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Chapter 43
THE FBI JOINS THE HUNT
It was 4:45 a.m. when the silver SUV pulled into its usual parking spot on the corner of Church
and Thomas streets in Lower Manhattan. Right on time. The car had black tinted windows with
government plates and blue and red police lights hidden under the front grill. The door to the SUV
swung open and FBI Special Agent Chris Tarbell stepped out, wearing gym clothes and a light jacket,
even though the winter temperature in New York City had dipped into the teens.
Come rain or shine, sleet or snow, this was Tarbell’s ritual. He worked out every day before he
went into the FBI offices at 26 Federal Plaza, a couple of blocks away. But today’s routine was going
to be different. While the cybercrime FBI agents hadn’t lost interest in the Silk Road, that topic hadn’t
moved past a discussion in the Whiskey Tavern among the Pickle Back shots and cham-pag-nay,
mostly because of bureaucratic bullshit within the system that Tarbell couldn’t stand. Higher-ups at
the Beau (which they pronounced “B-you”) had argued that drugs were not the mandate of their
division of the FBI.
But finally, after months of discussions over how to get in on the Silk Road case, an opportunity
had presented itself. Later that day a woman from the DEA in New York City would be coming by to
talk about the site and ask if Tarbell and his crew could help the DEA’s investigation.
After leaving the gym, Tarbell changed into a dark suit and white shirt and grabbed his coffee
from the nearby Starbucks before making his way up to the twenty-third floor of the federal building.
As he sat with his other agents in the Pit, a woman from the DEA arrived with Serrin Turner, the
assistant U.S. attorney in New York City whom the FBI had worked with on the LulzSec case.
The DEA agent wore jeans and a sweater, proudly displaying her badge and gun on her waist.
She sat down in an empty chair and explained that she was part of a New York task force based a few
miles away in Chelsea. They had been sporadically looking into—“well, trying to look into”—the
Silk Road for the past year and a half, and their attempt at an investigation had gone nowhere. Shortly
after the Gawker article had published back in June 2011, Senator Chuck Schumer had done what
most politicians do, holding an impromptu press conference and demanding that the government go
after the drug site, even though he was clueless as to what that entailed.
Since the Silk Road sold drugs, the DEA agent explained, the government had asked her office to
look into the site. That had been a mistake, it turned out, as her office knew how to do only physical