July 24, 2026 • 41 mins
Is Bitcoin dangerous to America? In the third and final installment of Crypto, we follow the hunt for Silk Road’s captain Dread Pirate Roberts, dig deep into the murder-for-hire accusations against him, and show how Bitcoin was used to take down the criminals.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is Red Pilled America.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Before we start the show, just a reminder to share, like,
and subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening to it,
and please give us a five star rating. Help us
save America one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Bitcoin's is a remarkable cryptographic achievement. Previously on Red Pilled America.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Do you think this is a currency, a currency that's
really going to work eventually?
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Well, I think it is working.
Speaker 5 (00:30):
A look for colleagues to join with me in introducing.
Speaker 6 (00:34):
A bill to outlaw cryptocurrency?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Is Bitcoin dangerous to America?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Throughout history, people have used all kinds of physical currency.
Speaker 7 (00:44):
The one thing that's missing but that will soon be developed,
is a reliable e cash.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Satoshi Nakamoto wrote a white paper entitled Bitcoin a Peer
to peer Electronic hash System.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Because of the two thousand and eight financial crisis in
which bitcoin was created and can be seen as a
catalyst for interest than Bitcoin, people have decided that perhaps
this monetary system is not the best one.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
I was looking for more places than bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Well I came up the product that would eventually make
Silk Road and national headline were the drugs. Many believe
bitcoin is dangerous because it lets criminals get away with
dirty deeds anonymously. President Trump is one of those people.
Speaker 7 (01:28):
Crypto assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and
other illegal activity, rights the president.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
But the President is getting some bad advice on this topic.
And we know this because it was bitcoin's lack of
complete anonymity that saved Curtis Green from spending perhaps the
rest of his life behind bars. I'm Patrick CORELCI and
this is Red Pilled America. It's our second episode looking
into the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. In part one, we explained how
(01:57):
we've been hearing a lot of concern about the new
Internet cash called Bitcoin, so we wanted to find find
out if it was really dangerous to America. To do this,
we first needed to understand what money actually is, so
we started by delving into the origin of cash. Throughout history,
people used all kinds of things as currency. Indians used
shell wampum, Ethiopians used rock salt, Malaysians even used crocodile figurines,
(02:23):
and practically everyone used gold and silver. Each of these
currencies had value because the people agreed they had value. Eventually,
gold and silver became one of the most universal forms
of currency, but Over time, even these precious metals became
difficult to handle. The Federal Reserve began circulating money, with
each bill representing a portion of gold held in our
(02:44):
US treasury. This gold backed currency system was the norm
for many years until President Nixon dropped this so called
gold standard in nineteen seventy one, and from then on,
our paper money was backed by a promise from the
US government. By the early eighties, a small group of
privacy enthusiasts began to f They were concerned about how
(03:05):
the government could easily track every financial transaction, so they
began developing this concept of an anonymous digital cache outside
of Big brother's watchful eye. They called themselves cipherpunks, and
by the late nineties a few of them actually tried
to market their digital cash idea, but the demand for
an internet currency wouldn't arise until the two thousand and
(03:26):
eight financial crisis. That's when a mysterious figure named Setoshi
Nakamoto developed the idea for Bitcoin, an Internet cash that
could bypass the Federal Reserve. Satoshi's technology removed the need
for banks by using a network of computers to automate
the banking system's accounting function, but Bitcoin needed a large
(03:47):
scale test case to prove its utility. That would come
with the launch of silk Road, an anonymous marketplace on
the dark Web, a portion of the Internet that is
invisible to regular Internet browsers and where anonymity is sacrosancd.
Curtis Green, an early bitcoin enthusiast, was drawn to silk
Road's message boards because it was a hot spot for
(04:08):
people interested in cryptocurrency. But silk road quickly became the
eBay for selling illegal drugs with bitcoin as the currency.
The administrator of the site eventually made Curtis a moderator
of a new community message board that helped people on
the site that were showing signs of self harm. But
Curtis would soon find out that by participating in silk Road,
(04:30):
he put his life in jeopardy. In early twenty eleven,
at about the time that Curtis Green became the moderator
of silk Road's harm reduction forum, news of the site's
existence hit the media.
