by Nick Bilton
The FBI had tried to find the bodies of the people murdered on the site, the ones DPR had paid to have killed, but no database matched the crimes. It appeared that either the Hells Angels had disposed of the bodies perfectly or, more than likely, no one had actually been killed at all. Rather, the Dread Pirate Roberts had been scammed for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The government offered Ross a plea deal of ten years to life, but he wasn’t willing to take the chance of a judge handing down the latter of those two sentences. Ross still very much believed that he could get himself out of this. He declined the offer. In response, and in frustration, the U.S. Attorney’s Office decided to throw everything it had at Ross and to make an example of him.
What Ross didn’t know at the time was that the laptop the FBI had managed to slip out of his hands had not been as secure as he hoped. Ross’s booby traps had failed, and his password (“purpleorangebeach”) had too, as the FBI team managed to find the password hidden in the computer’s RAM. The forensics team had uncovered a trove of digital evidence, including Ross’s diary entries, Silk Road financial spreadsheets, and, worst of all for Ross, some documents that Ross didn’t even know were on the machine, including millions and millions of words of chat logs among DPR and his cohorts Nob, Smedley, and good ol’ Variety Jones.
After turning down the plea deal, Ross was officially charged with seven felonies. Count one against him was narcotics trafficking, which, he was told, could result in a sentence of ten years to life. Count two was distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet, which could also result in ten years to life. Three was narcotics trafficking conspiracy; ten to life. Count four was the most terrifying, even for Ross: a charge of running a continual criminal enterprise. This was known as the “Kingpin Statute” and was reserved for the big boss of an organized criminal enterprise. While the kingpin charge carried a minimum of twenty years in jail and a maximum of life, if it was proved that the kingpin had murdered someone, the sentence could be upgraded to death. Finally there were counts five through seven, where Ross was charged with computer hacking, money laundering, and trafficking in fake IDs and false documents; if he was found guilty, these could tack another forty years onto his sentence. It was a hefty and sickening list of charges. While Dratel assured him that they were going to come up with a plan for his defense, the severity of the situation started to sink in for Ross.
Thankfully, there was some respite from all this bad news. Julia was going to fly out to New York to visit.
When they saw each other for the first time, they both wept. “I told you, Ross,” she said. “I told you.” He knew exactly what she was talking about without her actually saying the words. She then asked Ross if he would read the Lord’s Prayer with her. The scruffy boy she had met years earlier at a drum circle, now sitting in his prison uniform, said he would be happy to—he knew he needed all the help he could get.
She uncrumpled a piece of paper and began reading. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” Ross remembered the words from his childhood in church and recited along in tandem. His voice followed a few breaths behind Julia’s. And then they came to the end of the prayer, and he said the last sentence aloud. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Afterward Julia handed Ross a couple of dollars to go to the soda machine, and she slipped the prayer in between the bills she placed in his hand. Julia, it seemed, still wanted to save Ross, even though she now knew he could no longer save her.
Chapter 68
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V. ROSS WILLIAM ULBRICHT
All rise,” the clerk bellowed. “This court is now in session. The honorable Judge Katherine Forrest presiding.” Ross placed his hands on the oak table in front of him as he pushed himself upward; his legal team and two U.S. marshals rose beside and behind him in unison. He looked at the judge, an attenuated, stoic woman a few court cases away from turning fifty.
In front of Ross a group of lawyers from the U.S. Attorney’s Office stood and greeted the judge with the appropriate “your honor” as the court proceedings were set in motion. Judge Forrest was terse and to the point, cognizant of the fact that time in room 15A of the Lower Manhattan United States Courthouse was other people’s money, tax dollars at work. She announced dates for jury selection and scheduling and noted that expert witnesses would be approved, travel plans agreed upon, and some of the agents involved in the case against Ross, including Jared, Gary, and Thom, called to testify.
Judge Forrest had a tough reputation for handing out harsh sentences for drug offenders. But Ross’s legal team, headed by Joshua Dratel, stood ready for a fight.
It had been months since Ross had arrived at the prison in Brooklyn. But as autumn had become winter and the leaves fell off the trees, Ross was transferred across the bridge to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, which would serve as his new home during the trial.
MCC Prison, as it is called, was a chilling tower of concrete and steel that stood just a few blocks away from the World Trade Center and even closer to the FBI and IRS headquarters. The jail had, over time, had its share of famed residents, including John Gotti, the Gambino crime family boss, and several al Qaeda terrorists. When Ross arrived, whispers scurried through the walls that a new prominent resident had joined the ranks. A pirate.
While he waited for the trial to commence, life inside MCC became as monotonous as in its Brooklyn counterpart. Ross made friends. He taught yoga classes to some inmates, offered others help with their GEDs, and gave impromptu explanations of physics, philosophy, and libertarian theory to the guards.
The trial began shortly after Christmas.
Each day unfurled the same way. Ross was awoken in his cell at dawn by the guards. While still in his prison uniform, he was shackled at the ankles and cuffed at the waist and wrists. With U.S. marshals by his side, inmate 18870-111 trudged slowly through the concrete corridors to the federal courthouse. The door lock would buzz to announce Ross’s arrival or departure. He was placed in cages and cells and told to wait until the next cage or cell was ready for him.
