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

by Nick Bilton

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom—and almost got away with it
 
In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything—drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons—free of the government’s watchful eye.
 
It wasn’t long before the media got wind of the new Web site where anyone—not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers—could buy and sell contraband detection-free. Spurred by a public outcry, the federal government launched an epic two-year manhunt for the site’s elusive proprietor, with no leads, no witnesses, and no clear jurisdiction. All the investigators knew was that whoever was running the site called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts.
 
The Silk Road quickly ballooned into $1.2 billion enterprise, and Ross embraced his new role as kingpin. He enlisted a loyal crew of allies in high and low places, all as addicted to the danger and thrill of running an illegal marketplace as their customers were to the heroin they sold. Through his network he got wind of the target on his back and took drastic steps to protect himself—including ordering a hit on a former employee. As Ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren’t sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet.

Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, Vanity Fair correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It’s a story of the boy next door’s ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, anonymous, decentralized Web advocates and the old world of government control, order, and the rule of law. Filled with unforgettable characters and capped by an astonishing climax, American Kingpin might be dismissed as too outrageous for fiction. But it’s all too real.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143129028
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/29/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	46,944
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Nick Bilton is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, where he writes about technology, business, and culture, and a contributor at CNBC. He was a columnist for The New York Times for almost a decade. His most recent book, Hatching Twitter, was a New York Times bestseller. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, son, and dog, Pixel.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "American Kingpin"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Nick Bilton.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Author's Note xiii

Cast of Characters xv

Part I

1 The Pink Pill 3

2 Ross Ulbricht 13

3 Julia Vie 17

4 The Debate 21

5 Jared's Khat 24

6 The Bonfire 28

7 The Silk Road 33

8 Ross the Farmer 37

9 Opening Day of the Silk Road 42

10 What Goes Up Must Come Down 47

11 The Gawker Article 50

12 A Bull's-eye on My Back 54

13 Julia Tells Erica 58

14 What Have You Done?! 62

15 Jared and the Fifty-Ton Flamingo 65

16 From Austin to Australia 69

Part II

17 Carl Force's Tomorrow 75

18 Variety Jones and the Serpent 78

19 Jared Goes Shopping 83

20 The Dread Pirate Roberts 86

21 Carl Force Is Born Again 90

22 "O Captain, My Captain" 92

23 Ross, Hanged or Home 95

24 Carl, Eladio, and Nob 100

25 Jared's Chicago Versus Carl's Baltimore 103

26 The Mutiny 107

27 A Billion Dollars?! 112

28 The Aspiring Billionaire in Costa Rica 115

29 Variety Jones Goes to Scotland 119

30 The Armory Opens 123

31 Ross Silences Julia 127

Part III

32 Chris Tarhell, FBI 133

33 Ross Arrives in San Francisco 137

34 Chris in the Pit 142

35 Batten Down the Hatches! 145

36 Jared's Dead Ends 150

37 A Pirate in Dominica 153

38 Carl Likes DPR 159

39 Kidney for Sale! 165

40 The White House in Utah 171

41 Curtis Is Tortured 176

42 The First Murder 180

43 The FBI Joins the Hunt 184

44 Camping and the Ball 187

Part IV

45 Gary Alford, IRS 195

46 Life and Death on the Road 199

47 Gary's Big Change 203

48 Ross Goes Underground 207

49 Carl Switches Teams 213

50 A Parking Ticket on the Internet 217

51 Tarbell Finds a Mistake 221

52 The Fake IDs, Part One 225

53 The Deconfliction Meeting 231

54 Jared Becomes Cirrus 237

55 Julia Is Saved! Hallelujah! 242

56 The Fake IDs, Part Two 245

57 Onward to Federal Plaza 249

58 Julia Comes to San Francisco 254

59 I Am God 258

60 The Phone Call 262

61 The Good-bye Party 269

Part V

62 The Pink Sunset 275

63 Carla Sophia 279

64 FeLiNa 282

65 Arrested 290

66 The Laptop 293

67 Ross Locked Up 296

68 United States of America v. Ross William Ulbricht 300

69 To Catch a Pirate 304

70 Sentencing 307

71 The Plural of Mongoose 310

72 The Museum 313

73 The Others 316

Notes on Reporting 323

Acknowledgments 327

Bibliography 329

Editorial Reviews

An astonishingly well-researched narrative… Bilton's storytelling bears not so much as a trace of fat; the book he's conjured is so sharp and bright that it can be whipped through in the airport lounge before the flight takes off."
—The Globe and Mail

"Unbelievably riveting."
—CASEY NEISTAT

“I dare you not to read this book in one sitting. Masterfully reported and written, Bilton’s book drops you hard into the dark heart of the most famous Internet crime to date. A first-rate thrill.”
—JOSHUA COOPER RAMO, author of The Seventh Sense
 
“Nick Bilton has issued a fantastic modern true-crime thriller. The book moves at a stunning pace while packed full of exquisite reporting and detail. It delivers a vivid pic­ture of what happens when genius, ambition, and depravity collide, as well as a study on the complex interplay between good and evil.”
—ASHLEE VANCE, author of Elon Musk
 
“Engrossing, addictive, suspenseful, riveting—this book hooked me on page one and I could not put it down. American Kingpin is the best thing I’ve read in ages. I can’t recommend it highly enough.”
—DAN LYONS, author of Disrupted
 
“In American Kingpin, Nick Bilton again proves why he’s one of tech’s best storytellers with a stunningly researched and very scary portrait of the creator of a marketplace gone mad, and the oddly uncoordinated officers who took him down.”
—STEVEN LEVY, author of Hackers and In the Plex
 
