“I have to get to work for DPR,” Jared said as he stood up to leave the bar, knowing full well that he had a long night ahead of him. Tarbell had his own work cut out for him. The next day he would have to head down to the local FBI office and somehow try to persuade them not to go into Ross Ulbricht’s house with a SWAT team.
Chapter 63
CARLA SOPHIA
Carl read the e-mail from the group supervisor on the Baltimore task force.
“Baltimore is to stand down on all SR activity for 1 week pending outcome of FBI NY takedown(s) next week,” the message said. It was soon followed by more severe instructions. “For right now, the important thing is that we not do anything that could in any way possible interfere with the arrest of DPR and the collection of evidence in the course of that arrest and search. Therefore, please stand down on all investigative activities, including logging onto Silk Road, it’s forums, or any UC communications.”
This is bad. So very, very bad.
Rumors had already traveled from New York via Washington, DC, to Carl’s small desk in his mauve-colored cubicle in Baltimore that the FBI and some other agents might have found the Dread Pirate Roberts. Now this confirmed it. It was the worst news Carl could ever imagine hearing. This was a problem not just for DPR but also for Carl and his secret online identities who were feeding information to the man he was supposed to be hunting.
Until now Carl’s plan had been working seamlessly. He would chat by day as Nob, and the conversations would be saved and logged in to a DEA investigation report. Then he would send those very thorough and detailed reports to Nick and the other agents on the Marco Polo task force.
A job well done. Good work, Carl!
Yet as dusk turned to dark, Carl would log on to his computer as Kevin, the government agent, and, for a fee, surreptitiously send Dread messages that were not recorded and put into a report.
When the two lines crossed, and the Dread Pirate Roberts (unaware of what was going on at the other end of the connection) discussed payments for information, Carl would scold Dread, reminding him to “Use PGP!” the highly secure messaging platform. In the few instances that DPR slipped up, Carl would pretend that there had been a technical glitch in his daily report. “AGENT’S NOTE: SA Force was unable to make several video recordings of the above messages due to problems with the SR site.”
It had all worked perfectly, until the lies started to pile up atop one another and Carl started to mix up who he was supposed to be and when he was supposed to be them. Rather than slow down, or even stop crossing the line, Carl decided to move that line even further away and he started creating more fake accounts and machinations to take more money.
Before the e-mail came in telling him to stand down, Carl decided to create another fictitious online persona, one that wasn’t Nob, the drug smuggler, or Kevin, the dirty DOJ employee, but a new character called French Maid. Under this new guise, Carl sent DPR another message, offering to sell more information about the investigation into the site. “I have received important information that you need to know asap. Please provide me with your public key for PGP.” This was the point where Carl’s lies were too complicated to track, and everything he was saying became jumbled in his own mind. As a result, Carl was about to make an irreversible mistake.
In a message to DPR, while pretending to be French Maid, he accidentally signed the message with his own name, Carl.
A short while later, when Carl realized what he had done, he quickly followed up with another message to Dread. “Whoops! I am sorry about that. My name is Carla Sophia and I have many boyfriends and girlfriends on the market place. DPR will want to hear what I have to say ;) xoxoxo.”
Luckily for Carl, the Dread Pirate Roberts could care less who Carl or Carla was; Dread just wanted the information that was for sale and gladly handed more than $100,000 to French Maid for more information that could help him keep the Feds at bay.
Carl thought he’d gotten away with his exploits, but in mid-September 2013 he heard that the Feds had fingered DPR. This was followed by the e-mail from his bosses to stand down. Carl was in a panic. If the FBI got Dread on his computer, then there might be more records of the conversations between the mendacious DEA agent and the Dread Pirate Roberts.
As Nob, he messaged DPR and told him: “My informant (Kevin) is certain that you are going to be identified and caught. You are like one of my family. but I have to tell you that I have had several people killed who were sent to jail. it is very easy and cheap,” Carl said, and then concluded the threat implied in that previous message. “I trust that you have destroyed all messages, chats, etc between us.”
