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“Before we go,” Dylan said, “we think you’re a smart guy—a clever guy—but it’s odd to us that
you would order nine IDs; normal people, even normal criminals, don’t order nine fake driver’s
licenses. It all just seems very odd to us.” Ross didn’t reply as Dylan kept talking. “So we’re going to
need to talk to your roommates and your neighbors—” Dylan’s partner interrupted, finishing the
sentence, ”To make sure there are no dead bodies.”
Ross’s face scrunched up again, fear returning. “Well,” Ross said, “that’s going to be a bit of a
problem.”
“Why?”
“Because my roommates know me as Josh,” Ross replied. He quickly deflected suspicion about
that anomaly, talking to the agents about his privacy, and also made it clear with his body language
that he wanted them to leave.
The fact that Ross went by “Josh” wasn’t necessarily a red flag to Dylan. He had met plenty of
people in Silicon Valley who subscribed to a “libertarian” philosophy and were borderline paranoid
about their privacy. But Dylan was still hopeful that he could make Ross into a source and, with the
goal of eventually tracking down the creator of the fake IDs, the agents collected the information they
needed about Ross’s roommates.
“Take care,” Dylan said politely as he turned around with his partner and walked down the steps.
As they reached the driveway, Ross closed the door behind them.
The agents then got into their Jeep and checked Ross Ulbricht’s name in the DHS database,
which came back empty. “That guy sure was smart,” Dylan said to the other agent, who agreed, as he
pulled away. “There is something to this Silk Road thing, we should really look into it.”
Inside the home on Fifteenth Avenue, Ross rushed down the hallway and back into his bedroom.
He knew he had to do something before the agents realized the e-mail he had given them was fake, or
before the Department of Homeland Security called Andrew Ford, the man he was subletting the
apartment from, and told him that “Josh,” his tenant, was really Ross and that he had been ordering
illegal documents from a Web site that sold drugs, guns, hacker tools, and fake IDs and having them
mailed to 2260 Fifteenth Avenue in Andrew Ford’s name.