“You’ll never forget Bilton’s portrait of the brilliant and brazen Ross Ulbricht, even after you sacrifice sleep in a sprint to the final pages and to see justice served.”
—BRAD STONE, author of The Everything Store and The Upstarts
 
“A rollicking, deftly reported tale of the Dark Web. I couldn’t put it down.”
—CLIVE THOMPSON, author of Smarter Than You Think
 
“Bilton’s investigation of the Silk Road is dramatic and, at times, nearly unbelievable. It puts your favorite thriller novels to shame.”
—STEVEN PRESSFIELD, author of Gates of Fire
 
“Nick Bilton is the only writer who could tell this suspenseful story. American Kingpin is engrossing at every turn, right up to its pulse-racing ending.”
—ADAM LASHINSKY, author of Wild Ride
 
“American Kingpin is both a staggering feat of investigative journalism and a triumph of edge-of-your-seat storytelling. This is what true-crime writing should be.”
—BRYAN BURROUGH, author of Days of Rage

"A fast-paced, readable true-crime tale that frames the likely future of the underground economy."
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

The weird details of the Silk Road bust and the contrast of the drugs and violence with Ulbricht's wholesome past and G-rated vocabulary…have proved irresistible to storytellers…But American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road…is the most comprehensive narrative thus far. The cast of characters has been established over the years since Ulbricht's arrest, but Bilton's impressive reporting gives more space to a story that could use some sprawl…Ulbricht's rise and fall is like the start-up hero's journey reflected in a black mirror.

The New York Times Book Review - Nitasha Tiku

★ 05/01/2017
Bilton (special correspondent, Vanity Fair; Hatching Twitter) has written the first and definitive account of the Dark Web drug bazaar known as the Silk Road. Thanks to his access to trial transcripts, web postings of Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, and interviews with government players and friends of Ulbricht, this book brims with fascinating detail. It alternates between accounts of baffled federal agents trying to identify the ghostly "Dread Pirate Roberts," Ulbricht's online persona, and his Libertarian upbringing and actions. Bilton excels in showing how Ulbricht, otherwise undistinguished professionally, recognized that warring government agencies, including corrupt agents, were unable to police the anonymous reaches of the Internet. Hiring worldwide help to run a marketplace in drugs, guns, and human organs, Ulbricht could demonstrate his superiority, change society, and get rich in Bitcoin. This deeply researched book is a pleasure to read and a nightmare foretold for law enforcement. VERDICT Highly recommended for true crime and technology fans.—Harry Charles, St. Louis

Library Journal

If you didn't know any better, you'd swear this story was the concoction of a Hollywood screenwriter. Narrator Will Damron embodies the determination and frustration of driven but flawed federal agents who sought to bring down the world's largest website for the purchase of illegal drugs, weapons, and even deadly poisons. What is truly frightening is that this is the true story of Ross Ulbricht, a bored, idealistic computer whiz who designed and ran the Silk Road, a part of the dark web, in an effort to cause a worldwide revolution and make all drugs legal. He made hundreds of millions of dollars but spent almost none of it. Damron effectively embodies Ulbricht's idiosyncrasies and those of the federal agents who pursued him. Damron makes them all more human. M.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

If you didn't know any better, you'd swear this story was the concoction of a Hollywood screenwriter. Narrator Will Damron embodies the determination and frustration of driven but flawed federal agents who sought to bring down the world's largest website for the purchase of illegal drugs, weapons, and even deadly poisons. What is truly frightening is that this is the true story of Ross Ulbricht, a bored, idealistic computer whiz who designed and ran the Silk Road, a part of the dark web, in an effort to cause a worldwide revolution and make all drugs legal. He made hundreds of millions of dollars but spent almost none of it. Damron effectively embodies Ulbricht's idiosyncrasies and those of the federal agents who pursued him. Damron makes them all more human. M.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

2017-03-07
Engrossing account of the rise and fall of Ross Ulbricht, founder of the now-shuttered online drug bazaar the Silk Road.Vanity Fair special correspondent Bilton (Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal, 2013, etc.) ties his interest in technology to a gritty pursuit tale of the drug underground as it migrated to cyberspace. As the author writes, the Silk Road "could be living proof, Ross fantasized, that legalizing drugs was the best way to stop violence and oppression in the world." Seemingly another bright, restless millennial, Ulbricht enacted his libertarian beliefs by founding a drug marketplace intended to make purchasing safer and undermine the drug war. Utilizing the "Dark Web" technologies of TOR and bitcoin, Ulbricht's site opened in 2011 and immediately thrived: "Hundreds of people were now selling drugs on the site, and thousands were buying." An outlaw subculture quickly developed, drawing in dealers, acolytes, hackers, and scammers; Ulbricht encouraged the notoriety, developing a menacing alter ego, the "Dread Pirate Roberts." However, he overestimated his ability to avoid law enforcement scrutiny, beginning with low-level mail inspectors suddenly finding numerous identical envelopes of Ecstasy: "Ross had picked a fight with the biggest bully on earth, and the bully was about to punch back." Chapters generally alternate between Ulbricht's efforts to stabilize the website while covering his tracks with a self-consciously romantic fugitive lifestyle and the increasingly frantic investigation, which involved competing teams from different agencies (a few of whose members were later convicted of siphoning Ulbricht's bitcoins and other malfeasance). Ultimately, the Silk Road spun out of Ulbricht's control, to the point that he was soliciting murders for hire and allowing disguised federal agents to infiltrate the site's administration. Dramatically arrested by the FBI in a San Francisco library in 2013, he received a life sentence. Bilton writes in a breezy, colloquial style, punctuated by occasional pulpy asides, and he aptly manages the technological arcana of this sprawling story. A fast-paced, readable true-crime tale that frames the likely future of the underground economy.

Kirkus Reviews