But what if Dread didn’t delete the messages? After thinking all of this through, Carl knew that the only way to find out what the FBI knew, or would know if they captured Dread, was to see the servers that the Feds had apparently found. So he came up with another idea—another lie—and he called Chris Tarbell from the FBI, whom he had never spoken to before.
“Hi, this is Special Agent Carl Force from the DEA in Baltimore,” he barked at Tarbell. “When can I come up and look at the server?”
“Who is this?” Tarbell replied.
“Special Agent Carl Force from the— Look, you know, I really need to see that server.”
Tarbell was immediately combative in his response to Carl. “Did you get approval from the ASAC?”
“Yes, yes, yes, I did,” Carl stuttered, obviously not telling the truth, “When can I come up? What day is best for you?”
“There’s no time. If you want to see it, then you’ll have to go through ASAC.” And then Tarbell abruptly hung up.
After this interaction Carl was out of ideas. All he could hope was that DPR had done what Nob had requested and wiped the messages from his computer. Or maybe they would both be lucky and the Dread Pirate Roberts would get away, taking all of Carl’s secrets with him.
Chapter 64
FeLiNa
The last day of Ross’s life as a free man began just like any other. He woke up in his Monterey Boulevard apartment and slipped on his blue jeans and long-sleeved red T-shirt. Then he got to work on the Silk Road, unaware that by 3:16 p.m. that day, he would be sitting in the back of a police car in handcuffs.
He had been blue for the past few days, as things had not been going his way. First one of his government informants, who went by the moniker “French Maid,” told him that the Feds had a new name to add to the list of people who could potentially be the Dread Pirate Roberts, and French Maid (who had said her real name was Carla Sophia) would happily share the name in exchange for $100,000. So DPR had paid and was still waiting for a response. Then another employee, to whom he had loaned $500,000, had disappeared. To top it all off, his poison oak rash hadn’t gone away.
But there were things to be grateful for.
Ross was soon going to Austin, where he would see Julia. She had told him in an e-mail she would pick him up from the airport, and he could stay with her. Just like old times. They had been having romantic Skype sessions a lot too and sending long, dirty e-mails back and forth about what they would do to each other in person. Ross had also had an epiphany over the weekend. After the bonfire and the fireworks on Ocean Beach, he had written in his diary (alongside his travails on the Silk Road and an explanation for how he got the poison oak rash) that he needed to “eat well, get good sleep, and meditate so I can stay positive.”
12:15 p.m.
The houses along Monterey Boulevard were mostly two- and three-story wood frames. They were painted all different colors, some white, others blue or green. The apartment where Ross Ulbricht now lived was in a three-story beige building in the middle of the block. Every once in a while a large Suburban SUV with dark tinted windows would drive by. The SUV would make a right down Baden Street, then another right and another, until it found itself back in front of the beige building on Monterey Boulevard.
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Even if anyone had noticed the SUV as it swirled around the blocks that morning, no one would have guessed what was inside the vehicle.
2:42 p.m.
Tarbell paced in front of a coffee shop on Diamond Street, staring down at his phone, trying desperately to figure out what to do. He had gone to the local FBI offices and made his case that they shouldn’t use a SWAT team, but the supervisor in charge of the local Bureau had issued a flat-out “no.” The supervisor said he wasn’t going to risk losing an agent over an open laptop. Clearly he didn’t know how important that computer was. Tarbell called everyone he knew in government, trying to persuade them not to go into Ross’s house with a battering ram and guns drawn, but all he could get out of the local FBI office was an agreement to delay the SWAT team raid by one day.
Jared, Thom, and Brophy stood in front of the café near Ross’s house, listening to Tarbell explain this, unsure what they were going to do. They knew that Ross was at home on his laptop because the FBI had an undercover SUV circling his block and monitoring his Wi-Fi traffic. The system they were using would check the signal strength of the Wi-Fi on his computer and then, by triangulating that data from three different points they had captured as they drove around the block, they were able to figure out Ross’s exact location, which at this very moment was his bedroom, on the third floor of his Monterey Boulevard apartment.
