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even stop crossing the line, Carl decided to move that line even further away and he started creating
more fake accounts and machinations to take more money.
Before the e-mail came in telling him to stand down, Carl decided to create another fictitious
online persona, one that wasn’t Nob, the drug smuggler, or Kevin, the dirty DOJ employee, but a new
character called French Maid. Under this new guise, Carl sent DPR another message, offering to sell
more information about the investigation into the site. “I have received important information that you
need to know asap. Please provide me with your public key for PGP.” This was the point where
Carl’s lies were too complicated to track, and everything he was saying became jumbled in his own
mind. As a result, Carl was about to make an irreversible mistake.
In a message to DPR, while pretending to be French Maid, he accidentally signed the message
with his own name, Carl.
A short while later, when Carl realized what he had done, he quickly followed up with another
message to Dread. “Whoops! I am sorry about that. My name is Carla Sophia and I have many
boyfriends and girlfriends on the market place. DPR will want to hear what I have to say ;) xoxoxo.”
Luckily for Carl, the Dread Pirate Roberts could care less who Carl or Carla was; Dread just
wanted the information that was for sale and gladly handed more than $100,000 to French Maid for
more information that could help him keep the Feds at bay.
Carl thought he’d gotten away with his exploits, but in mid-September 2013 he heard that the
Feds had fingered DPR. This was followed by the e-mail from his bosses to stand down. Carl was in
a panic. If the FBI got Dread on his computer, then there might be more records of the conversations
between the mendacious DEA agent and the Dread Pirate Roberts.
As Nob, he messaged DPR and told him: “My informant (Kevin) is certain that you are going to
be identified and caught. You are like one of my family. but I have to tell you that I have had several
people killed who were sent to jail. it is very easy and cheap,” Carl said, and then concluded the
threat implied in that previous message. “I trust that you have destroyed all messages, chats, etc
between us.”
But what if Dread didn’t delete the messages? After thinking all of this through, Carl knew that
the only way to find out what the FBI knew, or would know if they captured Dread, was to see the
servers that the Feds had apparently found. So he came up with another idea—another lie—and he
called Chris Tarbell from the FBI, whom he had never spoken to before.
“Hi, this is Special Agent Carl Force from the DEA in Baltimore,” he barked at Tarbell. “When
can I come up and look at the server?”
“Who is this?” Tarbell replied.
“Special Agent Carl Force from the— Look, you know, I really need to see that server.”
Tarbell was immediately combative in his response to Carl. “Did you get approval from the
ASAC?”
“Yes, yes, yes, I did,” Carl stuttered, obviously not telling the truth, “When can I come up? What
day is best for you?”
“There’s no time. If you want to see it, then you’ll have to go through ASAC.” And then Tarbell
abruptly hung up.
After this interaction Carl was out of ideas. All he could hope was that DPR had done what Nob
had requested and wiped the messages from his computer. Or maybe they would both be lucky and the
Dread Pirate Roberts would get away, taking all of Carl’s secrets with him.