American Kingpin

by Nick Bilton

  The Silk Road case had proved to be an altogether different challenge, and it had become apparent to Jared that he wasn’t going to figure this one out alone. But he had no idea who he could collaborate with. Thankfully, after the deconfliction meeting in Washington, DC, that was about to change rapidly. The presentation Jared had given, showing all the work he had done so far on the case, had impressed the top lawyers at the Department of Justice so much that the New York FBI agents said they wanted to work with him in their quest to find the Dread Pirate Roberts. (This in itself was compliment enough, as the FBI didn’t like to work with anyone whose last name was not “of the FBI.”)

  Jared had flown back to Chicago, stopped in to see his wife and son, and, as usual, fallen asleep while watching Antiques Roadshow. Though now when he passed out on the couch, his son, Tyrus, would curl up next to him. It had been difficult for Tyrus to be away from his dad so much, but Jared had explained that this was all temporary, and the travel was important because “I’m trying to catch a pirate who is doing bad things.” (Tyrus, hearing this, accepted his father’s quest. Pirates, after all, were bad characters in the storybooks he read, and needed to be caught.) But Tyrus had one request, that Jared Skype with him each night before bed.

  “Of course,” Jared replied as they both curled up on the couch and fell asleep.

  The next morning Jared woke up and left for work again. As he pulled his car into the parking lot of the HSI offices in Chicago and it chugged to a stop, his phone rang with a New York phone number.

  “Agent Der-Yeghiayan here.”

  “Hey, Jared,” a voice said, “this is Serrin Turner with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, and I have Chris Tarbell, the lead investigator for the FBI on the Silk Road case.”

  Jared immediately sat up in his seat, greeting the two men with respect.

  “We really appreciated your honesty yesterday at the meeting,” a voice, clearly Chris Tarbell’s, said into the phone. He then explained that the FBI had so much evidence—Tarbell referred to the server as “the holy grail”—and given that the Bureau hadn’t been on the case long, agents were not sure where to begin. “We’d really love to get you out here to work with us.”

  Jared was flattered and joked, “I’m on my way!” Then, in a more serious tone, he explained that he was wrapping up a new important part of his case and that he would arrange to fly out to New York City within a week.

  They exchanged a few cordial comments and hung up. Jared sat there elated. The kid with no college degree who couldn’t get a job at the FBI years earlier was now being asked to work with what many considered the top men in law enforcement on one of the most important cybercrime cases of his generation.

  But first Jared needed to deal with that “new important part of his case” he had mentioned to Tarbell on the phone. Though Jared didn’t know yet how important it would be.

  A few days after the call, Jared drove the Pervert Car to Chicago O’Hare International Airport, as he had done ten thousand times before. But this time he wasn’t retrieving mail with drugs inside; he was picking up a passenger who was landing on a flight from Texas.

  “Excuse me,” Jared said as he brushed by people at the airport, holding his Homeland Security badge in the air. As he approached the jet bridge, there, waiting for him, was a young, timid woman from Texas with dark hair, whom Jared had held at gunpoint a few weeks earlier. The woman worked as a volunteer moderator for the Silk Road, and over the past few weeks Jared had managed to befriend her on the site, and had tracked her down by saying he wanted to send her a gift in the mail. This led to a guns-drawn knock on her door in Texas (with some agents from Baltimore), where Jared gave her a choice to work with him or have to deal with someone else in government who wouldn’t be as nice.

  Since that encounter they had spoken on the phone, and the woman from Texas had agreed to help Jared take over her account on the Silk Road. At around the same time, she explained to him that the Dread Pirate Roberts had contacted her, asking if she wanted a paid gig moderating the site’s forums and being a sort-of assistant doing trivial tasks for DPR. The pay would be $1,000 a week. Now the hope was that Jared would assume her identity and take the job as her.

