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another forty years to his sentence for the other counts. Ross stood there, unmoved by the words he was hearing. Behind him, in the benches of the courtroom, all that could be heard was the uninterrupted sound of cries. “In the federal system,” the judge continued, “there is no parole and you shall serve your life in prison.”
Chapter 71 THE PLURAL OF MONGOOSE It was more than a year after the trial until the last employee was arrested for working on the Silk Road. And yet he was, without question, the site’s most influential. One of the highest-ranking advisers and one of the most prolific dealers, he went by the curious moniker “Variety Jones.” For a while it seemed that Jones would actually get away. He had been holed up for more than two years in a small beach town in Thailand. He paid off some local cops, and whenever anyone started to come close, Jones was able to evade the authorities. Jones had been sitting in a hotel room in Asia, watching the news, when he discovered that his friend and boss, the Dread Pirate Roberts, had been arrested. Well, you could knock me over with a feather! Jones thought at the time, seeing a picture of Ross Ulbricht on his television. Like everyone associated with the site, VJ followed Ross’s trial religiously, getting to know more about the former Boy Scout and physicist he had advised and helped mold into the Dread Pirate Roberts. But unlike others, VJ got to see just how influential he had been to the site’s leader, as the diaries from Ross’s computer were presented as evidence in court. “This was the biggest and strongest willed character I had met through the site thus far,” Ross had written about his friend and consigliere, Variety Jones. “He has helped me better interact with the community around Silk Road, delivering proclamations, handling troublesome characters, running a sale, changing my name, devising rules, and on and on. . . . He’s been a real mentor.” There was also another piece of evidence that was talked about in the trial: The Feds had found the folder on Ross’s laptop with the IDs of all of his employees, including a picture of a passport that belonged to a fifty-four-year-old Canadian man whose real name was Roger Thomas Clark. A man whom authorities soon discovered was hiding out in Asia. On an early morning in December 2015, through a joint operation of the FBI, DHS, DEA, and local Thai police, VJ was captured in a small room in Thailand. As the cops barged into the hideout, placing him in cuffs, the first thing Clark said was “Call me Mongoose,” referring to a more famous nickname he had used on other drug forums, “The Plural of Mongoose.” But while they had captured the man behind Variety Jones, attempts to divine his past revealed a conflicting and complex picture. There were signs that Clark was truly a dangerous criminal, far more
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Portfolio/Penguin An imprint of Pen
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No man, for any considerable period
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20. The Dread Pirate Roberts 21. Ca
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Author’s Note My mother, who pass
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PART I
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look for anything out of the ordina
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pills that had been arriving, week
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Five Years Earlier
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hand in marriage (Say yes, please s
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Chapter 3 JULIA VIE Julia Vie’s f
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“Oh, no, no, no,” Julia said as
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American drug laws. “Take your se
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His hope was that this gig would le
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Chapter 6 THE BONFIRE Ross swerved
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As they joined the group around the
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Chapter 7 THE SILK ROAD Stuff, to R
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computer screen, he daydreamed that
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to push Ross’s intelligence, with
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“We should go,” he said to Juli
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at the University of Texas, and ask
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Chapter 10 WHAT GOES UP MUST COME D
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Now, rather than split his time amo
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enough, someone was. You could buy
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Chapter 12 A BULL’S-EYE ON MY BAC
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transaction. This would require rew
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libertarian theory. When the tête-
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Chapter 14 WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?! Tea
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Chapter 15 JARED AND THE FIFTY-TON
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themselves. The issue, Jared reiter
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A few days before he left for Austr
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Chapter 17 CARL FORCE’S TOMORROW
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Carl thought about it for a moment.
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Ross interacted with dozens of diff
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caught up in the conversation to se
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Then there was the challenge of buy
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Chapter 20 THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS
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What a brilliant idea. Ross loved i
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He soon realized that this site cou
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people, the risk was worth the rewa
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Ross’s cut from the commission fe
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Chapter 24 CARL, ELADIO, AND NOB Fo
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Chapter 25 JARED’S CHICAGO VERSUS
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The Baltimore attorney then explain
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commission,” Ross wrote in a lett
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world businesses when a CEO is oust
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Nope. Not going to happen. Carl had
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This place was special to Ross for
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Chapter 29 VARIETY JONES GOES TO SC
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him break a drug dependency, and en
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But if Ross wanted to keep growing
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Chapter 31 ROSS SILENCES JULIA Ross
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away. Heading into the darkness, al
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Chapter 32 CHRIS TARBELL, FBI A que
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took his SATs in high school he did
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After breakfast each morning, while
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other start-up in the city would ha
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There were two main aspects of the
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Chapter 35 BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES!
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For the backup plan to the backup p
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the site had grown, DPR’s message
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This wasn’t a vacation. It was hi
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When his new friends asked Ross wha
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Chapter 38 CARL LIKES DPR On paper
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are safe from the laws of your nati
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Chapter 39 KIDNEY FOR SALE! Ross st
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On the black market a person’s ki
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Chapter 40 THE WHITE HOUSE IN UTAH
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pup, tried to bite another agent’
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Chihuahuas. Green went on like a sc
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Chapter 42 THE FIRST MURDER Ross ha
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started to wonder if he might not h
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usts with physical drugs, not digit
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Portland, looked like she was going
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into the hospital room as they wept
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Chapter 45 GARY ALFORD, IRS The sid
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He started with the Gawker article,
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It was, after all, his legacy, the
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Chapter 47 GARY’S BIG CHANGE Ever
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to go and feed a parking meter. So
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you were only giving them half of y
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“Let me tell you a little parable
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your side” capacity—tried to wa
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Chapter 50 A PARKING TICKET ON THE
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Another search showed that Ross Ulb
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unclear what, if anything, was on t
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Chapter 52
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take a few breaks to watch Louis C.
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The agent asked again. “Andrew Fo
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Chris Tarbell had decided he wouldn
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By the end of Jared’s presentatio
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Chapter 54 JARED BECOMES CIRRUS Whe
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Page 199 and 200: She nonchalantly came up the stairs
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Page 203 and 204: Chapter 60 THE PHONE CALL Gary sat
Page 205 and 206: She turned back to her computer and
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Page 221 and 222: “Sure,” DPR wrote. “Let me lo
Page 223 and 224: “I am Special Agent Chris Tarbell
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Page 227 and 228: And then there was Julia, who had p
Page 229 and 230: Chapter 68 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Page 231 and 232: The defense knew an insurmountable
Page 233 and 234: He continued walking through the sp
Page 235: man. Gravity doesn’t care if you
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Page 245 and 246: For over a year after the Silk Road
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Page 249 and 250: Ross with his parents, Lyn and Kirk
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Page 255 and 256: Jared Der-Yeghiayan of the Departme
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Page 259 and 260: Chris Tarbell of the Federal Bureau
Page 261 and 262: Curtis Green, known on the Silk Roa
Page 263 and 264: Curtis Green’s staged murder, an
Page 265 and 266: Notes on Reporting Each and every d
Page 267 and 268: Acknowledgments I’d like to start
Page 269 and 270: Bibliography Bauer, Alex. “My Roo
Page 271: What’s next on your reading list?
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