Speaker 8 (04:51):
There really is something exciting about buying stuff online. You
pull the trigger, click the purchase confirmed button, then comes
that unbearable three to seven day weight, and finally, the
package of your new shoes from Zappo's those books you
ordered from Amazon, and then there's your LSD. You heard right,
pot acid cocaine delivered right to the front door in
(05:13):
a small, inconspicuous envelope from silk Road. The transactions are
anonymous and the website's owner claims untraceable. That is, if
you can figure out how to get to the website.
Adrian Chen wrote a piece about silk Road for Gawker
dot Com. Adrianchen is in our New York bureau. Adrian, welcome,
Thank you, so tell us more about this website, silk Road.
(05:35):
How is it even possible that this site exists? I mean,
this is all totally illegal, right.
Speaker 9 (05:40):
It is illegal, and the only way that it possibly
exists is the fact that the people on it think
that they are completely anonymous. They are using technologies like
tor and only exchanging in the untraceable digital currency Bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
The shaker here was not that you could acquire illegal
drugs online. People have been doing that on places like
Craigslist for years. No real story here was that illegal
drugs could be purchased online using bitcoin, and many believe
that this new internet cash was entirely untraceable.
Speaker 8 (06:12):
And explain to us what a bitcoin is.
Speaker 9 (06:14):
A bitcoin is a virtual currency that is basically the
digital equivalent of cash. It's completely peer to peer. There
are no banks acting as middleman. Transaction goes right from
buyer to seller, just like a cash transaction in the
real world.
Speaker 8 (06:29):
So how do you even buy a bitcoin?
Speaker 9 (06:31):
Bitcoins are for sale on all sorts of exchanges. You
can use, dollars, you can use, you know, most other
real world currencies, and they are buying and selling them
on markets online just like a real world stock exchange.
But there's not a lot of things that you can
buy with them so far, except, you know, apparently illegal drugs.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
The development whipped New York Senator Chuck Schumer into action.
He called a press conference to discuss Silk Road.
Speaker 7 (06:57):
It's a certifiable one stop shop for illegal drugs that
represents the most brazen attempt to pedal drugs online that
we have ever seen. It's more brazen than anything else.
By light years.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
The dark web marketplace was not so dark anymore.
Speaker 6 (07:12):
LSD, cocaine, and ecstasy are now just a click of
a mouse away. A new website sells illegal drugs to
anyone who was willing to pay. But as it team
investigator Michael George on Coover. The people who run the
site stand by what they're doing, and for now business
is booming.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
With all of the hoopla, the public was not only
introduced to the site, we also met the Silk Road
administrator for the very first time.
Speaker 10 (07:36):
Dan van Baummel is a recovering addict and an addiction
therapist to Turning Point of Tampa. He says silk Road
is a dangerous new concept.
Speaker 11 (07:44):
A drug addict will look for any way to get
their addiction fed, and so when you provide an avenue
that makes it easier for them, they're going to abuse it.
Speaker 10 (07:57):
An administrator who runs the website disagrees. He answered my
questions by email, though he wouldn't give us his none.
He writes that silk Road is satisfying people and enriching
their lives. I asked the administrator of the site about
the atticts who could die because a products sold through
silk Road. He said, quote, I'm so sorry if someone
you know has been hurt by drugs, But it's my
(08:17):
sincere hope that by making drugs available in a safe,
secure and predictable way, that we will eliminate the violence
and danger of obtaining and using drugs through traditional methods.
Even the administrator of the website admitted to me he's
not sure how long silk Road will last, but in
his own words, he says it's worth the risk.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
I think Chuck Schumer get the best advertising for the
site that anybody could.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Again, Curtis Green, author of silk Road Takedown, you.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Know, instead of keeping it quiet, he goes to the
world and says, look at this side, Look what you
can buy, look what you can do, look at all this,
and then that droves tens of thousands of people to decide.
That's kind of amazing how he brought so much attention
to that you can want people looking at.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
And Curtis is right before Schumer's press conference, Google registered
very little public interest in the search term silk Road. However,
after the senator's media blitz, web searches for the site's spiked.