  He drove her to the hotel, apologizing the entire time for how messy his car was, and explained that in the morning they would meet at the HSI offices to get to work. “Don’t forget your computer,” he joked.

  The conference room at HSI headquarters in Chicago was as drab as Jared’s personal office. There were no windows, the carpet was old and gritty, and the plants in the room were all made of plastic. When the woman from Texas arrived, he led her inside, handed her a tall cup of coffee, and then they sat down and began speaking.

  “So,” Jared said as he flipped open a notepad and took the cap off his pen. “I need you to tell me everything: Tell me about the forums; tell me what your daily routine is. When do you log on? When do you log off? How often do you stay online for? Where do you post? What do you post about?”

  Jared was going to become her. And he wanted to make sure, in his obsessive manner, that he knew every single detail about her account that others on the Silk Road would be aware of. Over the next two days he learned how to write like her, to capitalize inflections, to repeat important points twice, and even how to use emojis and smiley faces as she did.

  She handed Jared dozens of screenshots she had taken of previous chats with DPR and his three deputies, SameSameButDifferent, Libertas, and Inigo, all of whom were incredibly powerful on the site and, as she warned, not to be fucked with.

  Jared purchased a MacBook laptop that was identical to hers, and they spent the second day downloading all of the same applications she used to access the site, ensuring that his avatars matched hers (she had chosen to make her Silk Road avatar an image of Spider-Man eating a taco) and that the versions of the programs they used were indistinguishable from each other. He set his username to hers, which was Cirrus.

  Then, at the end of the two days, the woman from Texas gave Jared her log-in credentials for the Silk Road. As he typed the username and password into his computer, she voiced her concern about what could happen if things went awry.

  “I’m really worried DPR is going to find me,” she said. There were, after all, rumors floating around the Dark Web that the merciless Dread Pirate Roberts had recently had some people killed. The last thing the woman from Texas wanted was to get a knock on her door and . . . Well, the thought terrified her.

  Jared assured her that she had nothing to worry about and said he was available day and night if anything happened. “Most of the people on this site are just nerds,” he said. “They’re not ruthless drug lords.” From all of his investigations, it seemed that the Silk Road was less like The Godfather and more like Lord of the Flies. Were these people capable of ruthless acts? Yes, absolutely. But with a caveat: many of them were capable only from behind the safety of a keyboard. “My advice,” he said to her, “is to just get off the grid for a while. Don’t go on social media. Don’t go to the site. Just lay low.”

  The people on the Silk Road would still see her online under her pseudonym, Cirrus. Only a handful of people in the federal government would know that Cirrus was really Jared, undercover.

  DPR had asked Cirrus to provide a driver’s license if she wanted to work for him, so Jared had the undercover team at HSI put together a fake license with a photograph of a female agent, which he sent to Dread.

  “Hey I’m willing to do anything you need me to do on the site,” Jared told the Dread Pirate Roberts in his first interaction with the man he had been hunting for two years. “I’m here to help.”

  DPR responded with a list of mundane tasks to complete and told Cirrus to get to work. There would be no small talk here.

  Maybe this puzzle would be solvable after all, Jared reasoned.

  As he dropped the woman fro
m Texas back off at O’Hare, Jared was invigorated by the fact that he was no longer just an employee with the Department of Homeland Security; he was now also undercover as a worker for the Silk Road. And his boss wasn’t just any underling on the site, but rather the most ruthless pirate of them all.

  Chapter 55

  JULIA IS SAVED! HALLELUJAH!

  Jesus told me I need to pray for you,” the Spanish lady said as she placed her coffee cup on the table next to a slew of images of mostly naked women. “So I’ve been praying for you—just as Jesus told me to.”

  Julia looked back at the lady and began to weep. A stream of black mascara flowed down her cheeks as she buried her face in her hands.

