- Jul 27, 2015
- 5,458
The read is long...very long in fact as it includes 2 parts but it's one of the most interesting ones I read in a long time and I do highly recommend it as it's many times like reading a very good action novel.
The full source is found in the end of the post...Enjoy!
By Joshua Bearman on WIRED
The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1
Quote : " THE POSTMAN ONLY rang once. Curtis Green was at home, greeting the morning with 64 ounces of Coca-Cola and powdered mini doughnuts. Fingers frosted synthetic white, he was startled to hear someone at the door. It was 11 am, and surprise visits were uncommon at his modest house in Spanish Fork, Utah, a high-desert hamlet in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains. Green ambled over, adjusting his camouflage fanny pack. At 47 his body was already failing him: He was overweight, with four herniated discs, a bum knee, and gleaming white dental implants. To get around he sometimes borrowed his wife’s pink cane. Green waddled to the door, his two Chihuahuas, Max and Sammy, following attentively. He peeked through the front window and caught a glimpse of the postman hurrying off. The guy was wearing a US Postal Service jacket, but with sneakers and jeans. Weird, Green thought. Also odd was a van Green noticed across the street, one he’d never seen before: white, with no logos or rear windows.Green opened the door. It was winter, a day of high clouds and low sun. A pale haze washed out the white-tipped Spanish Fork Peak rising above the valley. Green looked down. On the porch sat a Priority box about Bible-sized. His little dogs watched him pick up the mystery package. It was heavy, had no return address, and bore a postmark from Maryland.Green considered the package and then took it into his kitchen, where he tore it open with scissors, sending up a plume of white powder that covered his face and numbed his tongue. Just then the front door burst open, knocked off its hinges by a SWAT team wielding a battering ram. Quickly the house was flooded by cops in riot gear and black masks, weapons at the ready. There was Green, covered in cocaine and flanked by two Chihuahuas. “On the floor!” someone yelled. Green dropped the package where he stood. When he tried to comfort his pups, a dozen guns took aim: “Keep your hands where we can see them!”
...The fact was, Green wasn’t just your average Mormon grandpa. Over the past few months he had been handling customer service for the massive online enterprise called Silk Road. It was like a clandestine eBay, a digital marketplace for illicit trade, mostly drugs. Green, under the handle Chronicpain, had parlayed his extensive personal narcotics knowledge he’d been on pain meds for years into a paying gig working for the site.
The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
Quote : " THE DESCENT WAS stunning. Chris Tarbell, a special agent from the New York FBI office, was in a window seat, watching a green anomaly in a sea of blue as it resolved into Iceland’s severe, beautiful landscape. On approach to Keflavík International Airport, he could now see the city of Reykjavik coming into view. And just beyond that, perched on the edge of a moss-covered lava field: the massive matte-white box that housed the Thor Data Center. That’s why Tarbell and two US attorneys had come all this way. Thor was the home of a computer with a very important IP address, one that Tarbell and his FBI colleagues had discovered back in New York the hidden server for a vast online criminal enterprise called Silk Road. They’d been working on this case for months, as had federal agents across the country, in a wide-ranging digital manhunt for Dread Pirate Roberts: the mysterious proprietor of Silk Road, a clandestine online marketplace that functioned like an anonymous Amazon for criminal goods and services. Silk Road investigations had been launched by Homeland Security, the Secret Service, and the DEA office in Baltimore, where an agent named Carl Force had been working an undercover identity as a Silk Road smuggler for more than a year.
...TARBELL AND DER-YEGHIAYAN joined the action in the library, taking a spot on the stairs at a landing. Der-Yeghiayan was alarmed at how fast his battery was draining, but he kept communicating with DPR, making sure he logged in to the admin panel. Tarbell peered over the last step but couldn’t see much. Somewhere in the stacks was the other agent, but Tarbell wasn’t sure where. Everyone was communicating electronically, trying to coordinate, caught blind by the moment. Minutes ticked past. Der-Yeghiayan and DPR still chatted. His battery dropped further. Tarbell heard from the plainclothes surveillance team they were in the library too. Tarbell didn’t know where exactly, because he didn’t know what they looked like. (Such is the very low profile kept by field surveillance.) A few miles away, the giant squad of SWAT teams was approaching San Francisco. All the local supervisors were in that armada, so technically Tarbell was in charge here on the ground. He took a deep breath and sent a message: “Let the guy run if you have to, but don’t let that computer close.” This was the moment. Tarbell didn’t know it, but the surveillance agents had designed a new arrest on the spot. He had no idea what would happen when he took a deep breath and told everyone: Go. "
Source :
The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1
The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
The full source is found in the end of the post...Enjoy!