But perhaps even more notable was the curiosity of this
new Internet cash. Google searches for the term bitcoin dwarfed
that of silk Road. The first major test case for
(09:29):
this new Internet cash was Undeniable. Bitcoin was a smashing
success in the free market of the dark web, so
it should come as no surprise that bitcoin became a
major target of our government and Curtis would eventually find
himself in the crosshairs. There's nothing more that makes me
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Speaker 2 (11:00):
Welcome back. I'm Adriana Cortez. So after a story about
silk Road hit the news, New York Senator Chuck Schumer
held a press conference about the dark web marketplace. People
have been acquiring illegal drugs online for years, but silk
Road was something new. It used the new internet cash
bitcoin as the only way to purchase products on the site,
(11:22):
and this new technological innovation freaked the government out.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
And I think what really bothered them was that at
the beginning, people thought Bitcoin was totally anonymous. It is.
You couldn't get more non anonymous at all. Cash is
ten times more anonymous than Bitcoin is because everything on
the Bitcoin letter stays there forever.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
What Curtis means here is that every Bitcoin transaction that
has ever been made lives on a publicly viewable ledger
called the blockchain. This is a crucial point that eventually
saved Curtis from spending the rest of his life behind bars.
To grasp its significance. To understand what this so called
blockchain thing is, you can literally spend months on just
(12:09):
this topic alone. So I'm going to keep it really
simple here so you not only get a feel for
this groundbreaking technology, but also understand how blockchain is kind
of like the DNA of currency. So what is blockchain?
As you know by now, bitcoin is Internet cash, and
(12:30):
blockchain is a technology that allows Bitcoin to be transferred
from one person to another. Before Bitcoin arrived, if I
wanted to transfer money to you from a distance, I
needed to use a trusted third party what we know
of as a bank, or a credit card company or PayPal.
To illustrate this, let's take, for example, the many people
that bought are awesome Red Pilled America baseball cap. To
(12:53):
buy it, many of you went to Redpilled America dot com,
clicked the shop button, selected the hat, went into your
pocket or purse, pulled out your wallet, grabbed your debit card,
and entered the number into our website. You eventually clicked
a button that told your bank to transfer a specific
amount of money from your bank account to our bank account.
Both of our banks were the trusted third parties that
(13:14):
recorded this transaction by logging it into our account ledger,
or what we refer to as our bank statement. The
process of buying this same hat works differently in the
world of bitcoin. Instead of a bank account, people that
own some of this Internet cash typically store in a
digital account called a bitcoin wallet. That wallet can live
on your computer, your smartphone, or a separate hard drive
(13:36):
that's not connected to the Internet. Just like your bank
account has a number, your bitcoin wallet has a unique
series of letters and numbers called a wallet address. When
you send me bitcoin to purchase our red pilled America hat,
for example, there is no bank middleman that records the transaction.
The transaction is instead performed by a decentralized system of
(13:57):
computers and is recorded to the public ledger called the blockchain.
This removes the middleman bank and the large fees they
deduct with every purchase. The blockchain is basically one big
banking statement for all bitcoin transactions. Since I don't have
the luxury of drawing this out on a whiteboard, I'm
going to explain how blockchain technology works through a visual
(14:19):
analogy without boring you with the technical details. This is
how blockchain works. Let's say I give you one hundred bitcoins.
Now imagine that transaction is written down on a piece
of paper. The paper is placed into a clear box.
That box is sealed so that it can never be opened,
(14:41):
and then the clear box is placed on a table
that everyone can see. Anyone can look into the clear
box and see the amount of money that was exchanged,
who sent it, and who received it? Following me, Then,
let's say that from the bitcoins I gave you, you
turn around and give ten of those bitcoins to a friend.
That transaction is also recorded onto a piece of paper.
(15:01):
That paper is placed in into a different clearbox. That
box is sealed so that it can never be opened.
Then the second box is stacked like a lego brick
on top of the first box. Again, anyone can look
into the first and second box and follow each transaction,
but no one can open the boxes and make edits
to the exchange. The transactions are immortalized in this blockchain. Next,
(15:27):
your friend takes five of the bitcoins that you gave
him and turns around and gives them to me. Again,
that transaction is recorded onto a piece of paper. The
paper is placed into a new clearbox. That box is
sealed so that it can never be opened and the
transaction inside can never be altered. And then this third
box is stacked like a lego brick on top of
(15:47):
the second box, which is on top of the first box.
Every future transaction of these bitcoins are recorded in a
similar way and stacked on top of the last transaction.