  To anyone who hadn’t seen her in a while, Julia appeared much thinner than usual, and her eyes were welted with worry. Life hadn’t been easy over the past year. First there was the depression, and the alcohol. Then came the older man with money who could protect her. He liked skinny girls, so Julia became skinnier, developing an eating disorder to placate her new boyfriend. Then it became apparent that the protector had a drinking problem. Before long he threw her against a wall in one of his drunken rages.

  Soon afterward a Spanish woman stopped by Julia’s studio to pick up some books, then explained why she was really there. “Jesus told me I need to pray for you.”

  Julia wept.

  Her life goals were not that far-fetched. Julia hadn’t wanted to change the world; she had just wanted her world to be changed. Was it so difficult to find a good man to marry, who would give her a child or two, a white picket fence, and, most important, see that those children grew up differently from how she had? There was a dream in her mind where that good man was Ross Ulbricht, and it ended with them both living happily ever after.

  Sadly, that fairy tale had never materialized.

  After the Spanish woman who knew Jesus arrived at her studio, the kind lady invited Julia to church.

  Later that morning Julia sat at the back of the congregation and heard angels in her ears. She was mesmerized by the place. The rays of light streaming in through the windows, the answers everyone else seemed to have. The pews in the church were filled with Bibles, and the people who read them sang hymns about the Lord. As she listened to the messages from the church’s preacher, Julia felt like this could be her white picket fence, that Jesus could be that good man she had always been looking for. That afternoon she canceled her client meetings and went back to the church again.

  But this time things were different. Unlike in the morning, when Julia had arrived at the chapel sad and gloomy, she was now glowing. The pews were packed that afternoon, brimming with more than 150 churchgoers. As she stood listening to the sermon, and as people waved their hands in the air and screamed to the heavens, “Praise the Lord!” and “Amen! Jesus!” a group approached Julia and asked, “Have you been baptized?”

  No. But can I? Will you? Jesus recently told someone to pray for me.

  The group gently led Julia to a tub in the middle of the chapel. They wrapped her in a black robe, and the entire congregation started to chant. “You pass through death and into life!” But then something went wrong. The tub in the middle of the church was broken and there was no holy water to fill it. Everyone continued chanting as they stood there, trying to figure out what to do. Out of the crowd someone cried out that they should take the unbaptized girl to a nearby apartment and baptize her in a bathtub.

  The congregation streamed out of the wide front door, leading Julia through Austin’s streets, the chants growing louder as Julia, in the black robe, was summoned into a small apartment nearby.

  “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you will live forever!” they yelled in unison as they walked with her through a dark and dingy living room into an even smaller bathroom.

  The bath was filled with water, and Julia wandered past the two dozen chanting churchgoers who now surrounded her inside a bathroom that was big enough for one. They placed young Julia in the tub as the water continued to rise like an ocean tide.

  “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ . . .”

  They pushed her backward, her head sinking under the water as the liquid surrounded her face and muffled the sound of the sermon.

  “. . . you will live forever!”

  When a hand lifted Julia’s head out of the water, she was saved. She felt a sense of relief that she had never experienced before. A hope of a future that was different from the past. She was elated.

  And then, as Julia wandered outside, she looked up at the open and tranquil sky and wondered if she would ever have the opportunity to see Ross again in person. And if so, was there a chance that he could be saved too?

  Chapter 56

  THE FAKE IDS, PART TWO

  The gray Jeep Commander drove along California Street in San Francisco, weaving in and out of traffic. Inside the big SUV one man steered the vehicle while the other studied the map on his smartphone, offering instructions to go left here and right there.

  It was late afternoon on July 26, 2013, when the Jeep pulled up to 2260 Fifteenth Avenue in San Francisco. Pulling the Jeep to a stop, Dylan Critten, an agent with the Department of Homeland Security, reached for his bag and a printout of a California driver’s license.

  Dylan looked like he was born to work in law enforcement. He had a cop’s buzz cut, broad shoulders, and a face that could easily have been hammered out from a single cinder block. As he got out of the SUV, he looked up at the house in front of him, a sort of Spanish-style place with a white exterior and brown terra-cotta roof.

