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away from Momi Toby’s café, that he was the first person on the Internet who had ever written about
the Silk Road, and that he had been caught buying nine fake IDs.
“I’m going to send out an e-mail to Jared and Tarbell,” Serrin said. “I want to get us all on a
conference call.”
• • •
The office in the Dirksen Federal Building, where Jared sat, was completely sparse. There were no
computers or books in the room, just a solid oak desk and a phone that Jared was now reaching for.
He looked at the e-mail he had received from Serrin a few minutes earlier and began dialing the
number for the conference call. As the phone rang, Jared sat back in his chair, slouching exhaustedly
as he blankly stared out the window at Chicago’s skyline.
• • •
Tarbell walked into his house in New York, greeted his wife, Sabrina, and the kids, and said he had to
hop on a quick conference call. He walked into his bedroom and began his evening ritual, kicking off
his dress shoes and suit and replacing them with a stained pair of Adidas shorts and a T-shirt. He then
belly flopped onto the bed with a thud. He was so tired he could have closed his eyes at that moment
and slept for a month. But instead he let out a deep, exhausted sigh and reached for the devices in his
bag.
Like a casino dealer fanning out a deck of cards, Tarbell placed his laptop, iPad, and phone out
in front of him. He then dialed the conference-call number from Serrin’s e-mail and stared blankly at
his iPad, which lay in between the two other devices, displaying the map Serrin had sent out an hour
earlier.
• • •
“Gary.”
“Serrin.”
“Tarbell.”
“Jared.”
“We all here?”
“Yes.”
Serrin began speaking, giving Jared and Tarbell a recap of the conversation he had wrapped up
with Gary a few minutes earlier. He then asked Gary to tell them what he had found.
Gary began talking with a sense of urgency in his voice. He explained about the Google search
and how the very first reference to the Silk Road online originated in a forum post on the Shroomery
Web site in late January 2011, from a person with the username Altoid.
Tarbell and Jared were somewhat nonchalant about the evidence Gary was presenting. Maybe
Altoid was just an early user on the site. And coincidences were easy to find in a case this large. God
knew there had been dozens of coincidences with other people. Agencies had ruminated over the
leader of the Silk Road being the CEO of a Bitcoin exchange, a Google engineer, or even a professor
at a U.S. university. Others had believed it was an inner-city drug dealer or possibly the Mexican
cartels now working with programmers. And some had surmised that it was Russian hackers or
Chinese cybercriminals. Yet here was Gary Alford, insinuating that the ruthless, deriding, and wealthy