The days in court oscillated between dull and terrifying. The prosecution presented all of the chat logs and diaries found on Ross’s computer. Conversations that orbited around the sale of cocaine and heroin, guns, and other illegalities and the profits DPR was corralling. There were chat logs presented where Variety Jones had promised to spring DPR from prison if he was ever captured by the Feebs. “Remember that one day when you’re in the exercise yard, I’ll be the dude in the helicopter coming in low and fast, I promise,” the prosecution read aloud. “With the amount of $ we’re generating, I could hire a small country to come get you.” And then there were the chats about the alleged murders.
The prosecution showed spreadsheets illustrating the immense growth of the Silk Road, the hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, and the more than $80 million in profit that allegedly led back to Ross Ulbricht. The jury’s eyes seemed to glaze over when the lawyers tried to explain how Bitcoin blockchains worked, why server encryption and CAPTCHAs and IP addresses were so important, and what happens when you run Ubuntu Linux on a Samsung 700Z.
Then it was the defense’s turn.
Dratel eloquently argued that, sure, Ross had been caught with his hands on the keyboard, but he was not the Dread Pirate Roberts. That person, whoever he was, could be dozens of people. Dratel even admitted (to gasps in the courtroom) that Ross had indeed started the Silk Road years earlier, before the “Dread Pirate Roberts” moniker was even invented, but that the site had soon spiraled out of control, like a digital Frankenstein. Ross had become too stressed running the Silk Road and had given it away. Dratel pointed fingers at other people who worked with Bitcoins, noting that they could easily be the Dread Pirate Roberts. He contended that there was very obviously more than one DPR, and Ross was not among them.
Ross’s defense showed e-mails between Jared and other a
gents who had all believed, at one time or another, long before they captured Ross Ulbricht, that DPR was someone else. Dratel then argued that Ross had been framed by the real DPR.
The back of the courtroom overflowed daily during the proceedings. The benches on the right of the room were jammed with reporters and bloggers covering the spectacle. The ones to the left had a different, more somber feeling and were allocated to Ross Ulbricht’s loved ones and supporters. Advocates came in from all over the country to champion Ross, protesting on the steps of the courthouse that he was a hero, that all he did was run a Web site, and, if that was a crime, then the CEOs of eBay and Craigslist should stand trial too, as illegal goods were sold on those sites.
Ross’s mother, Lyn, arrived every day, bundled up in her thick black jacket with a dainty dark scarf and a wounded look on her face, as if what was happening wasn’t real. She could never in her worst nightmares have imagined that this fate would befall her son. Young Ross, her baby boy, who was so kind and thoughtful and sweet and smart, who had gone off to graduate school to become a molecular physicist, now sat ten feet away, facing a sentence worse than death.
But when Ross looked back at her, he offered up a confident and unfazed stare that told her not to worry, that he was fine.
The defense knew an insurmountable quantum of evidence pointed directly to Ross—the fake IDs, Ross’s old friend Richard Bates from Austin testifying against him, the tens of millions of dollars found on Ross’s laptop, and Jared testifying that he had worked for Ross as an undercover employee. People in the courtroom could see that in the case of United States of America v. Ross William Ulbricht, one side was clearly winning.
After three weeks of trial, the closing arguments were presented.
“His conduct was brazenly illegal; he knew perfectly well what he was doing the whole time,” Serrin Turner, the prosecutor, bellowed as he paced in front of the jury. “He built it. He grew it. He operated it from top to bottom until the very end.” As he spoke, Serrin grew more exasperated by the defense Ross had given.
“He thinks he can pull one over on you—” Serrin thundered to the jury.
“Objection!” Ross’s lawyer tried to interject.
“—and then there is the defendant’s attempt to explain away mountains of evidence on his computer,” Serrin continued, ignoring the defense lawyer. “It’s a hacker.”
“Objection!!”
“It’s a virus,” Serrin ridiculed. “It’s ludicrous. There were no little elves that put all of that evidence on the defendant’s computer.” He finally concluded, peering at the men and women of the jury: “He knew perfectly well what he was doing the whole time, and you should find him guilty on all counts.”
When it was the defense’s turn, Dratel stood up, vexed by Serrin’s speech.
“One of the fundamental principles in this case is that DPR and Mr. Ulbricht cannot be the same person,” Dratel began. “Saving those chats, does that sound like DPR? You have to actually enable the chats to be saved.” He went on, noting that the Dread Pirate Roberts would never have made such a silly mistake: “Keeping a journal like that and then saving it on your laptop? A little too convenient.”
He pointed to the evidence found on the laptop and said it had been put there by someone else. It was the real Dread Pirate Roberts, who knew the Feds were closing in, and while Ross was in the library downloading a TV show onto his laptop, the real DPR placed the chat logs and other evidence on his computer. “There are a lot of blinking neon signs in this case that have been created to incriminate Mr. Ulbricht,” he shrieked. “It is not the same person.”
