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kicking in a door or two, yelling at some big-time dealers or low-level meth heads to “freeze!” and “get the fuck on the floor!” It was as exciting a job as anyone could wish for. But over time the early mornings started to strain. The door kicks were less exciting. When one dealer went to jail, another filled his seat on the street. The metamorphosis from rash young newbie to jaded old-timer had happened slowly. At first Carl couldn’t find good cases on his own. Then he had trouble making busts. There was also the high pressure of undercover work, where you have to catch someone or they’ll catch you. His downward trajectory was compounded by the fact that he’d secretly developed his own substance abuse problem. Finally, all the strain had been too much, and Carl was eventually arrested for a DUI while he was an agent, which led to a mental breakdown four years later. He almost lost it all—the family, the job, the cat. But the Lord had stepped in, and Carl had been offered amnesty with this desk job as a solar agent. Since then there hadn’t been many opportunities arriving at his cubicle. But on a late-January day in 2012, that was about to change. He was sitting at his desk waiting for another day to pass when his supervisor, Nick, yelled for Carl to come into his office. These moments came often: a shriek from Nick and some sort of order to take on cases that most agents thought were ridiculous. This included the regular request to go and do “jump-outs,” the name given to the act of driving around Baltimore, pulling up to a street corner, jumping out of the car, and grabbing low-level dealers. Most agents thought this was a pathetic way of trying to beat the drug problem, as opposed to going after the big bosses, where they believed they could actually have an impact. Still, when Nick called, you went. Nick’s office was dark, as usual. While Carl’s supervisor was lucky enough to have a window with a paltry view of frozen and barren Baltimore, he always kept the blinds drawn, blocking out even the tiniest pinprick of light. Adding to the darkness, Nick had pinned posters of Iron Maiden and Metallica all over his office walls. “So,” Nick said to Carl, “I just got a call about the Silk Road Web site.” Carl perked up. He had heard about this strange Web site a month earlier at a law enforcement meeting when an investigator with the U.S. Postal Service had given a brief presentation on it. There was a new phenomenon, the postal inspector had said, that was starting to infect mail ports all across the United States, and lots of people were sending small amounts of drugs through the system. The inspector had explained that the connection point for these dealers and buyers was called “the Silk Road.” Later, intrigued by what the postal inspector had said, Carl searched online and read a few articles, including Adrian Chen’s piece on Gawker. He then thought about the implications, which were momentous. You couldn’t do jump-outs online, he reasoned. But given that Carl had no knowledge of computer forensics, it wasn’t a case he would have even thought of being assigned to. That was, until Nick called Carl into his office and asked if he wanted to assist a group of HSI agents in Baltimore. “They’ve picked up an informant who says he can lead them to the owner of the site,” Nick told Carl. When Carl asked why he was being asked to join the case, Nick explained: The HSI group in Baltimore was not a drug team and usually tracked counterfeit stuff or, as Nick put it, “fake Louis Vuitton bags and shit like that.” So if the Baltimore group wanted to go after drugs, they needed a DEA agent on the team. “You want in?” Nick asked.
Carl thought about it for a moment. He was at the point in his career where he could have easily said, “No, not interested,” walked out of Nick’s dark office, and continued living life as a solar agent, coaching his son’s football games, going to church with his wife and kids on weekends, and hopefully realizing one day that his tomorrow was his family. Or he could get involved in this investigation and maybe—just maybe—make a name for himself at the DEA. “Sure,” Carl said to Nick. He would take on the case. Carl walked out of his supervisor’s office unaware that with the single word—“sure”—he was about to enter an underground world so dark and full of avarice that it would drag him in headfirst, and that as a result of the temptations of the Silk Road, Carl Force was going to lose everything that mattered to him.
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Portfolio/Penguin An imprint of Pen
Page 5 and 6:
No man, for any considerable period
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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 and 32: As they joined the group around the
Page 33 and 34: Chapter 7 THE SILK ROAD Stuff, to R
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: Chapter 17 CARL FORCE’S TOMORROW
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
Page 85 and 86: Chapter 25 JARED’S CHICAGO VERSUS
Page 87 and 88: The Baltimore attorney then explain
Page 89 and 90: commission,” Ross wrote in a lett
Page 91 and 92: world businesses when a CEO is oust
Page 93 and 94: Nope. Not going to happen. Carl had
Page 95 and 96: This place was special to Ross for
Page 97 and 98: Chapter 29 VARIETY JONES GOES TO SC
Page 99 and 100: him break a drug dependency, and en
Page 101 and 102: But if Ross wanted to keep growing
Page 103 and 104: Chapter 31 ROSS SILENCES JULIA Ross
Page 105 and 106: away. Heading into the darkness, al
Page 107 and 108: Chapter 32 CHRIS TARBELL, FBI A que
Page 109 and 110: took his SATs in high school he did
Page 111 and 112: After breakfast each morning, while
Page 113 and 114: 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
Page 169 and 170:
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
Page 245 and 246:
For over a year after the Silk Road
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Young Ross in elementary school in
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Ross with his parents, Lyn and Kirk
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The NOMMO Club at Penn State Univer
Page 253 and 254:
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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