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1-Page Summary of American Kingpin

“The Amazon of Drugs”

Ross Ulbricht worked out of his apartment in Austin, Texas to create an online drug marketplace called the Silk Road. The website allowed users to sell illegal drugs anonymously and without government interference. Ross believed that this was a way for people to freely buy and sell what they wanted without being subjected to laws he didn’t agree with. In order to bring down Ross’s business and close down the Silk Road, law enforcement officers from four different agencies had a huge task ahead of them.

The Physics Student

Ross Ulbricht was a libertarian who believed in the legalization of drugs. He also wanted to create an anonymous marketplace where people could buy and sell anything. In order to do this, he would need programming code for his site that used Tor and bitcoins so that people couldn’t trace transactions on his website.

The Silk Road

The Silk Road founder was not keen on revealing his plans. He built the site mostly by himself and taught himself programming languages as needed. The first product he sold were psychedelic mushrooms, which he grew in his own home.

The Silk Road was launched in January 2011. It didn’t have much publicity, but it quickly became popular. The founder used the screen name Altoid and left comments on a couple of forums about the website. Soon after that, he started to receive orders for mushrooms from customers who were looking to buy drugs online, and more dealers appeared with different types of drugs for sale. Eventually, people could also order body parts such as kidneys and livers through this site.

Media Blitz

In June 2011, a blogger wrote about the Silk Road on Gawker. This attracted attention from other sites and led to media coverage of the story. Thousands joined the site after this news was published. Senator Chuck Schumer held a press conference denouncing it and called for law enforcement to shut down Silk Road.

Ross Ulbricht knew he needed to be more secure. He had a government threat and hackers. He also didn’t have the coding skills required to protect himself, so he hired people who did. One of those people became his mentor and confidante, giving him advice on how to run Silk Road better. That person suggested that Ross use a fake name for security purposes in case something happened to him so someone else could take over the site. Ross used “SilkRoad” or “Admin” as screen names before this point, but when they decided on “Dread Pirate Roberts,” it gave them an opportunity to create the fiction that Dread Pirate Roberts was a title passed down from one man (Ross) who created the website and handed it off to another Dread Pirate Roberts (whoever took over after Ross’s arrest).

The Authorities

In 2012, a Homeland Security Investigations agent investigated packages that were seized at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The pieces contained small amounts of drugs, sometimes only a single pill. The agent persuaded the US Attorney’s office to open an investigation into the Silk Road. A team was formed in Baltimore by Homeland Security with support from the Drug Enforcement Administration and DEA agents joined it. One such DEA agent was Carl Force who had little respect for authority but did some unsanctioned digging into the Silk Road on his own using a pseudonym. He made contact with Dread Pirate Roberts through this alias and offered to buy out the site for $250,000 worth of bitcoin

The Pirate Makes Plans

By March of 2012, the Silk Road was ringing up half a million dollars in sales weekly. By 2013 it would reach $1 billion in annual sales and Ross Ulbricht (the founder) would make $100 million per year.