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Ross knew this better than anyone. But he felt like what he was doing was truly going to change the world and free people. Given that, life in prison, or taking his last breath in an electric chair, was not enough to deter him. “Balls to the wall and all in my friend,” Ross replied, vociferating how unafraid he was of those consequences. After this was clear, their collaboration moved to the next phase. VJ started to give Ross pep talks. “Just always remember Life magazine,” VJ proffered. “So successful, they had to shut it down.” According to VJ, the cost to print the luscious postwar photo magazine exceeded the newsstand price, so the more people who purchased Life, the less money it made. Until one day it had grown so much that it “went bankrupt with success.” This, he warned, could happen to the Silk Road if its founder wasn’t careful about the server costs and hiring the right employees as it grew. Ross was rapt as he read the words on his screen. Until this moment he had felt so alone running the site, with no one to talk to about the questions rattling around in his head. Now here was a man who seemed to have answers to questions Ross had never uttered aloud to anyone. “Tell me more,” he replied to VJ. Before long he started seeking out all kinds of advice from VJ. Ross would write questions for his new friend while he sat in his apartment in Sydney or in a nearby coffee shop, slurping up everything Variety Jones had to offer. They went from speaking every few days to every few hours to —eventually—every few minutes. Each tête-à-tête was an instructive lesson for Ross, whether he was learning how to set up a Bitcoin config file on the server, managing warring factions of dealers on the site, or understanding how he was perceived by the proletariat who used the Silk Road. At its core, though, the relationship was personal. VJ’s greatest value was as an executive coach of sorts—someone who could mentor the young founder through problems germane to any start-up, like Bill Campbell, who had helped the creators of Twitter and Google, or Marc Andreessen, who offered advice to Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. “What are my strengths?” Ross asked VJ one afternoon, hoping that his new confidant could hold up a mirror for Ross to see himself, a view that Ross, in his secret solitude, was incapable of discerning on his own. “You play your cards close,” VJ replied. “You really do get that it’s gone from fun and games to a very serious life or death lifestyle you’ve created.” He then listed a handful of attributes of the leader of the Silk Road, including that he was obviously well educated and that many on the site saw him as “the Steve Jobs” of the online drug world. “Awesome,” Ross replied. Then he followed with a more vulnerable question: “What are my weaknesses?” Variety Jones didn’t skip a beat. “Your inability to discern between a garter snake and a copperhead,” he wrote, “and the gaping holes in your knowledge of security.” “Wait,” Ross interrupted, “what’s the snake metaphor?” “Recognizing something as dangerous, when you think it’s harmless.” It was a pointed comment, one that left Ross searching for more answers. In that pregnant moment, as Ross heard the waves on Bondi Beach and felt the soft air of Australia, a pressing question was left unspoken. Could Variety Jones, this unlimited dispenser of wisdom, this ostensible genius in the realm of cybersecurity, be offering Ross a hint that maybe this new friend wasn’t here just to help but had a larger plan in the works? If VJ was trying to offer a warning, Ross was too
caught up in the conversation to see it, and he didn’t stop to question which of these two snakes Variety Jones might be. The harmless garter or a hundred-foot venomous demon. “Tell me more,” Ross wrote instead. “Tell me 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
Page 9 and 10:
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
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 and 64: Chapter 17 CARL FORCE’S TOMORROW
Page 65 and 66: Carl thought about it for a moment.
Page 67: Ross interacted with dozens of diff
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
Page 115 and 116: There were two main aspects of the
Page 117 and 118: 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
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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
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Jared Der-Yeghiayan of the Departme
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Force disguised as Nob, his online
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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
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Notes on Reporting Each and every d
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Acknowledgments I’d like to start
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Bibliography Bauer, Alex. “My Roo
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