Anyone can look into every single clear box and follow
each transaction, but no one can make a change to
any of the past exchanges. That is the blockchain. It's
(16:08):
a complete history of all transactions ever made with bitcoin,
and this history can never be changed or hacked. If
you gave five bitcoins to someone three years ago, you
can go back to the blockchain and see that transaction forever.
This is an effect what the blockchain computer program does.
It records and creates a history of every single Bitcoin
(16:29):
transaction that has ever been made, and that history can
be tracked and never be changed. It's permanent. You may
remember from part one that the very first bitcoin transaction
was when the founder of bitcoin, Satoshi na Kimoto, sent
ten bitcoins to the cipherpunk. How Finny that exact transaction
(16:51):
can still be seen in the blockchain. In fact, it's
the very first lego block in the long chain of
bitcoin transactions that have occurred ever since. By storing transactions
in this fashion, the blockchain can he keeps track of
how many bitcoins everyone has, just like a bank statement
keeps track of how much money you have in the bank. Now,
you may say, yuck, I don't want everyone knowing that
(17:11):
seven years ago I purchased nosehair clippers from overstock dot
com for three bitcoins. Well, you don't have to worry
about that. First, the blockchain doesn't record what you purchased
unless you write it in as a note, kind of
like writing in the memo section of a banking check. Second,
the blockchain does not record the buyer's name or the
seller's name in the transaction. It instead records the bitcoin
(17:33):
wallet address of the buyer and the bitcoin wallet address
of the seller. It's like recording the banking account numbers
with no attached name to either account. So the only
practical way that someone would know that you bought nosehair
clippers seven years ago with three bitcoins is if the
person knew your bitcoin wallet address to tie you to
the purchase. Otherwise the transaction is anonymous. This is what
(17:55):
Curtis meant when he said, at the beginning.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
People thought bitcoin was totally anonymous. You couldn't get more
non anonymous at all. Cash is ten times more anonymous
than Bitcoin is because everything on the Bitcoin leader stays
there forever.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
If you, let's say, transfer fifty coins from your bitcoin
wallet address to a cocaine vendor on Silk Road, that transaction,
along with your Bitcoin wallet address, was forever recorded on
the blockchain. All an FBI agent would need to do
is find out who owns that Bitcoin wallet address, and
they could tie you to the purchase of an illegal drug.
(18:31):
But finding out who owns the wallet is the challenge.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
So all you need is if you've found a Bitcoin
address that I use, you could see that whole history
forever at All you need to do is attach a
name to that address, and those theaterything. So at the beginning,
they thought bitcoin was totally anonymous, and that scared the government.
They're like, oh my gosh, they're going to be able
to do this. We won't be able to do anything.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
After Schumer's big media blitz as twenty eleven, progressed, Curtis
continued acting as a moderator for silk Roads harm Reduction Form.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
And I wanted to help people that had questions and
track the medical background and to help them if you know,
if they wanted wanted to do it suicide or they
were wanting to think about doing drugs, I wouldn't hear
them away from it.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
But while Curtis was volunteering as a foreign moderator, several
federal task forces were being assembled to find the captain
of silk Road. The site was an entirely new thing.
It was an anonymous marketplace on the encrypted dark Web
using bitcoin to buy and sell illegal drugs. The government
didn't know who was running the site, or even know
how to find out who was manning the wheel, because
(19:42):
Bitcoin and the dark Web were hiding the identity of
the sellers, purchasers, and the site administrators. The emergence of
this new cryptocurrency woke up every law enforcement agency in
the government. Two separate federal task forces were formed to
find the mastermind behind silk Road, one in Baltimore and
another New York. They included agents from the doj, FBI,
(20:04):
Homeland Security, DIA, Secret Service, Treasury Department and the Postal Inspector.
That's how much the government feared the power of this
new Internet cash. One of their primary objectives was to
shut down not only Silk Road but also Bitcoin.
Speaker 12 (20:22):
The first time I ever heard the word bitcoin was
back in twenty twelve when I was a federal prosecutor
at the US Department of Justice.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
That's former Department of Justice prosecutor Katie Hahn giving a
speech published in December twenty eighteen. She led an investigation
involving Silk Road.
