34856893457934

your side” capacity—tried to warn DPR about the potential consequences of running the site, Dread
responded in a recalcitrant tone that Carl had never seen before.
“I was not forced into this. I chose it,” Dread stated defiantly. “I chose it with full awareness of
what the consequences would be.” He then offered his intransigent view that the Silk Road would
grow so large that “it will force governments to legalize” drugs. Don’t question the Dread Pirate
Roberts, because he was willing to do anything imaginable to see that through.
Dread had become more stern about smaller issues too. When Nob was late to a chat meeting
they had scheduled to talk business, he was berated by DPR and given a long lecture about the
importance of loyalty and “honoring your word.”
O captain, my captain.
It didn’t take long for DPR to go from feeling disheartened by the death of Curtis Green to
believing that the murder was Green’s own fault. “I am pissed that he turned on me,” he wrote to Nob.
“I’m pissed I had to kill him. I just wish more people had some integrity.”
Carl agreed wholeheartedly. “Integrity is probably the hardest thing to find [in people],” he
wrote, pointing out that loyalty, fear, greed, and power are traits that most of us possess, “but integrity
is rare.”
It seemed that “integrity” was a rare trait in Carl also.
Over the past couple of months, just like his co–case agent who had stolen $350,000 from the
site, Carl had been trying to come up with a way to get money out of the Silk Road for his own
personal gain too. This was the opportunity of a lifetime, Carl reasoned. No one would ever find out;
these were Bitcoins; they couldn’t be traced; it was just like digital cash.
And so he came up with a plan. Several plans, actually.
One afternoon in the summer of 2012, he wrote to the Dread Pirate Roberts with a proposition. It
turned out, just by chance, that Nob knew a corrupt government official. Well, whaddaya know? A guy
who just so happened to be involved with the Silk Road case. Interesting. This official’s name, Nob
explained, was Kevin, and he was willing to give information about the case to the Dread Pirate
Roberts, but for a small donation.
Dread wanted to know how Nob knew this bad cop.
“He came to me,” Nob explained. “Told me about an investigation on me.”
“Why did he do that?” DPR asked.
“He did it for money :),” Nob said. “Kevin is a very smart and devious man.”
In the same way that Carl had borrowed what he knew about drug smuggling in South America
when he created the fictitious character “Nob,” he was now borrowing from his own demons to
create “Kevin,” an unscrupulous government agent who got a thrill from breaking the rules and was
now about to cross one of the most sacrosanct lines in law enforcement. He was going to start selling
secrets back to the man he was hunting.
Up until this point Carl’s supervisors had been able to see everything he wrote to DPR, as their
chats were all put into evidence in DEA “Report of Investigation” documents. Aware of this, Carl
suggested that Nob and Dread move some of their conversations, specifically those with information
from Kevin, to PGP, a highly secure and private chat system that encrypts every single message. If
Carl was going to commit a major felony, which he was about to do, he wanted to ensure that the
government would never be able to find out by reading these messages.
And with that, a new relationship blossomed.