Dratel argued skillfully that in November 2011 Ross had given the site away. A site that he, regretfully, had started. That Ross had then left for Australia to start his life anew and get away from the monster he had birthed. “The Internet is not what it seems; you can create an entire fiction.” Finally Dratel asserted that the government in no way had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Ross Ulbricht was the Dread Pirate Roberts. “I’m confident . . . in deliberations, you will reach only one conclusion: Ross Ulbricht is not guilty on every count in the indictment.”
Chapter 69
TO CATCH A PIRATE
All rise,” the clerk bellowed again. “This court is adjourned.” Ross was led out of one door of the courtroom, heading to his holding cell. A few feet away Jared walked out of another door, past the court officers, and into the marble lobby on the fifteenth floor. Jared needed a place to think, and he knew exactly where he was going to go: Ground Zero, the place the towers fell.
Jared had been pummeled on the stand. He was accused by Ross’s lawyers of screwing up the case in every way possible. The lawyer painted a portrait of Jared as a young agent who was under so much pressure to capture the Dread Pirate Roberts that he and his buddies at the FBI had apprehended the wrong man. The questions lobbed at Jared grew so contentious that every query was met with a loud and vociferous “Objection!” from the prosecution.
The media lapped up the drama, volleying Dratel’s theories out to the world, noting that Jared had, at different times in the case, “alternative perpetrators” in his sights. After days of being pelted and accused by the defense, Jared finally heard seven words that relieved him to no end. “I have no further questions, your honor.”
Now, as he walked toward Ground Zero, Jared played back the last few years in his mind. What a country, he thought as he walked down Broadway, away from the courthouse. One minute you’re the nobody son of an Armenian immigrant, working in a movie theater, applying over and over for a dozen jobs in government, each of which you are denied. They say you don’t have a degree. You’re too abrasive. You didn’t answer my question correctly. No. No. No. And then finally, after years of trying, you get a job stamping passports. You try and you try and you try, and eventually you become an agent with the Department of Homeland Security. Then the call comes in from a thankless employee in a humongous government mail center at the airport about a single tiny pink pill. And then here you are.
As Jared entered the site of the Trade Center, he was surrounded by construction equipment beeping and digging, hardhats yelling, the roar of giant trucks and cranes as tourists peered up through their phones and cameras to capture the new, almost finished One World Trade Center. He thought about the Silk Road. He had set out to try to stop what he saw as potentially devastating to the fabric of this country on his own, and he had ended up doing just that, but he had needed the assistance of so many others, each of them bringing a single piece to one giant puzzle.
He continued walking through the sprawling construction site, growing more emotional with each step, still thinking about how a single pill might have saved so many lives. That every single person can have a sweeping and massive impact on the world they live in. Some choose to have a positive effect, others a negative; some don’t know the difference. But most people think their role in this big, big world is meaningless. Just a job.
With this realization in his mind, Jared walked up to one of the burly, seemingly bored security guards at the One World Trade Center construction site, and he looked directly into the man’s eyes and blurted out, “Thank you for your service.” The security guard looked back with complete confusion. He thought the man in front of him—Jared—had gone mad. Jared said it again. “Thank you for your service.” The guard peered at this strange man, perplexed, as he walked away. Jared’s eyes were now welling up with tears as he came across another security guard. “Thank you for your service.” He beamed. “Thank you for your service,” he said again as tears rolled down his cheeks. He walked up to every single security guard he could find, some old, some young, men and women, large and small. “Thank you for your service.” He knew he sounded like a crazy person, but he couldn’t stop himself. He wanted them all to know.
“Thank you for your service.”
• • •
The followi
ng morning everyone streamed back into the courthouse as the judge instructed the jury on what they were to do next. Ross, his mother, Lyn, and his father, Kirk, were there. Tarbell and Gary too. Dozens of reporters and even more supporters. Except there was one person who wasn’t in the courtroom: Jared.
As the twelve jurors entered the chambers to deliberate, Jared was on a United Airlines flight heading back to Chicago. He had spent years, months, weeks, and days hunting for the Dread Pirate Roberts, and he had been away from his family for so long during that chase. He didn’t need to be away from his wife and son any longer, and he frankly didn’t care what the verdict was. He had done his job.
As the plane landed at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, the same place the pink pill had touched down almost four years earlier, Jared got a text message from Tarbell. The jury had deliberated for a mere three and a half hours.
“Guilty on all counts.”
Jared smiled as he walked to his Pervert Car and drove back toward his house, where he walked inside and was gleefully greeted by his son, who asked, “Did you catch the pirate, Daddy?”
“Yes, we did,” Jared said as they fell onto the couch to play video games together. “We caught the pirate.”
Chapter 70
SENTENCING
Judge Katherine Forrest sat in her chambers for a moment before placing the long black robe over her shoulders and making her way to courtroom 15A. The jury had found Ross Ulbricht guilty, and it was time for her to hand down the sentence.
In the weeks leading up to the sentencing, the prosecution and the defense had implored the judge to take one path or another. Ross’s family and friends wrote long and thoughtful letters begging for his release or, at the very least, the shortest sentence possible. Lyn had written to Judge Forrest, as a mother, begging for mercy. “I beseech you to make his sentence no longer than necessary and give Ross the chance to rectify his mistakes.”
