Given that the Silk Road now had thousands of dealers, it was not an easy task. But Jared was always up for a laborious and all-consuming challenge. He reasoned that when (or at this rate, if) they finally caught the leader of the Silk Road, Jared would have hundreds of pounds of evidence tying the site to actual drugs.
He had learned a lot by purchasing his own drugs on the site, figuring out who was selling what and learning how drugs coming from differing countries might look different from one another. (Some used puffy envelopes; other drugs were hidden in everyday objects like CD cases. Some dealers put them in hollowed-out dead batteries; others stuck tabs of LSD to the backs of photos.) Yet with all of this information coming together, he had also learned something else rather disturbing. The site was growing too quickly for anyone to catch up to it.
In the months since Jared had started to investigate the case, the Silk Road had become a phenomenon. It was being written about in the press all over the world on a daily basis, and given that the site was still running after eighteen months, other potential customers felt more confident buying drugs and guns, so the customer base was growing rapidly.
The slew of press came with consequences, not just for the leader of the Silk Road, but also for Jared. All those stories in all those newspapers and blogs meant that other government agents were learning about the Silk Road, and Jared assumed they would want in on the case.
And he was right.
In the spring of 2012, on a late afternoon, Jared was sitting in his office, sifting through the latest envelopes customs had intercepted and, like a doctor checking an X-ray, holding up photos of drugs next to images on the Web site. He had checked in with his wife, Kim, and was trying to wrap things up to make it to the airport before racing home when his computer sounded a loud DING!, announcing a new e-mail.
This wasn’t just any e-mail. The system that agents use to keep records of their cases is designed to notify each agent when someone else in the government has read their specific case files. The e-mail that Jared had just received told him that two people at Homeland Security in Baltimore, a sister office within the same agency, were at that very moment reading one of his case files. As he sat there looking at the message on his screen and wondering what was going on, there was another DING! And another. Soon it was like an old lady had hit the jackpot in Las Vegas. DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!
As Jared sat there perplexed as to what was going on, things grew even stranger. His supervisor in Chicago received an e-mail from another supervisor in Baltimore, saying that a group of agents wanted to come out to the Windy City to talk about the Silk Road case. To add to this bizarre, out-of-the-blue request, the Baltimore agents were bringing their U.S. attorney with them.
This could mean only one thing: Baltimore wanted in on Jared’s case. But Jared didn’t want anyone impinging on his hunt for the Dread Pirate Roberts. This was his case, not theirs, and other people would surely drag him down in his pursuit. He also knew that coming out and saying that would only lead to infighting, which would only lead to a “deconfliction meeting,” where someone very high up in government decides who gets to run a case. That wasn’t a good scenario for Jared. In a standoff with older agents, he would likely lose.
So Jared and his boss at HSI agreed to a meeting with the Baltimore team at the Dirksen Federal Building, where Jared had first sold the Chicago U.S. attorney on the Silk Road case.
On the day of the meeting, Jared showed up at the home of the fifty-ton Flamingo expecting one or two people from the Baltimore contingent, but instead a small army streamed inside the office, including agents, assistants, and their own personal Baltimore assistant U.S. attorney, who introduced himself as Justin.
After some formalities and awkward handshakes, the Baltimore attorney spoke. “Thanks for meeting with us. We’ve been reading your reports, Jared”—momentarily looking in his direction—“and you’re doing some really great work, just great reporting in there.”
Jared thought to himself, I know you’ve been reading my fucking reports. I’ve been getting alerts in my in-box every fifteen minutes for the past few fucking weeks. He kept his rant to himself for now and instead smiled and nodded.
The Baltimore attorney then explained that the HSI agents in the room, Mike and Greg (who also worked with Carl Force), had picked up a lead in a bust, a dealer who had been “turned” and had given them a list of names belonging to people who sold drugs on the Silk Road. The attorney went on to say that they were going to trace all the people on the list, and “one of those names is going to be the leader of the Silk Road.” The Baltimore team sat there gloating with pride at their plan.
Jared couldn’t stop himself from interrupting them. “You guys have no idea what you’re up against,” he said, upset. “You have no respect for Tor and Bitcoin and . . .”
Justin from Baltimore ignored Jared’s comment and insinuated that Baltimore HSI was going to be taking over the case against the Silk Road. They might let Chicago join in if Jared had something to contribute.
Furious, Jared was about to interrupt again when he was beaten to it by his own supervisor, who seemed equally annoyed at the way these Baltimore agents had stormed into their town trying to throw their weight around. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Jared’s supervisor declared in a bellicose tone. “You guys are going to go your way; we’re going to go our way.”
The room fell silent. Any ounce of cordiality that had been there when the meeting began had vanished. Jared’s supervisor went on to dictate that if HSI Baltimore bumped into the investigation by HSI Chicago, they would go up through the ranks and deal with it accordingly. “We’ll deconflict when we have to.”
Silence hung there for a second and Justin spoke again. “That’s fine,” he said as the group from Baltimore got up to leave. “But we’re pretty sure we’re going to have this site shut down in a couple of weeks.”
Chapter 26
THE MUTINY