Speaker 12 (20:39):
And I heard the word bitcoin because I was asked
to prepare an investigation in a case against it and
to help shut it down.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
By the time twenty twelve rolled along, Silk Road had
become more than just an anonymous marketplace. It had become
a social gathering spot of libertarian minded people, with the
Silk Road Administrator as their spiritual leader. The purveyor of
Silk Road, no doubt recognized his growing prominence, and on
February fifth, twenty twelve, the Silk Road Administrator announced his
(21:15):
new name as Dread Pirate Roberts or DPR for short.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
I know who you are.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Your cruelty reveals everything You'll The Dread pirate Roberts aquitit
with pride?
Speaker 13 (21:28):
What can I do for you?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Dread Pirate Roberts was a fictitious character from the novel
and movie The Princess Bride. In the story, the original
dread Pirate Roberts was a feared pirate that developed a
near mythical reputation because of his ruthlessness and fighting prowess
and eyes.
Speaker 13 (21:43):
You know Roberts.
Speaker 8 (21:44):
But how's that possible? Since he's been moralding twenty years
and jo only left me five years ago.
Speaker 13 (21:49):
Roberts are growing so rich he wants to retire.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Once he pillaged enough money, he retired to enjoy his riches,
passing on his name and persona to another chosen person,
and the cycle would repeat through each successor.
Speaker 13 (22:01):
So he took me to his cabin told me a secret.
I am not the dread Pirate Roberts, he said, I
inherited the ship from the previous dread Pire Roberts, just
as you will inherit it from me. The man I
inherited from was not the real dread Pirate Roberts Eason.
His name was Kamabu. The real Roberts has been retired
fifteen years and living like a king of pat Gun.
Then he explained that the name was the important thing
(22:22):
for inspiring a necessary fear. So we sailed ashore, took
an entirely new crew, and he stayed aboard for a
while as first mate all the time, according me, Roberts.
Once the crew believed he left the ship, and I
have been Roberts ever since.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Dread Pirate Roberts or DPR, became the primary voice of
Silk Road, posting grand statements on the site's community forum.
He claimed Silk Road was built on libertarian principles and
saw it as a grand experiment in free market principles.
DPR felt that the war on drugs was a massive
failure and that people should be able to put in
their bodies what they see fit, as long as they
(23:01):
weren't hurting anyone else. DPR even had a book club
where he promoted the study of Austrian economics, a form
of libertarian free markets. As the site progressed, Curtis was
in regular contact with DPR as a moderator of the
community boards. He knew that there was a lot of
illegal sales happening on Silk Road, but he rationalized his
involvement with the fact that he was only an unpaid
(23:23):
volunteer for the Harm Reduction Forum, but that would change
in November twenty twelve when DPR contacted Curtis and offered
him a job.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
The DPR reached out to me and he said, hey,
he said, your work is not done unnoticed. I think
that's the exact term he used, and said I would
like you to become on board as an admin to
help with customer service issues.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
The job description was to change passwords for users and
mediate disputes between buyers and sellers. DPR said the job
would take eighty hours a week and he'd pay Curtis
thirty two hundred dollars a month. Curtis wasn't sure if
he should take the job. It was one thing to
be a volunteer moderator of a forum, but it was
quite another to be a paid employee of a site
(24:10):
that was involved with the sale of illegal drugs. But
after the two thousand and eight financial crisis, jobs were
hard to come by and Curtis needed the money. After
consulting with his wife and brother and convincing himself that
he wasn't involved in the sale of drugs, he decided
to take the job as a paid employee, DPR required
that Curtis sent him a copy of his driver's license.
He hesitated doing this, but eventually chalked it up to
(24:32):
a normal procedure that any employer would require, so he
sent DPR a picture of his license. Now the purveyor
of the world's biggest online illegal drug marketplace knew his
name and where he lived. As a customer service representative
for the site, DPR gave Curtis administrator access to Silk.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
Road, and this was the first time might actually get
seed it back again.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Curtis's relationship with DPR grew, but what he didn't know
was it, in just over two months, his boss was
going to target him for assassination. Do you want to
hear red Pilled America stories ad free? Then become a
backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilldamerica dot com and click
(25:15):
join in the topmenu. Join today and help us save
America one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Welcome back. So, in November twenty twelve, DPR hired Curtis
to work as a customer service representative for Silk Road.
