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“Oh, honey,” she replied, “it’s okay. You’re trying different things. You’ll find—” Ross spoke over Julia. “I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I’ve tried to start all of these different things and nothing has worked.” “It will. You just have to—” He continued speaking as if he were alone in the truck. “I want to see some results,” he said. “I want to build something that is really successful.” “You just have to keep trying.” She was right, as Ross was about to see.
Chapter 7 THE SILK ROAD Stuff, to Ross, was just that: stuff. He had no interest in any of it. But there was one object Ross couldn’t live without: his laptop. That rectangular clamshell was, in many respects, Ross’s life. All of the files and folders it contained made up a map of his brilliant and, to many, enigmatic mind. And it was on that very computer that, on a late summer morning in 2010, Ross began working on a project that was going to change everything. He had recently moved into an apartment with Julia, a live/work space in downtown Austin with shiny concrete floors. Julia had started a new business, which she called Vivian’s Muse, where she photographed half-naked women for their husbands. Her pitch was simple: What do you get the man who has everything? Sensual pictures of his wife, almost nude. And so, several days a week Julia would set up candles throughout the main room of the apartment, play sensual techno music, and snap thousands of boudoir pictures. In the adjacent bedroom, as Ross would get to work on his latest project, he could hear the pop! pop! pop! of the camera flash and Julia commanding her muse, “Stick your ass in the air,” and “Now act like you’re having an orgasm!” Their bedroom, where Ross often sat to work, was its usual mess, with Julia’s crumpled-up jeans, discarded dresses, and underwear littering the floor. When they weren’t working, they spent hours under the covers, snuggling or watching TV shows on Ross’s laptop. The latest show they had become obsessed with was Breaking Bad. They would cuddle on the bed, warmed by the glow of Ross’s screen, as Walter White transformed into the terrifying and mysterious drug kingpin Heisenberg, a man who justified his evil along intellectual lines. Ross liked the drama, and it was hard not to appreciate what Heisenberg had done. Once an underachieving, largely browbeaten high school chemistry teacher, Walter White found in drugs the best way to express his technical brilliance as a chemist and businessperson. What he did may have been terrible and destructive, but he did it with such beauty and so adroitly that, to him at least, the very sin was absolved by the manner in which it was carried out. Still, Ross thought the story line was a bit far-fetched. “That would never happen in real life,” he said to Julia.
Page 3 and 4: Portfolio/Penguin An imprint of Pen
Page 5 and 6: No man, for any considerable period
Page 7 and 8: 20. The Dread Pirate Roberts 21. Ca
Page 9 and 10: Author’s Note My mother, who pass
Page 11 and 12: PART I
Page 13 and 14: look for anything out of the ordina
Page 15 and 16: pills that had been arriving, week
Page 17 and 18: Five Years Earlier
Page 19 and 20: hand in marriage (Say yes, please s
Page 21 and 22: Chapter 3 JULIA VIE Julia Vie’s f
Page 23 and 24: “Oh, no, no, no,” Julia said as
Page 25 and 26: American drug laws. “Take your se
Page 27 and 28: His hope was that this gig would le
Page 29 and 30: Chapter 6 THE BONFIRE Ross swerved
Page 31: As they joined the group around the
Page 35 and 36: computer screen, he daydreamed that
Page 37 and 38: to push Ross’s intelligence, with
Page 39 and 40: “We should go,” he said to Juli
Page 41 and 42: at the University of Texas, and ask
Page 43 and 44: Chapter 10 WHAT GOES UP MUST COME D
Page 45 and 46: Now, rather than split his time amo
Page 47 and 48: enough, someone was. You could buy
Page 49 and 50: Chapter 12 A BULL’S-EYE ON MY BAC
Page 51 and 52: transaction. This would require rew
Page 53 and 54: libertarian theory. When the tête-
Page 55 and 56: Chapter 14 WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?! Tea
Page 57 and 58: Chapter 15 JARED AND THE FIFTY-TON
Page 59 and 60: themselves. The issue, Jared reiter
Page 61 and 62: A few days before he left for Austr
Page 63 and 64: Chapter 17 CARL FORCE’S TOMORROW
Page 65 and 66: Carl thought about it for a moment.
Page 67 and 68: Ross interacted with dozens of diff
Page 69 and 70: caught up in the conversation to se
Page 71 and 72: Then there was the challenge of buy
Page 73 and 74: Chapter 20 THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS
Page 75 and 76: What a brilliant idea. Ross loved i
Page 77 and 78: He soon realized that this site cou
Page 79 and 80: people, the risk was worth the rewa
Page 81 and 82: Ross’s cut from the commission fe
Page 83 and 84:
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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plastic. When the woman from Texas
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Chapter 55 JULIA IS SAVED! HALLELUJ
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Chapter 56
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Dylan waited for Ross to respond, b
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Chapter 57 ONWARD TO FEDERAL PLAZA
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Angels to have people killed, and h
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Chapter 58 JULIA COMES TO SAN FRANC
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She nonchalantly came up the stairs
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“We’re going to read from the T
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Chapter 60 THE PHONE CALL Gary sat
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She turned back to her computer and
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Dread Pirate Roberts was a twenty-n
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caught in a tree in the park and ha
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Chapter 62 THE PINK SUNSET Pink. Th
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was logged in to the site and arres
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even stop crossing the line, Carl d
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Even if anyone had noticed the SUV
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laptop and find a spot in a cafe wh
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“Sure,” DPR wrote. “Let me lo
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“I am Special Agent Chris Tarbell
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Thom and the other agent started ch
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And then there was Julia, who had p
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Chapter 68 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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The defense knew an insurmountable
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He continued walking through the sp
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man. Gravity doesn’t care if you
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Chapter 71 THE PLURAL OF MONGOOSE I
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Chapter 72 THE MUSEUM Along Pennsyl
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high school, René, about their fut
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the perils lovingly and yet resolut
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For over a year after the Silk Road
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Young Ross in elementary school in
Page 249 and 250:
Ross with his parents, Lyn and Kirk
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The NOMMO Club at Penn State Univer
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The Silk Road Web site, which offer
Page 255 and 256:
Jared Der-Yeghiayan of the Departme
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Force disguised as Nob, his online
Page 259 and 260:
Chris Tarbell of the Federal Bureau
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Curtis Green, known on the Silk Roa
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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:
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