He had felt so lonely over the past year running the Silk Road. He had all of this success, and no one to share it with. So he fell in love headfirst with Kristal. A weekend together soon turned into every weekend together. Once, Ross flew up to Portland, where Kristal lived, and they spent an entire day cuddling under the covers in her apartment. On another trip they set off for an adventure at a nearby campground, where they holed up in a cabin in the woods for the weekend, Ross wearing nothing more than a blue robe and his glove shoes and Kristal in a green dressing gown. Ross felt alive! He sketched pictures of her. After the trip she sent him messages of herself blowing a kiss. He sent her notes of adoration back. But he never told her about his Web site. Never could; never would.
In between all of this, he continued to steer the ship of the Silk Road, sneaking off to transform into the superhero who was going to legalize drugs and make the world a safer place. The man who navigated tribulations only people with his level of power had to negotiate. And it was that power, at this moment, that he needed more than anything to protect.
Someone was now dead who had deep ties to the Silk Road and its founder, and it was not a stretch to think that the cops would soon find the body of Curtis Green. It wouldn’t be long before they figured out what had happened. The murder, the site, and the cocaine bust would all point law enforcement toward the Dread Pirate Roberts. He needed dedicated minions now who could really defend and grow the Silk Road into the biggest enterprise on the planet.
As Ross explained to one of his employees: “I’m in it to win it.” Then he reiterated what was at stake here. “Before I die, I want the world to be so radically different that I will be able to tell my story in person without repercussion.”
Ross was fully aware that he needed more soldiers in his ranks to reach that goal. “I’m thinking we may even staff up,” he had told VJ as they discussed moving the operation to the next level. They had killed someone, and they were now running a site that trafficked hundreds of millions of dollars in drugs and anything else illegal. Any one of these felonies could land them in jail for life.
It wasn’t that Ross was worried; he truly believed that the Dread Pirate Roberts simply couldn’t be stopped—you can’t stop an idea! But Ross also knew that the best way to stay ahead of the cops who might knock on his door was to stay ahead of what they knew.
As he returned from his weekend in a cabin with Kristal, he was determined to bring in more bodies to help protect the world he now governed. But he didn’t just want to bring on hackers and drug dealers. He needed to up his game. He needed an arsenal of hit men and muscle if someone else was arrested or tried to squeal to the Feebs. But most important, Ross needed to find someone inside the government who would be able to keep him apprised of what the Feds knew. Maybe a local cop, an agent with the FBI or the DEA, or even someone at the Department of Justice. He was willing to pay this person whatever he or she wanted. There was simply too much at stake not to. He wasn’t going to let any more fuck-ups happen. It was time to go to war.
Chapter 47
GARY’S BIG CHANGE
Everything felt completely out of place for Gary as he reported for duty on the DEA strike force he had been assigned to in New York City. Unlike the IRS’s beige downtown office building, which was surrounded by a blockade of federal monoliths and local courthouses, his new workplace was above Fourteenth Street, nestled in among hipster bodegas, cupcake shops, and the Chelsea-Elliot housing projects.
At the IRS, every cubicle was as tall as a man, which afforded privacy for agents and their spreadsheets. Yet the cubicles in his new office were low and open. As a result, when Gary sat down at his desk, no matter which direction he looked, he found himself gazing directly into someone else’s eyes. (This was all intentional, Gary was told, designed to get people from different government agencies—NYPD, DEA, IRS, and local and state police—on the task force talking to one another about their cases.) He had no privacy. People in his new office dressed differently too, wearing “casual” street clothes, like sneakers and T-shirts. Gary didn’t own any of these, so he had to go shopping with his wife to buy boots and jeans, which made him feel like he was wearing someone else’s clothes. Buttoned-up Gary felt completely out of place.
The most dissimilar aspect of the new task force was the open-door policy. People shared the information they had gleaned from their investigations with everyone else. It was all for one, not a cadre of solo IRS suits counting pennies alone.
Before arriving, Gary had done his homework, scouring news articles, forum posts by the Dread Pirate Roberts, and research about the Dark Web, all to get acquainted with the case he was about to join. While reading these pieces, Gary had come across the first white paper that had been published about Bitcoin, written by the creator of the digital currency, an anonymous man who went by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.
Gary read the paper once and nothing stood out. He read it a second time, and still nothing. But the third time he noticed something, in a section of the paper that referenced the “Gambler’s Ruin problem,” a theory that no matter how much money you have in a betting scenario, the casino (or house) has an infinite amount of money, and therefore, if you keep making bets, the house will eventually win. Gary reasoned that the same theory was true for DPR and the Silk Road. The U.S. government was the casino; DPR was the gambler. Eventually, Gary believed, because the Dread Pirate Roberts wouldn’t stop playing, he would lose.
To say Gary was excited about this case was the understatement of his career. He was ecstatic! As soon as he was settled into his office (or as close to settled as he could be), he was briefed by his new teammates. This was when he very quickly learned that everyone else was not as enthusiastic about the Silk Road case as Gary was—at least, not anymore.
Investigators were burned out and fed up, given that their probe had gone nowhere. To them Gary arriving with all of this enthusiasm for the case was like a child waking up in mid-August thinking that it was Christmas morning.
His co–case agents immediately noticed something about Gary too. When he spoke, he would often interrupt himself and utter a rhetorical “You know?” or “Riiiiight!” almost like someone saying the words “rye” and “tight” together very quickly. He did this all the time. Gary could be chatting away at full stride, and in midsentence he would reach into the depths of his core and, as if he were trying to impersonate a bear, bellow the word “Riiight!” followed by “You know? You know?” and then he would just keep going as if nothing had happened.