As an employee, DPR required Curtis to send him a
copy of his driver's license. Now the purveyor of the
biggest online drug marketplace had his name and address, and
that was not a good place to be at for
(25:42):
what came next. On January seventeenth, twenty thirteen, Curtis received
a strange package at his front doorstep. The return address
carried the name Noob. Curtis heard rumors about Nob from
a Silk Road vendor. Nob was getting close with DPR
and was looking to sell high quantities of illegal drugs
(26:05):
to a Silk Road vendor. Why was Noob sending him
a package? He thought. He hesitated opening it, initially just
leaving it on a trash can, but ultimately his curiosity
got the best of him and he grabbed a knife
to open up the package. It was tightly wrapped, so
he wrestled with it to pry it open, and when
he did, the box burst open and a white powder
(26:26):
caked his face. Within seconds, he felt his face go numb,
but before he could react, his door was hit with
a battering ram and a full fleet of agents stormed
his house. Curtis was being raided by a federal task
force hunting for the Captain of Silk Road.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
When he first came bargin down my door. If you
have the mad abay man, I would push that upon
my worst enemy. It's something that he owned his shock,
and I was just willing to do whatever, say anything
to I'm trying to get myself out of his math.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Curtis says he hadn't ordered cocaine. He'd been set up
sort of. For a few weeks. A DEA agent by
the name of Carl Force had infiltrated the Silk Road
community under the user name Noob. Force was part of
the federal task force based in Baltimore that was investigating
Silk Road. To DPR, Nob portrayed himself as a big
(27:22):
time drug trafficker connected to the mafia that was not
looking for tiny sails like most of the site's vendors.
It wasn't worth his time. He was looking to move
kilos of cocaine. Nab got close to DPR and convinced
the Silk Road administrator to help him find a buyer
for his product, and DPR bit The Silk Road purveyor
connected Nob with a site vendor, but that vendor must
(27:45):
not have completely trusted the transaction, because instead of having
Knab mailed a cocaine directly to their address. The Silk
Road vendor had Knob send the cocaine to someone else,
and that someone else was Curtis. Now the Utah grandfather
was caught in the trap. When the task force rated
Curtis's house, his computer was running and he was logged
(28:06):
into silk Road. The federal agents likely assessed pretty quickly
that he wasn't the person that asked for the shipment
of cocaine. But the Federal task Force had hit a
gold mine, nonetheless, because they could see that Curtis had
administration privileges on the site, and this was a big deal,
especially for someone that had bad intentions. You see, silk
(28:27):
Road operated a lot like eBay. They used an escro
model to protect their buyers. When someone purchased something from
silk Road, the bitcoins weren't sent immediately to the cellar. Instead,
they were sent to silk Road where they sat in
their bitcoin wallet and escrow. Once the buyer received the shipment,
he sent a message to silk Road that the package
(28:48):
had arrived, and at that point the money was sent
from silk roads bitcoin wallet to the seller's bitcoin wallet.
So at any given time, there was a lot of
internet cash sitting in the site's wallet waiting for shipments
to be verified. And as you may remember, in Curtis's
new customer service role, he was responsible for mediating disputes
between buyers and sellers, so he had control of the
(29:10):
bitcoins that sat in the Silk Road wallet. After the
agent's interrogated Curtis, they arrested him and booked him in
a local jail. During that time, DPR tried to contact Curtis,
wondering why he hadn't been communicating with the customers, but
DPR's messages went unanswered, so dread pirate Roberts cut off
(29:35):
Curtis's access to Silk Road. When he was released from jail,
DEA agent Carl Force, demanded Curtis contact DPR and regained
access to the site. So Curtis did what he was told.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
I gave DPR this big, long winded I'm sorry, I
was gone. I screwed up, so YadA, YadA, YadA, And
so he gave me a new log in, he admonished
me and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Curtis gave the new log in to Carl Force, and
then a few days later he handed over the username
and password to a room full of roughly twenty Baltimore
federal agents. That's when Curtis's troubles got exponentially worse. As
he was meeting with the federal agents, someone began draining
bitcoins out of Silk Roads vendor accounts.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
What he did was he changed my use name of
password so I couldn't log in, and he sent all
the bitcoin. He drained all the big these bitcoin account
sent it to my account on the site, so it
looked like I was the guy who was doing it,
because I'm the one who could have done it had
(30:39):
I been a dishonest person. And then from my site
it went out to other exchanges or other lawls.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
They were stealing the internet cash and trying to pin
it on Curtis. It wasn't long before a site administrator
alerted DPR to the theft. They quickly performed an internal
investigation and came to the conclusion that Curtis was the thief,
having his full name in driver's license. They dug a
little deeper and found out that he'd been arrested a
(31:08):
few days earlier. DPR needed to do something about this
immediately because the heist was massive, Approximately twenty thousand bitcoins.
