Deep Web Page #5

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including Dread Pirate Roberts.

"I have to assume he will sing,"

DPR wrote to nob, the undercover agent.

"I'd like him beat up. "

Then, the next day,

he allegedly wrote,

"Can you change the order to

execute rather than torture?"

A murder was staged.

And a photograph of Green's

bloody body was sent to DPR,

who paid for

the hit in Bitcoin.

There would be five more

alleged Murders-For-Hire,

including ordered hits against

a blackmailer, a scammer

and an apparent contract

with the Hells Angels.

The names of two of these victims

were found to be fictitious.

And authorities have no evidence

of any murders being carried out.

The alleged attempted

murder of Curtis Green

allowed the authorities to obtain an

indictment against Dread Pirate Roberts,

charging him with drug offenses, attempted

witness murder and Murder-For-Hire.

Of course, they still had no idea who

the Dread Pirate Roberts actually was.

So the embedded agents continued

to communicate with DPR,

and DPR continued to respond.

In June of 2013, Ross moved into an

apartment that he found on Craigslist.

Allegedly, he did not give

his roommates his real name

and was known

as Joshua Terrey.

At the same time,

IRS agent Gary Alford

was investigating

the Silk Road

and through a simple Google

search was able to locate

an early email on the open

internet discussing the launch

of the Silk Road

marketplace

and connect that email to an

account owned by Ross Ulbricht.

One month later,

postal inspectors

at the Canadian border

seized a package of fake IDs

with Ross' image that were

en route to his home address.

Ross was visited at his apartment

by several DHS agents.

The agents handed Ross a false

California driver's license

that bore his picture,

but a different name.

Ulbricht denied ownership or

knowledge of the fake IDs,

and the agents simply left.

If you suspect somebody

may be involved in a...

in a large-scale

criminal enterprise,

going and knocking on a door

with some, uh, you know,

some evidence of fake IDs

is important, uh,

because you can see

the guy face-to-face.

Uh, you may get some useful

information out of an interview.

You may or may not want to take

him into custody on the spot.

Let's sit back and let's, uh,

let's really go after this

in a... in a... you know,

much more global way, if you will,

uh, because there's a lot more

here than just one count of,

uh, you know, fake IDs.

The next big break in the case would

be achieved by FBI agent Tarbell

and his cyber-crime team,

who had somehow located

the Silk Road servers

in Germany and Iceland.

How these hidden servers were found

has been a matter of controversy,

but the FBI had their own copy

of the Silk Road server,

and now they hoped to finally

unmask the Dread Pirate Roberts.

Over the course of a year,

a Chicago-based agent from the

DHS named Jared Der-Yeghiayan

had been embedded

in the Silk Road,

now posing as a high-ranking

moderator named "cirrus. "

With both the evidence

connecting Ross to the launch of

the Silk Road and the incident

with the fake IDs,

Ross became one of

the primary suspects.

On October 1st in

a coordinated effort

between Der-Yeghiayan from

the DHS and Tarbell's FBI squad,

a sting operation was launched.

According to

Der-Yeghiayan's testimony,

he staked out Ross'

new residence.

And using his

pseudonym of cirrus,

Der-Yeghiayan initiated a conversation

on the Silk Road with DPR.

Moments later, Ross went to the Glen

Park Library, apparently to use their Wi-Fi.

And when Der-Yeghiayan saw that DPR

was logged back into the Silk Road,

he gave the order for Tarbell

and his squad to move in.

It's an excitement that you

couldn't even buy off Silk Road.

Uh, all the drugs you could buy

on the site, you... you... you...

It's not the same excitement as catching

the guy. It's an adrenaline rush.

Ross was apprehended before

he could encrypt his laptop.

He was allegedly logged into a

Silk Road administration panel

for customers

needing DPR's attention.

He was a dream

for drug users,

because he was very technically

adept and he was able to hide

both the website

that he put together

and the actual sales of illegal

drugs that the drug sellers

would, uh,

make on his website.

The Silk Road was

seized and shut down,

and charges were

announced against

a number of core partners

and vendors from the site.

Ross was held for over a

month in a jail in Oakland,

awaiting extradition

to New York.

Ross's family was able to raise

over a million dollars for his bail.

But the prosecution argued

that due to the alleged

Murders-For-Hire, Ross was

too dangerous to release

and so his bail was denied.

I thought it was the

wrong decision.

He wouldn't have been a flight

risk and he's never been

and is not a

danger to anyone.

There was more than one person

using the DPR account?

The data seized from

the Silk Road servers included

all internal private messages,

which revealed that many people

collectively ran the site.

One vendor with the user

name "Variety Jones"

was active from the beginning

of the Silk Road.

Jones gave many of the orders

for running the Silk Road,

even instructing the systems

administrator to create

the Dread Pirate Roberts

persona.

But Ross Ulbricht remained the

primary focus of the investigation.

Ross has been incarcerated

for over a year

in the Metropolitan Detention Center

in Brooklyn awaiting trial.

Six weeks of that time was

in solitary confinement.

Ross plead not guilty and denies

being the Dread Pirate Roberts.

His trial was set for November

10, 2014 in New York City.

If convicted, Ross faces

a minimum sentence of 30 years

with a maximum sentence

of life in prison.

- Are you taking a video?

- Mmm-hmm.

He's a hairy f***er.

These big guys are

generally not too, uh...

I would let him off somewhere.

Where is he?

- You know it's hard.

It's... it's hard on a family.

It really is, especially when

you love that person so much

and you believe in

them so much, and

you have such a daunting

Goliath of an opponent.

It's, uh, challenging.

It's kind of like a death, in a way,

when you go like, "No, that can't be true,"

and then you're like,

"Oh, yeah, it's true. "

And you go through

that kind of shock.

His dad, my husband, um, of course,

he's trying to keep our business going

so we have a livelihood.

And, um, his sister

is in, um, Australia

- and she's been helping, too, from there.

- I'm Ross' sister and I can tell you

he has been a man of his word

and honor all his life.

I was shocked to hear

the news of his arrest,

but felt even more dismayed

at what the media was writing

about him, not even knowing him.

You know, I read things by people who

have not a clue who Ross really is.

He's been tried and

convicted in the media.

Nothing has been proven at all.

I don't know what's happened to

the presumption of innocence

in this country, but it is

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