American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

In the months after the Dread Pirate Roberts was captured, it appeared to Carl Force and Shaun Bridges that they had gotten away with fake murder and with stealing millions of dollars in Bitcoins. They had cleverly hidden most of their loot in offshore accounts under fake business names. They both assumed that those digital coins could never be traced back to them. After all, in their minds, Bitcoins were like cash—completely anonymous.

Carl was so confident that he tried to contact book publishers in New York City and movie studios in Hollywood with the hope that he could sell his story as the undercover DEA agent who helped bring down the Silk Road. He was lionized as a hero at the DEA and even given awards for a job so well done. When it seemed that no one suspected Carl of anything unlawful, he quietly began selling some of his Bitcoins, paying off the mortgage on the old Colonial home and picking up a few toys.

But when the FBI and IRS started to trace the Bitcoins that had flowed in and out of the Silk Road, by putting together a complex algorithm that figured out where the money took off and where it landed, it became apparent that some of these coins didn’t add up. While most of the money had been accounted for, with tens of millions of dollars pointing to Ross’s laptop and millions more directed to employees, hackers, and informants, there was also a slew of Bitcoins that curiously found their way back to Carl Force and Shaun Bridges. Maybe, the Feds thought, it was an anomaly. Two cops on the same task force would never steal money from a case.

Or would they?

As the Feds covertly began investigating this possibility, more peculiarities started to appear, all of which led back to Shaun and Carl.

In one instance the FBI had found a message on the Silk Road servers that had been sent to the Dread Pirate Roberts from one of his alleged informants who was a mole inside the government. The plant went by the name “French Maid” and had been selling secrets to DPR for a hefty fee. But as the FBI started to look further, they noticed that one of the messages sent from French Maid to DPR was bizarrely signed “Carl.” And then another message sent shortly afterward provided a clarification: “I am sorry about that. My name is Carla Sophia and I have many boyfriends and girlfriends on the market place.”

It was evident that Carl had fucked up and accidentally written his own name when selling information to DPR as someone else. The Feds later learned that Carl had created several other fake accounts that were used to threaten, coerce, or bribe the Dread Pirate Roberts. As all the loose ends were tied back together, they found dozens of clues that linked Carl to $757,000 in stolen Bitcoins.

Faced with an endless list of evidence and the possibility of spending decades in a maximum-security prison, Carl Force surrendered to authorities and pled guilty to charges of theft of government property, wire fraud, money laundering, and conflict of interest. He was sentenced to seventy-eight months in federal prison.

Shaun Bridges wasn’t prepared to go as quietly. When he discovered that the government was investigating him for money laundering and obstruction of justice, Shaun tried to have his work laptop, which contained a trove of evidence against him, erased. He then attempted (unsuccessfully) to change his name and Social Security number. When none of those tactics worked, he pled guilty to charges related to the $820,000 he had taken from the Silk Road and was given seventy-one months in prison and told to pay $500,000 in restitution. Unlike Carl, who turned himself in and began his sentence, Shaun was caught trying to leave the country with a computer, a bulletproof vest, passports, and a cell phone. The two men are now serving out their sentences in a federal penitentiary. They will both be released in 2022.

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After Ross was arrested, Julia saw him a couple of times, venturing to New York to visit him in prison. They spoke on the phone every few weeks. Sometimes she cried when they talked; she always spoke of God. And then, one day in mid-2015, she stopped answering his phone calls. While she still loved Ross, she decided that it was time to focus on herself and her business. A year later Vivian’s Muse was one of the most successful boudoir photography studios in the country. Julia still hoped to find a good man to marry, one who would give her a child or two and a house with a white picket fence where she could live happily ever after.

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Curtis Green (the Gooch) could have faced up to forty years in prison for being arrested with a kilo of cocaine in Spanish Fork, Utah. Instead, because he was tortured and fake-murdered by two government agents (Carl and Shaun) who had broken the law themselves, a federal judge in Baltimore let Curtis off with “time served.”

After his trial Green began selling Silk Road memorabilia online, including Silk Road hats, Silk Road T-shirts, and signed copies of his memoir—which he is still writing—detailing his life as a Silk Road employee.

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Gary Alford still works for the Internal Revenue Service in New York City, focusing on finance-related crimes. He was given an award by the government for his work on the Silk Road case. The gold placard, which sits on his desk at work, credits Gary with being “The Sherlock Holmes of Cyberspace.” He still reads everything three times.

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For over a year after the Silk Road was shut down, Jared stayed undercover as Cirrus on the Dark Web and helped Tarbell, Gary, and others in law enforcement coordinate the arrest of the Dread Pirate Roberts’s most trusted advisers.

Inigo, the youngest administrator at twenty-four years old, was arrested on a houseboat in Charles City, Virginia, where he lived and worked on the site. His elderly parents put up their home and retirement savings to post the $1 million bail to free their son. Smedley was apprehended by authorities entering the United States after trying to hide out in Thailand with Variety Jones. And SameSameButDifferent was captured in Australia by federal police in the outback. When he was apprehended, authorities found an engagement ring in his pocket; he was on his way to propose to his girlfriend. One of the oldest administrators at forty, he had a full-time job helping people with intellectual and physical disabilities, in addition to working on the Silk Road.

In all, several hundred people from forty-three different countries around the globe were caught buying, selling, and working on the Silk Road and were subsequently arrested by authorities, concluding with the capture of Variety Jones.

The day after VJ was apprehended, Jared showed up at the mail center at Chicago O’Hare International Airport to explore the evidence locker and see the packages and drugs that had been seized the night before. Backpack slung over his shoulder, a Rubik’s Cube inside, he lumbered along the long hallway to the evidence room. He was excited to know that the case he had started working on years earlier, a case that had begun with a single peculiar pink pill coming into the same facility he now walked through, had finally and resolutely come to a close.

Yet as Jared rounded the corner, passing by a doorway, he heard someone yell his name. “Jared! I got something for you.”

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