As the agents stood outside the café discussing their conundrum, Jared looked at his computer to check his battery level, now in the red and quickly falling past 18 percent. In that moment he noticed that the icon next to the Dread Pirate Roberts vanished from the chat window. “DPR just logged off,” Jared said. “I’m going to go into Bello Coffee and charge my shit and get a coffee.”
Thom followed him, leaving Brophy and Tarbell outside.
The coffee shop was bustling and every seat was occupied by a laptop-toting patron. A few moms sipped tea with a hand on their strollers, and others stared at their phones. Jared found a single free power outlet along the wall, plugged in his computer, and ordered a coffee.
After two years of slogging up a mountain of shit, they were so close to DPR they could practically hear him breathing, and yet they had lost. The SWAT team was going in. They wouldn’t capture the open laptop; they wouldn’t get Ross Ulbricht logged in to the site.
2:46 p.m.
Ross grabbed his laptop, stuffed it into his shoulder bag, and headed down the stairs and onto Monterey Boulevard. The air was unusually warm, with just a slight chill from the San Francisco breeze.
He had been in the house all day and needed to change locations. Plus he wanted to find a fast Wi-Fi connection so he could download an interview with the creator of the show Breaking Bad. The show’s final episode, “FeLiNa,” had aired the night before and had left the protagonist, Walter White, and his alter ego, Heisenberg, dead.
Ross wouldn’t be out long. Maybe just a couple of hours to mooch Wi-Fi from a nearby coffee shop, download the show, and do some work on the Silk Road.
2:50 p.m.
Tarbell was watching the street when his phone vibrated with a message from the undercover FBI agents who had been monitoring Ross. “He’s on the move,” they wrote.
Tarbell quickly ducked into the coffee shop to alert Jared and Thom.
“Our friend is coming down the street!” Tarbell said aggressively to Jared. His voice was gruff and to the point. Jared looked back at him, exhausted and confused by what Tarbell was saying. “Which friend?” Jared asked, thinking this could be another Tarbell joke.
“Our. Friend,” Tarbell said firmly, “Is. Coming.” He couldn’t exactly blurt out “Ross Ulbricht” or “Dread Pirate Roberts” or “the criminal mastermind you’ve been after for two fucking years.”
And then it hit Jared. Holy shit! Our friend!
He grabbed his coffee and laptop, came rushing outside, and ran across the street to a park bench with Thom, where they tried their best to blend in with the world around them.
2:51 p.m.
Tarbell exited the coffee shop. “Description and Direction?” he wrote on his BlackBerry to the undercover agents. Everyone in Tarbell’s crew scattered. Brophy cut right to hide in the library a few doors down. He had seen Thom rush across the street, taking a seat on a bench in front of a pizza place. Jared was not far behind him. Tarbell turned in the only direction left and started walking south along Diamond Street, right into the path of Ross Ulbricht.
Tarbell knew that the undercover FBI agents would be following Ross, but he wanted to get a glimpse of him firsthand.
Cars and people flowed by in all directions as Tarbell approached the crosswalk. The world was moving at a perfectly normal pace. Yet for Tarbell it was operating so much slower; his heart hammered in his chest, as he knew he was about to come face-to-face with the Dread Pirate Roberts.
And then he did.
As Tarbell crossed the street, as if he were doing so in slow motion, he noticed every detail of his surroundings: the birds flapping through the air, the colors of the cars on the road, the chipped paint of the yellow crosswalk, and the man now walking into his path, who was wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved red T-shirt and had a brown laptop bag over his shoulder. Tarbell took another step forward into the median of the road and looked directly into his eyes as Ross looked back.
3:02 p.m.