By Joshua Bearman on WIRED
The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1
Quote : " THE POSTMAN ONLY rang once. Curtis Green was at home, greeting the morning with 64 ounces of Coca-Cola and powdered mini doughnuts. Fingers frosted synthetic white, he was startled to hear someone at the door. It was 11 am, and surprise visits were uncommon at his modest house in Spanish Fork, Utah, a high-desert hamlet in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains. Green ambled over, adjusting his camouflage fanny pack. At 47 his body was already failing him: He was overweight, with four herniated discs, a bum knee, and gleaming white dental implants. To get around he sometimes borrowed his wife’s pink cane. Green waddled to the door, his two Chihuahuas, Max and Sammy, following attentively. He peeked through the front window and caught a glimpse of the postman hurrying off. The guy was wearing a US Postal Service jacket, but with sneakers and jeans. Weird, Green thought. Also odd was a van Green noticed across the street, one he’d never seen before: white, with no logos or rear windows.Green opened the door. It was winter, a day of high clouds and low sun. A pale haze washed out the white-tipped Spanish Fork Peak rising above the valley. Green looked down. On the porch sat a Priority box about Bible-sized. His little dogs watched him pick up the mystery package. It was heavy, had no return address, and bore a postmark from Maryland.Green considered the package and then took it into his kitchen, where he tore it open with scissors, sending up a plume of white powder that covered his face and numbed his tongue. Just then the front door burst open, knocked off its hinges by a SWAT team wielding a battering ram. Quickly the house was flooded by cops in riot gear and black masks, weapons at the ready. There was Green, covered in cocaine and flanked by two Chihuahuas. “On the floor!” someone yelled. Green dropped the package where he stood. When he tried to comfort his pups, a dozen guns took aim: “Keep your hands where we can see them!”
...The fact was, Green wasn’t just your average Mormon grandpa. Over the past few months he had been handling customer service for the massive online enterprise called Silk Road. It was like a clandestine eBay, a digital marketplace for illicit trade, mostly drugs. Green, under the handle Chronicpain, had parlayed his extensive personal narcotics knowledge he’d been on pain meds for years into a paying gig working for the site.
The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
Quote : " THE DESCENT WAS stunning. Chris Tarbell, a special agent from the New York FBI office, was in a window seat, watching a green anomaly in a sea of blue as it resolved into Iceland’s severe, beautiful landscape. On approach to Keflavík International Airport, he could now see the city of Reykjavik coming into view. And just beyond that, perched on the edge of a moss-covered lava field: the massive matte-white box that housed the Thor Data Center. That’s why Tarbell and two US attorneys had come all this way. Thor was the home of a computer with a very important IP address, one that Tarbell and his FBI colleagues had discovered back in New York the hidden server for a vast online criminal enterprise called Silk Road. They’d been working on this case for months, as had federal agents across the country, in a wide-ranging digital manhunt for Dread Pirate Roberts: the mysterious proprietor of Silk Road, a clandestine online marketplace that functioned like an anonymous Amazon for criminal goods and services. Silk Road investigations had been launched by Homeland Security, the Secret Service, and the DEA office in Baltimore, where an agent named Carl Force had been working an undercover identity as a Silk Road smuggler for more than a year.
...TARBELL AND DER-YEGHIAYAN joined the action in the library, taking a spot on the stairs at a landing. Der-Yeghiayan was alarmed at how fast his battery was draining, but he kept communicating with DPR, making sure he logged in to the admin panel. Tarbell peered over the last step but couldn’t see much. Somewhere in the stacks was the other agent, but Tarbell wasn’t sure where. Everyone was communicating electronically, trying to coordinate, caught blind by the moment. Minutes ticked past. Der-Yeghiayan and DPR still chatted. His battery dropped further. Tarbell heard from the plainclothes surveillance team they were in the library too. Tarbell didn’t know where exactly, because he didn’t know what they looked like. (Such is the very low profile kept by field surveillance.) A few miles away, the giant squad of SWAT teams was approaching San Francisco. All the local supervisors were in that armada, so technically Tarbell was in charge here on the ground. He took a deep breath and sent a message: “Let the guy run if you have to, but don’t let that computer close.” This was the moment. Tarbell didn’t know it, but the surveillance agents had designed a new arrest on the spot. He had no idea what would happen when he took a deep breath and told everyone: Go. "
Source :
The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1
The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall
