The trial began shortly after Christmas.
Each day unfurled the same way. Ross was awoken in his cell at dawn by the guards. While still in his prison uniform, he was shackled at the ankles and cuffed at the waist and wrists. With U.S. marshals by his side, inmate 18870-111 trudged slowly through the concrete corridors to the federal courthouse. The door lock would buzz to announce Ross’s arrival or departure. He was placed in cages and cells and told to wait until the next cage or cell was ready for him.
The days in court oscillated between dull and terrifying. The prosecution presented all of the chat logs and diaries found on Ross’s computer. Conversations that orbited around the sale of cocaine and heroin, guns, and other illegalities and the profits DPR was corralling. There were chat logs presented where Variety Jones had promised to spring DPR from prison if he was ever captured by the Feebs. “Remember that one day when you’re in the exercise yard, I’ll be the dude in the helicopter coming in low and fast, I promise,” the prosecution read aloud. “With the amount of $ we’re generating, I could hire a small country to come get you.” And then there were the chats about the alleged murders.
The prosecution showed spreadsheets illustrating the immense growth of the Silk Road, the hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, and the more than $80 million in profit that allegedly led back to Ross Ulbricht. The jury’s eyes seemed to glaze over when the lawyers tried to explain how Bitcoin blockchains worked, why server encryption and CAPTCHAs and IP addresses were so important, and what happens when you run Ubuntu Linux on a Samsung 700Z.
Then it was the defense’s turn.
Dratel eloquently argued that, sure, Ross had been caught with his hands on the keyboard, but he was not the Dread Pirate Roberts. That person, whoever he was, could be dozens of people. Dratel even admitted (to gasps in the courtroom) that Ross had indeed started the Silk Road years earlier, before the “Dread Pirate Roberts” moniker was even invented, but that the site had soon spiraled out of control, like a digital Frankenstein. Ross had become too stressed running the Silk Road and had given it away. Dratel pointed fingers at other people who worked with Bitcoins, noting that they could easily be the Dread Pirate Roberts. He contended that there was very obviously more than one DPR, and Ross was not among them.
Ross’s defense showed e-mails between Jared and other agents who had all believed, at one time or another, long before they captured Ross Ulbricht, that DPR was someone else. Dratel then argued that Ross had been framed by the real DPR.
The back of the courtroom overflowed daily during the proceedings. The benches on the right of the room were jammed with reporters and bloggers covering the spectacle. The ones to the left had a different, more somber feeling and were allocated to Ross Ulbricht’s loved ones and supporters. Advocates came in from all over the country to champion Ross, protesting on the steps of the courthouse that he was a hero, that all he did was run a Web site, and, if that was a crime, then the CEOs of eBay and Craigslist should stand trial too, as illegal goods were sold on those sites.
Ross’s mother, Lyn, arrived every day, bundled up in her thick black jacket with a dainty dark scarf and a wounded look on her face, as if what was happening wasn’t real. She could never in her worst nightmares have imagined that this fate would befall her son. Young Ross, her baby boy, who was so kind and thoughtful and sweet and smart, who had gone off to graduate school to become a molecular physicist, now sat ten feet away, facing a sentence worse than death.
But when Ross looked back at her, he offered up a confident and unfazed stare that told her not to worry, that he was fine.
The defense knew an insurmountable quantum of evidence pointed directly to Ross—the fake IDs, Ross’s old friend Richard Bates from Austin testifying against him, the tens of millions of dollars found on Ross’s laptop, and Jared testifying that he had worked for Ross as an undercover employee. People in the courtroom could see that in the case of United States of America v. Ross William Ulbricht, one side was clearly winning.
After three weeks of trial, the closing arguments were presented.
“His conduct was brazenly illegal; he knew perfectly well what he was doing the whole time,” Serrin Turner, the prosecutor, bellowed as he paced in front of the jury. “He built it. He grew it. He operated it from top to bottom until the very end.” As he spoke, Serrin grew more exasperated by the defense Ross had given.
“He thinks he can pull one over on you—” Serrin thundered to the jury.
“Objection!” Ross’s lawyer tried to interject.
“—and then there is the defendant’s attempt to explain away mountains of evidence on his computer,” Serrin continued, ignoring the defense lawyer. “It’s a hacker.”
“Objection!!”
“It’s a virus,” Serrin ridiculed. “It’s ludicrous. There were no little elves that put all of that evidence on the defendant’s computer.” He finally concluded, peering at the men and women of the jury: “He knew perfectly well what he was doing the whole time, and you should find him guilty on all counts.”
When it was the defense’s turn, Dratel stood up, vexed by Serrin’s speech.
“One of the fundamental principles in this case is that DPR and Mr. Ulbricht cannot be the same person,” Dratel began. “Saving those chats, does that sound like DPR? You have to actually enable the chats to be saved.” He went on, noting that the Dread Pirate Roberts would never have made such a silly mistake: “Keeping a journal like that and then saving it on your laptop? A little too convenient.”
He pointed to the evidence found on the laptop and said it had been put there by someone else. It was the real Dread Pirate Roberts, who knew the Feds were closing in, and while Ross was in the library downloading a TV show onto his laptop, the real DPR placed the chat logs and other evidence on his computer. “There are a lot of blinking neon signs in this case that have been created to incriminate Mr. Ulbricht,” he shrieked. “It is not the same person.”
Dratel argued skillfully that in November 2011 Ross had given the site away. A site that he, regretfully, had started. That Ross had then left for Australia to start his life anew and get away from the monster he had birthed. “The Internet is not what it seems; you can create an entire fiction.” Finally Dratel asserted that the government in no way had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Ross Ulbricht was the Dread Pirate Roberts. “I’m confident . . . in deliberations, you will reach only one conclusion: Ross Ulbricht is not guilty on every count in the indictment.”
Chapter 69
TO CATCH A PIRATE