Ross continued along the crosswalk and walked up to Bello Coffee. The coffee shop was bustling. Every seat was taken by someone with an open laptop or a mother with a stroller. He had told his employees the importance of being safe in a coffee shop, once offering Inigo this advice: “Take your laptop and find a spot in a cafe where your screen won’t be visible to anyone. Get a large coffee, sit down, and don’t get up except to stretch.” Given that there was nowhere for Ross to sit that adhered to that protocol, he turned around and walked back outside.
He had a lot on his mind, as always. He had made plans with Julia to video chat that evening.
“Can we skype tonight?” she had asked over e-mail.
“Sure, what time?”
“Is 8 my time good?”
“Sure, see you then,” he wrote, following up with a “:)” as he knew exactly what kind of Skyping they’d be doing.
The air was calm as Ross contemplated where to go next. He needed Wi-Fi but didn’t have many options at 3:00 p.m. in this sleepy corner of the city. He looked to his left, in the direction he had just come from, and knew Cup Coffee Bar had closed an hour earlier. Straight ahead of him cars streamed by, a woman walked with her daughter, and two men sat on a wooden park bench, one staring at his laptop, the other looking at his phone. Ross continued to scan the street, his eyes sliding past the burrito shop, then past the local pub, until he turned to his right, staring up at the Glen Park Public Library.
3:03 p.m.
Jared and Thom sat on the bench, gazing straight ahead as if they were in a staring contest with the coffee shop. Jared’s laptop was open, and Thom had his smartphone in his hand. They could see Ross walk out of the café, holding on to his bag. Ross was peering around, and then he looked directly in the direction of Jared and Thom as they both quickly looked away, trying to seem inconspicuous.
“I bet he’s looking for Wi-Fi,” Jared whispered under his breath to Thom. They watched out of the corners of their eyes as Ross walked to his right, toward the public library.
At almost that exact moment Tarbell appeared, his phone in his hand as he read updates from the undercover agents trailing Ross.
“Where’s he at?” Tarbell asked. Jared motioned toward the library.
At that moment Tarbell, who had gone by the book his entire life, had to decide what to do. He had studied and practiced for every single moment of his life, no matter how small. Yet now, he didn’t know if he should follow the rules or break them. He was fully aware that the local FBI office would be apoplectic if they knew he was
contemplating trying to arrest Ross Ulbricht without the SWAT team present. But he had no choice if he wanted to catch the Dread Pirate Roberts on the laptop. He looked down at Jared, then over to Thom, then to the library, and a thought rang out in his head: Fuck it.
“Go to the library and get in position,” he told Thom. Do nothing, say nothing, just blend in.
As Tarbell looked down at his phone, he was fully aware that a few miles south of where he stood, at that very moment, dozens of SWAT team members were shuffling into a conference room at the local Bureau office, preparing to run through a drill for how they would apprehend Ross Ulbricht, guns drawn, the following day. He tapped out another e-mail to let his crew know the plan, that they were going into the library to try to capture Ross Ulbricht. This meant that the men in that SWAT team meeting would see the message too, and in a few minutes they would be running toward their cruisers, sirens blaring and lights flashing, racing north along the 101 freeway past the San Francisco airport in the direction of placid Glen Park, toward the little library.
3:06 p.m.
To the right of the library stacks, a couple of children sat at a small table with small chairs, quietly flipping the pages of small storybooks. A few other patrons milled about between the stacks. It was a diminutive library, reminiscent of the Good Wagon Books warehouse, where most of the sections were composed of only one or two bookshelves.
Ross walked toward a round beige table nestled between the science fiction section and the romance novels. He sat down, pulled his laptop out of his bag, and watched as the computer came to life.
3:08 p.m.
In the corner of the room, Brophy reached for his BlackBerry and sent a note out to the other FBI agents: “Seated NW corner.”
At the park bench in front of the library, Tarbell was pacing. DPR still wasn’t online. Jared looked up at Tarbell, then back to his laptop, the battery indicator now at 20 percent.