On an early morning in December 2015, through a joint operation of the FBI, DHS, DEA, and local Thai police, VJ was captured in a small room in Thailand. As the cops barged into the hideout, placing him in cuffs, the first thing Clark said was “Call me Mongoose,” referring to a more famous nickname he had used on other drug forums, “The Plural of Mongoose.”
But while they had captured the man behind Variety Jones, attempts to divine his past revealed a conflicting and complex picture. There were signs that Clark was truly a dangerous criminal, far more dangerous than DPR had ever imagined. But there were other clues online that painted a picture of a broken man who hid behind a computer with one goal: to torment the world.
Or maybe the Internet allowed him to be both.
Stories about Clark and his identities go back decades online. Some allege that Clark was once the most powerful weed dealer in Europe. Others talk about people who crossed him and whom he had sent to jail in a setup. One person alleged that he was multiple people and that the real Roger Thomas Clark died many years ago. Other tales about Clark and his early associates are rife with theft, murder, drug busts, shoot-outs, and international intrigue.
Clark himself, or at least a version of himself, has claimed in the past that he has multiple sclerosis; that his muscles are wasting away; that he suffers from muscle cramps, spasms, or twitching; and that “any 7 year old kid in a playground could beat the heck out of me, without having to put down their ice cream.” He is believed to have family abroad, in England and Canada, some in Scotland too, none of whom he has spoken to in years.
By all accounts Clark was someone to be wary of.
In 2006 a reporter for High Times, a magazine devoted to marijuana, wrote a story about a collection of characters who used to sell weed seeds on online forums, and while the reporter spoke to a number of people for the article, he chose not to interview Clark, whom he thought of as a dangerous puppet master. The man now known as Variety Jones was known to infect people’s computers with viruses and to tell long and elaborate stories, and no one really knew whether they were true—except, of course, for Roger Thomas Clark.
When Clark was arrested in Thailand, the agents snapped a photo of him with a smartphone, and the message was sent to their counterparts in the United States. In the grainy, low-resolution image a disheveled and broken man peered up at the camera through his droopy eyes. His gaunt, ravaged body looked like it belonged to a man who had been to hell and back and who had loved every moment of the trip.
Now that man is sitting in the Bangkok Remand Prison. There, a team of lawyers are fighting his extradition to the United States, where he will stand trial for narcotics trafficking and money laundering and could face life in prison.
Chapter 72
THE MUSEUM
Along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, there are dozens of museums that tell the story of the history of America. Some of the relics in these buildings go back hundreds of years, like the tattered flag that inspired “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the pistol that was used to kill President Lincoln. And then there are some objects that are more recent but will remain infamous for hundreds of years to come. Some of these newer artifacts sit on the Hubbard Concourse in the contemporary Newseum at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue, a few blocks away from the White House.
The relics at this museum hail from some of the biggest criminal cases in American history. In one corner of the exhibit there is an old wooden cabin, barely big enough for a man, that belonged to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Nearby a pair of thick black sneakers sit, their bases torn open; they were worn by the Shoe Bomber, Richard Reid, when he tried to blow up an American Airlines flight in 2001. And then, farther along in the exhibit, a glass box contains exhibit number 2015.6008.43a, which is a silver Samsung laptop.
“He called himself Dread Pirate Roberts after a character in The Princess Bride,” the text next to the laptop reads. And then it explains that the computer belonged to Ross Ulbricht, “who ran a $1.2 billion marketplace called the Silk Road.” The text does not, however, tell the story of how that laptop ended up in that glass case or what is still hidden inside its hard drive.
In the weeks after Ross’s arrest, Tarbell, Thom, and Jared rummaged through the laptop for forensic evidence about the Silk Road. While the FBI forensics team was successful in getting into the side of the computer that Ross used when he was the Dread Pirate Roberts—the side that contained those millions of words of chat logs between DPR and his employees on the Web site and the hackers, hit men, and gun and drug dealers he engaged with—those same FBI agents were unable to get into the other side of the computer, the side of the computer that Ross logged in to when he wanted to be Ross Ulbricht, to message friends, to talk to his family, to live his other life.
The agents have tried to crack the passwords to that side of the machine, but it would take a computer more than one hundred years to guess the correct pass code. Instead that side of the computer, the Ross side, is locked away forever.
So is the man who owned that laptop.
Ross’s days now often begin before the sun rises, with the sounds of keys and the door to each prison cell unlocking. His cell is only a few feet deep and half as wide. The walls of the prison, which are mostly thick orange concrete blocks, are a brooding and formidable sight. Ross wakes up, slips on his prison clothes, and walks out into the general population. The days are tediously regimented, with an hour allocated for breakfast, thirty minutes for lunch, and the same for supper. Meals are served on plastic trays, with divots on the sides for plastic forks or spoons, plastic cups, and pats of margarine. The commissary at the prison sells snacks, drinks, and clothing. Ross, using the money his mother has placed into his account, can sometimes buy candy and sodas or a new pair of sneakers or sweatpants.
Inmates like Ross, who are well behaved inside, are given an hour outside to walk in circles on the roof of the prison, where a cage encloses the air. In the evening Ross is ushered back into his cell, and the bolts on the doors slam tight. The concrete room is thrust into darkness.