The cops in the back of the house rummaged through Green’s drawers, pulling out his wife’s big black dildo that became the butt of several jokes. Other officers went down into the basement, where they found a series of computers linked together for what they were told was Green’s Bitcoin-mining farm. These computers ran software Green had downloaded that constantly crunched numbers trying to find Bitcoins online that he could then turn into real physical cash.
As the cops rummaged through his stuff, one of the HSI agents from Baltimore took timid Green aside and began questioning him. This left Carl and Shaun Bridges, the Secret Service agent who had tried to set up the meeting with the NSA, to examine Green’s computer. They soon discovered that Green, as an employee of the Silk Road, had a special account on the site with privileges that allowed him to change people’s pass codes and even log others out of their accounts. This was an administrative right that, Green told them, had been granted to him by the Dread Pirate Roberts himself.
As Carl and Shaun explored Green’s account for evidence that would bring them closer to capturing DPR, they noticed one other feature about Green’s administrative abilities on the site that seemed out of the ordinary. It appeared that Green, as a moderator, also had access to other people’s Bitcoins on the Silk Road. Hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins, to be precise. Green could have easily stolen that money if he wanted to. After all, everyone believed that Bitcoins couldn’t be traced like cash. But Green would never do such a thing, fearing a vicious reprisal from the Dread Pirate Roberts. Neither, one would think, would federal agents with the Marco Polo task force who had taken an oath to protect citizens, “so help me God.”
But in the coming days, without the knowledge of anyone else inside that little house on East 600 North Street in Spanish Fork, Utah, or within the U.S. government, Shaun Bridges of the Secret Service was about to do the unthinkable. He started tinkering with the computer that belonged to Green and furtively siphoning $350,000 out of other people’s accounts on the Silk Road, all using Curtis Green’s log-in credentials. Rather than turning this money in to the U.S. government as evidence, Shaun would instead secretly transfer that $350,000 into his own personal accounts online.
It didn’t stop there.
It wouldn’t take long for do-gooder, churchgoing dad Carl Force—completely separately from Shaun Bridges—to start stealing money from the Silk Road too. But rather than purloin the money, as Shaun did, Carl would instead sell information back to the Dread Pirate Roberts in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoins. This information would help Ross Ulbricht stay ahead of law enforcement as they hunted for the leader of the Silk Road.
Just as he had before, Carl was about to cross the line between covering a criminal and becoming one.
So help me God.
Chapter 41
CURTIS IS TORTURED
The lobby of the Marriott Hotel in Salt Lake City was as bland and soundless as any other. The carpet was as hard as concrete, and a stale smell of coffee hung in the air. In the corner of the foyer, a television played with a ticker streaming below the newscaster who read the latest headlines, noting that new home sales in the United States had fallen by 7.8 percent over the previous month, and the economy was again sputtering.
Upstairs in one of the hotel suites, a pink walking cane lay on the floor. And a few feet away, in the bathroom, the owner of that cane—Curtis Green—was being drowned by a postal worker from the Marco Polo task force. Across from him, as Green’s head was held underwater and his arms flailed about in panic, Carl Force of the DEA stood with a digital camera videotaping this torture.
It had been a week since the DEA had come into Green’s house with a battering ram, smashing down his front door and scaring the shit (quite literally) out of his poor Chihuahuas. After he had been booked, processed, and let go from the local police precinct, he had gone home, dropped onto the couch, and cried. He reasoned that the next steps would be getting a lawyer, having a court date, and maybe striking a deal with the DEA that would grant him a lesser sentence. But events had played out differently.
After his arrest the Marco Polo task force returned to Baltimore, and the Mormon boy, Green, had been told to lie low. Carl and the rest of the team had assumed that they would have time to question Green later and could sift through his computer for more evidence in the meantime. But as Carl had learned (as Nob), the Dread Pirate Roberts had figured out that his employee had been arrested.
Amid a flurry of confusion, Shaun Bridges, Carl Force, and a postal worker from the task force had returned to the Salt Lake City Marriott to question Green, to try to glean what they could while he still had access to his Silk Road files.
Green arrived at the Marriott with his lawyer and immediately began babbling on about how the ruthless Dread Pirate Roberts would soon surely send his goons to have him killed. He was so petrified he couldn’t sleep, he said. He kept peering out of his window in Spanish Fork, fearing that someone would come and tap on the door and that would be the end of Curtis Green and his two Chihuahuas. Green went on like a scared teenager telling the principal about some bullies that would get him after school.
Green had always been a rambler and, as Carl soon believed, a weakling. In high school Green’s classmates had called him “the Gooch.” At the time, young, chubby Green didn’t know what the term meant and laughed along with the other boys when they referenced him by that nickname. It wasn’t until years later that he found out that a gooch was the area on a man’s body between his scrotum and his asshole.
Carl could easily see why the nickname had stuck. After a few minutes of his rambling, Carl wanted to slap him or tell him to shut the hell up, or both. (Gooch!) Green seemed as nervous as his three-pound Chihuahuas. Sometimes he whimpered as he spoke to the Marco Polo task force about his role on the site and about the dreaded Dread Pirate Roberts. At other times he pleaded, “I’m just a good Mormon boy.”
Eventually, after a couple of hours of questioning, Green’s lawyer (who was apparently the worst lawyer in Utah) grew bored and decided to leave, noting that his client should just tell the cops everything he knew. As the lawyer walked out, the Gooch started crying. Carl thought about how pathetic this man was and how he was everything Carl hated in the world: not tough enough to stand up for the choices he had made.
At around noon, exhausted from hours of interrogation, they decided to go down to the restaurant of the Marriott Hotel and grab lunch. As everyone ate, Carl logged on to his laptop as Nob to chat with DPR and see if he knew more about the man sitting across from him. It was then, as Green sat eating french fries and trying not to upset his DEA captors, that Dread told Nob what had happened. One of his employees had stolen some Bitcoins, and he wasn’t happy about it. “Not a ton of money,” DPR said as they began typing to one another, “but it pisses me off to no end.”
“Who is it and where is he,” Nob wrote back as he looked up from his laptop at the Gooch, who nervously looked back.
“I’ll send you his ID,” DPR replied.