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pup, tried to bite another agent’s shoelaces. On the wall above this chaos there were pictures of
Green’s wife and kids and a square decorative tile that offered the welcoming message “If I had
known you were coming, I would have cleaned up!”
Green was searched—the cops found $23,000 in cash stuffed in his fanny pack—and was read
his rights. He was visibly petrified, telling the cops he’d do whatever they needed; tell them whatever
they wanted to know; show them how Bitcoins worked and the computer he used to log on to the Silk
Road.
The cops in the back of the house rummaged through Green’s drawers, pulling out his wife’s big
black dildo that became the butt of several jokes. Other officers went down into the basement, where
they found a series of computers linked together for what they were told was Green’s Bitcoin-mining
farm. These computers ran software Green had downloaded that constantly crunched numbers trying
to find Bitcoins online that he could then turn into real physical cash.
As the cops rummaged through his stuff, one of the HSI agents from Baltimore took timid Green
aside and began questioning him. This left Carl and Shaun Bridges, the Secret Service agent who had
tried to set up the meeting with the NSA, to examine Green’s computer. They soon discovered that
Green, as an employee of the Silk Road, had a special account on the site with privileges that
allowed him to change people’s pass codes and even log others out of their accounts. This was an
administrative right that, Green told them, had been granted to him by the Dread Pirate Roberts
himself.
As Carl and Shaun explored Green’s account for evidence that would bring them closer to
capturing DPR, they noticed one other feature about Green’s administrative abilities on the site that
seemed out of the ordinary. It appeared that Green, as a moderator, also had access to other people’s
Bitcoins on the Silk Road. Hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins, to be precise. Green could have easily
stolen that money if he wanted to. After all, everyone believed that Bitcoins couldn’t be traced like
cash. But Green would never do such a thing, fearing a vicious reprisal from the Dread Pirate
Roberts. Neither, one would think, would federal agents with the Marco Polo task force who had
taken an oath to protect citizens, “so help me God.”
But in the coming days, without the knowledge of anyone else inside that little house on East 600
North Street in Spanish Fork, Utah, or within the U.S. government, Shaun Bridges of the Secret
Service was about to do the unthinkable. He started tinkering with the computer that belonged to
Green and furtively siphoning $350,000 out of other people’s accounts on the Silk Road, all using
Curtis Green’s log-in credentials. Rather than turning this money in to the U.S. government as
evidence, Shaun would instead secretly transfer that $350,000 into his own personal accounts online.
It didn’t stop there.
It wouldn’t take long for do-gooder, churchgoing dad Carl Force—completely separately from
Shaun Bridges—to start stealing money from the Silk Road too. But rather than purloin the money, as
Shaun did, Carl would instead sell information back to the Dread Pirate Roberts in exchange for
hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoins. This information would help Ross Ulbricht stay ahead
of law enforcement as they hunted for the leader of the Silk Road.
Just as he had before, Carl was about to cross the line between covering a criminal and
becoming one.
So help me God.