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For over a year after the Silk Road was shut down, Jared stayed undercover as Cirrus on the Dark
Web and helped Tarbell, Gary, and others in law enforcement coordinate the arrest of the Dread
Pirate Roberts’s most trusted advisers.
Inigo, the youngest administrator at twenty-four years old, was arrested on a houseboat in
Charles City, Virginia, where he lived and worked on the site. His elderly parents put up their home
and retirement savings to post the $1 million bail to free their son. Smedley was apprehended by
authorities entering the United States after trying to hide out in Thailand with Variety Jones. And
SameSameButDifferent was captured in Australia by federal police in the outback. When he was
apprehended, authorities found an engagement ring in his pocket; he was on his way to propose to his
girlfriend. One of the oldest administrators at forty, he had a full-time job helping people with
intellectual and physical disabilities, in addition to working on the Silk Road.
In all, several hundred people from forty-three different countries around the globe were caught
buying, selling, and working on the Silk Road and were subsequently arrested by authorities,
concluding with the capture of Variety Jones.
The day after VJ was apprehended, Jared showed up at the mail center at Chicago O’Hare
International Airport to explore the evidence locker and see the packages and drugs that had been
seized the night before. Backpack slung over his shoulder, a Rubik’s Cube inside, he lumbered along
the long hallway to the evidence room. He was excited to know that the case he had started working
on years earlier, a case that had begun with a single peculiar pink pill coming into the same facility he
now walked through, had finally and resolutely come to a close.
Yet as Jared rounded the corner, passing by a doorway, he heard someone yell his name. “Jared!
I got something for you.”
“What is it?” Jared asked as he stopped and turned to walk toward a customs agent who sat in a
nearby cubicle.
“We found these in the mail last night,” the agent said, pointing down at a puffy brown envelope
on his desk and a large pile of blue ecstasy pills that had been discovered in the package.
“How many are in there?” Jared asked.
“I counted two hundred,” the agent replied.
“Two hundred?!”
“Two hundred.”