At first Richard was shocked. After Ross explained his thinking behind the site, Richard agreed to continue to help. It didn’t hurt that Ross gave his old pal a few baggies of his specialty magic mushrooms as a big thank-you. And that Richard started shopping on the site, buying ecstasy, weed, Vicodin, and some prescription antibiotics. (Richard was a germophobe, so he relished the ability to get medicine without a doctor’s note.) And finally, Richard was confident (given that he had helped write the code) that nothing could be tied back to them.
But reassuring Julia that he wasn’t in danger was a completely different challenge for Ross. Over the past two months the two had started fighting constantly about the Silk Road. There were now hundreds of people signing up for accounts every week, and Julia worried that Ross, whom she one day hoped to marry, could be caught and spend the rest of his life in prison.
“It’s secure,” Ross assured Julia, explaining how uncrackable Tor was and how Bitcoins were completely anonymous. “It’s safe. Trust me, no one can ever figure it out it’s me behind the site.”
But the cautionary voice of Julia gnawed at him and, to be sure that he was covering his tracks properly and knowing full well how limited his programming skills were, Ross decided to explore hiring other experts (besides Richard) to rewrite some new security protocols on the site. He posted a job listing on the Silk Road, and some antigovernment programmers were happy to help in the battle to stop the Man, part time and for a fee.
Ross’s Web site hadn’t received any press yet, which was surprising given the chatter on some forums, though he wasn’t entirely sure he was ready for any. Yet the time had come. Someone with the username Adrian802 had been sniffing around the site, telling Silk Road customers he was working on a story for Gawker about the Silk Road.
Ross knew he couldn’t stop the story, so he figured it was best to message Adrian802. He was polite and grateful for the interest, voicing his belief that the Silk Road was making it safer for people to buy drugs. “Our community is amazing,” Ross wrote under the guise of the anonymous administrator of the Silk Road. Then, completely oblivious to the consequences, Ross decided to go full bore with Adrian802 and took the opportunity to get his libertarian message out, explaining that the site was going to show the government that it was flat-out wrong to deny people their rights. “Stop funding the state with your tax dollars and direct your productive energies into the black market,” he wrote to Adrian.
He didn’t foresee that this kind of message would have vast and grim consequences.
? ? ?
At 4:20 p.m. on June 1, 2011, Adrian sat at Café Grumpy, sipped his black coffee, and watched as his blog post about the Silk Road went live. The title read: THE UNDERGROUND WEBSITE WHERE YOU CAN BUY ANY DRUG IMAGINABLE. The article began, “Making small talk with your pot dealer sucks. Buying cocaine can get you shot. What if you could buy and sell drugs online like books or light bulbs? Now you can: Welcome to Silk Road.”
Chapter 12
A BULL’S-EYE ON MY BACK
What’s wrong, baby?” Julia asked as she lay in bed next to Ross, admiring his jawline. Ross didn’t respond to her. He was too busy reading a news article about the Silk Road.
He knew there might be a hostile response from the government after the article from Adrian Chen at Gawker, published a couple of days earlier. But this was a far worse response than his imagination had ever come up with.
With trepidation he clicked to play a video in the article he was reading. There, in a small rectangular window, stood Senator Chuck Schumer at a press conference podium, a vexed look on his face. To the senator’s right and left, two large, oversize printouts of the Silk Road Web site rested on display stands. Below him, on the wooden rostrum, the blue, white, and gold insignia of the U.S. Senate was clear for the press corps, and Ross, to see.
“It’s a certifiable one-stop shop for illegal drugs that represents the most brazen attempt to peddle drugs online that we have ever seen,” Schumer said to a gaggle of press. “It’s more brazen than anything else by light-years.”
Oh heck!
This really wasn’t good. Sure, Ross wanted recognition and attention. But this was more than he had ever anticipated, especially so early in the life of his drug bazaar.
The video cut to a scene of Schumer sitting in front of a computer, Ross’s drug site on the screen. The senator’s finger traversed the Silk Road as he listed off all of the goodies that were for sale. “Heroin, opium, cannabis, ecstasies, psychedelics, stimulants,” Schumer said (briefly showing how out of touch he was with the topic at hand as he made “ecstasy” plural). The sound of camera flashes burst—pop! pop! pop!—as Schumer said in disbelief, “You name it, they have it!”
Ross felt sick as he read the article that accompanied the news clip, which noted that both Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin, then the junior senator from West Virginia, had asked the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration to shut down the Amazon of drugs—immediately.
Fudge! Friggin’ fudge! Ross had picked a fight with the biggest bully on earth, and the bully was about to punch back.
“Look,” Ross said, leaning against the back of the bed as he replayed the clip for Julia. “They’ve painted a bull’s-eye on my back.”
“Ross,” Julia said, petrified as she watched, “this isn’t good.”
The attention of the U.S. Senate was the last thing he needed at this moment. In a month, or six, maybe he could handle it. But not now.
Over the past few days, since the Gawker article had been published, an unremitting avalanche of press had followed in its wake. Ross’s Web site had transformed from almost invisible to mainstream as it entered the national news cycle with shocking velocity. Established media brands were all over the story. The Atlantic picked it up; NPR talked about it on air; and TV news outlets, including ABC and NBC, produced segments devoted to it (“They call it the Amazon of drugs . . .”). Not to mention the hundreds of blog posts, discussions on drug forums and social media, and articles on libertarian Web sites.
Despite the mainstream press, most people who read about the site still didn’t believe you could actually buy drugs on the Internet and have them mailed to your home. This had to be one of those Nigerian e-mail scams or a place for law enforcement to lure unsuspecting idiots who were going to be swept up in a massive online drug bust. But still, idiots or not, thousands of people downloaded Tor and signed up for the Silk Road to see. It couldn’t hurt to look, right?
Ross watched with a mixture of dread and delight as his databases filled up and the site slowed down. He barely slept a wink the night after the article was published, lying awake staring at his laptop or sitting in his ergonomic chair in the bedroom, watching sign-ups from all over the world.