  A day earlier Dylan had been asked by his old buddy from the Department of Homeland Security, Agent Ramirez, to follow up on a lead about nine fake IDs that had come in from customs agents at San Francisco International Airport’s mail center. Agent Ramirez had almost given up on the IDs before he realized that he had gone to the wrong home two weeks earlier to do a knock-and-talk, driving to 2260 Fifteenth Street instead of 2260 Fifteenth Avenue.

  Now it was Dylan’s turn to go to the right place. With his partner by his side, Dylan ascended the front steps and looked through the glass front door down a long hallway. At the exact moment he lifted his fist to knock on the door, he saw a man, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts, appear in the hall in front of him. Dylan froze, his fist a mere inch from the door, stopping before it touched the glass.

  Ross Ulbricht froze too.

  Dylan looked down at the piece of paper in his hand, then back at the man now standing half naked in the hallway. Without any question, they were the same person. The man on the nine fake IDs was now walking toward the front door, turning the handle, and pulling it open. There Ross stood, no shirt, no shoes, just a pair of dirty khaki shorts, looking at the strangers in front of him and seemingly assuming—hoping, even—that they were at the wrong house.

  “Hello, my name is Agent Critten,” Dylan said as he turned to look at his partner. “And this is Agent Taylor.” Ross’s facial expression started to look strained. “And we’re from the Department of Homeland Security.” As those words hung in the air between the three men, Ross’s demeanor morphed into one of terror. “Can you step outside so we can talk to you?” Dylan asked.

  Oh, dear God. This is it. The end.

  Ross took a few steps outside, and Dylan raised the printout of the fake IDs so Ross could see it. “We’re here to talk to you about these counterfeit documents that were set to be delivered here,” Dylan said, watching as Ross’s grimace turned stark white with dread.

  This is it. Fudge!

  Dylan waited for Ross to respond, but instead he just looked back, petrified. His hands were now visibly starting to shake. The agents could see how scared Ross was, so they began speaking quickly back and forth, both playing good cop to try to put him at ease—the last thing they wanted was someone who wouldn’t cooperate with them. “We’re not here to arrest you for having fake documents,�
�� they began. “We just want to talk to you a little about the IDs.” As they spoke, assuring him that they were just there to talk, Ross’s hands stopped shaking and the color started to return to his face.

  “So you’re not going to arrest me?” Ross muttered, his voice brittle.

  “No, no,” the agents said. “But we will need to see your real ID to know who you are.”

  Ross hesitated but, knowing he didn’t have much of a choice, he went to his bedroom, returning with his real Texas ID. Again, he asked, “So you’re not here to arrest me?”

  “No,” Dylan explained as he scrutinized the license with Ross Ulbricht’s name on it. “We just want to talk about these IDs and to make sure you are who you say are so we know you’re not a fugitive.” Dylan also explained that, as agents, their job was to find the people who made fake IDs, not necessarily those who purchased them.

  Hearing this, Ross realized that his worst fears were simply fears. These agents were completely unaware of whom they were standing in front of. As he became aware of this reality, he started to feel confident.

  “I understand that you don’t want to make a statement acknowledging these documents are yours, because that could incriminate you,” Dylan said, giving Ross an out so the agents could continue asking him questions. “So hypothetically, if I needed these kinds of documents, where would I get them from? Just tell me in hypotheticals.”

  “We’re just speaking in hypotheticals?”

  “Yes,” Dylan said, “strictly hypothetically.”

  It was apparent to all three of the men on that stoop that day that Ross was the smartest of them all. His answer to Dylan’s question made it clear that he had the most hubris too. “So anyone,” Ross began, “hypothetically, could use the Tor network and can go onto a site called the Silk Road and buy anything they want.” He paused for a second, then concluded, “Including guns, drugs, or fake IDs.”