSTSCRIPT: CRIMINAL CHARGES AGAINST AGENTS REVEAL STAGGERING CORRUPTION IN THE SILK ROAD INVESTIGATION INTRODUCTION I remember the moment I heard about Ross William Ulbricht’s arrest. Holed up in my San Francisco apartment on a gray Wednesday morning in October 2012, I was still asleep when a deluge of messages and emails to my iPhone forced me awake. With bleary eyes, I read the FBI’s announcement that it had arrested the ringleader of the Silk Road, a massive illicit online drug marketplace that Forbes had been tracking for the better part of a year. Incredibly, that criminal mastermind—alleged at the time to be Ulbricht—had been detained at a public library just a few miles from my home. I hobbled over to my desk and fired off a few emails to other Forbes reporters before realizing that Andy Greenberg, our staff writer who covered the Internet’s underbelly, was away on a book tour in Eastern Europe. After several attempts to reach him in Bulgaria, where spotty cell service from the backseat of his car made communication impossible, I set out on my own, trying to figure out just who Ulbricht was and his level of involvement with the Silk Road. Five hours later I had banged out my first piece on the alleged online drug lord, who federal authorities estimated oversaw $1.2 billion worth of sales in the crypto-currency Bitcoin by the time of his arrest. (That number has been adjusted as the price of Bitcoin has dropped over the last three years.) In the criminal complaint against Ulbricht, the FBI called the Silk Road “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today,” a stunning, impressive accusation for a website supposedly created by a 29-year- old University of Texas, Dallas graduate who had little prior trouble with the law. Thus began my trip down a rabbit hole that has helped define Forbes’ coverage of the Silk Road. For more than two years, Forbes’ writers and contributors— including Andy Greenberg, Kashmir Hill, Kate Vinton, Runa Sandvik, Sarah Jeong, Susie Cagle and myself—have watched and reported closely on the developments surrounding the Dark Web’s most notorious marketplace, from its days as an online boomtown hawking black tar heroin and ecstasy to its shutdown to Ulbricht’s imprisonment and subsequent trial. With hindsight, it’s easy to see why the Silk Road tale caught Forbes’ attention. First and foremost, this was a business. Though much of what the Silk Road was doing was highly illegal, one begrudgingly admires the entrepreneurial spirit of its leader, the self-styled “Dread Pirate Roberts.” The sheer amount of commerce facilitated by the Dark Web marketplace conveyed the pent-up demand for illicit goods worldwide and the lengths people were willing to go to get them. Second, we were struck by the idealism of it all. The Silk Road was an exercise in complete freedom from the State, a place where libertarianism reigned and economic principles defined human interaction—even if all of those humans were hidden behind computers and the online-identity-anonymizing software, Tor. In early posts on the Silk Road’s forum, the Dread Pirate Roberts waxed lyrical about libertarian principles and how the Silk Road’s mechanics, which relied on customer and seller ratings, weeded out bad actors. “At its core, Silk Road is a way to get around regulation from the State,” said the site’s leader in an interview with Greenberg on July 4, 2013. “If they say we can’t buy and sell certain things, we’ll do it anyway and suffer no abuse from them. But the State tries to control nearly every aspect of our lives, not just drug use.” Finally, the Silk Road saga played out like surreal fantasy. In many ways, the Silk Road story resembled a spinoff of Breaking Bad, a Hollywood yarn whose drama centered around an Amazon-like website that could send cocaine and fake passports through the U.S. Postal Service to a consumer’s front door. There was the charismatic leader who eluded authorities behind a computer screen and the mystified, frustrated federal agents, who eventually brought it all to an end with a highly publicized sting in the science fiction section of a San Francisco public library. Through the trial, we learned of Ulbricht as well as the staged murders, the money laundering, drug trafficking and constant blackmail that all figured into Silk Road’s short but fascinating existence. Still, the Silk Road story is far from over. Despite a New York jury declaring Ulbricht guilty on counts of drug trafficking, computer hacking, money laundering and running an organized crime ring in February, his lawyers are working on a possible appeal. That may have legs as well, as a new wrinkle in the investigation revealed that two federal agents allegedly laundered Bitcoins confiscated from the Silk Road to their own personal bank accounts. The confiscated from the Silk Road to their own personal bank accounts. The government claims that one of those agents created fake online personas to blackmail and extort the Dread Pirate Roberts. There have also been a number of sites to pop up on the Dark Web to fill the illegal narcotics void, the metaphorical hydra heads that have replaced the severed original. One, Silk Road 2.0, has already flourished and collapsed after the U.S. government raided the site—making for an offshoot tale that may prove just as compelling as that of its predecessor. In that sense, the Silk Road’s impact has been undeniable. In the Dread Pirate Roberts’ own words: “The jungle has never seen a species quite like the Silk Road.” —Ryan Mac I. The Silk Road
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