So to figure out how to handle this crisis, DPR
turned to a trusted Silk Road administrator that he looked
to as a mentor. After some back and forth, DPR
(31:28):
came to the conclusion that Curtis needed to be terminated.
So he decided to put a hit on Curtis. And
who did he turn to to take him out? He
contacted a mafia guy he knew, Knob, the same undercover
DEA agent Karl Force, that sent Curtis the cocaine. DPR
agreed to pay Nob eighty thousand dollars for Curtis's assassination,
(31:49):
with half up front and the other half when the
job was complete. DPR wired Knob forty thousand dollars from
an anonymous wire transfer service called Techno Cash Limited. Once
he received the money, Karl Force and other agents and
staged Curtis's death by physically torturing him to get a
picture of Curtis authentically distressed. Then they faked a picture
(32:10):
of him dead. Carl Force then sent the image to DPR,
and according to the Department of Justice, the Silk Road
administrator wired the remaining forty thousand dollars to Knob using
the same anonymous wire transfer service. Curtis was temporarily in
the clear with Silk Road because DPR thought he successfully
(32:31):
had him murdered. But Curtis now had perhaps an even
bigger problem to deal with. He was being framed for
the theft of roughly twenty thousand bitcoins.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
The government was positive that I was guilty of stealing
all this money, and they were doing everything in their
power to try to pen it on me.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Just a few weeks after Curtis's fake murder, in March
twenty thirteen, DPR had another crisis. A site user going
by the moniker Friendly Chemist claimed to have been fronted
seven hundred thousand dollars worth of drugs from a Hell's
Angel and was in partnership with another Silk Road vendor
to sell the drugs on the site. But now that
vendor had skipped town, leaving Friendly Chemists on the hook
(33:15):
to pay back the Hell's Angels. So Friendly Chemist told
DPR that if he didn't pay him for his loss,
he'd release identifying information for dozens of Silk Road vendors
and thousands of buyers. DPR asked Friendly Chemists to put
him in contact with the Hell's Angels to see if
he could work out something with them, and within a
few days, a user named Red and White contacted DPR,
(33:38):
claiming to be the Hell's Angels member that friended Friendly
chemists the illegal drugs. After a back and forth, DPR
proposed hiring the Hell's Angel to kill Friendly Chemist, fearing
he would follow through on his threats to release the
names of Silk Road vendors in their customers. When the
Hell's Angel gave DPR a cost of between a hundred
fifty thousand and three hundred thousand dollars to kill Friendly Chemist,
(34:01):
DPR responded, don't want to be a pain here, but
the price seems high. Not long ago, I had a
clean hit done for eighty thousand dollars. Are the prices
you quoted the best you can do? End quote. The
two agreed to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to
murder Friendly Chemist, which at the time was roughly sixteen
hundred and seventy bitcoins, so DPR paid Red and White
(34:24):
in bitcoins and waited for confirmation of the murder. A
day later, Red and White confirmed that he killed Friendly
Chemist and followed up with a picture of the deceased.
But now there was another problem. Apparently, while the killers
were torturing Friendly Chemist, he divulged that he was working
with another user by the name of Tony seventy six,
and the pair were together ripping off other Silk Road vendors.
(34:47):
DPR knew Tony seventy six that user ripped off Silk
Road customers a year earlier, to the tune of hundreds
of thousands of dollars. What luck it was for that
scammer to fall into DPR's lap. So dread pirate Roberts
calls for a hit on Tony seventy seve as well,
but the Hell's Angels Red and White comes back with
another complication. Tony seventy six lives with three other drug dealers,
(35:12):
so taking him out alone would be hard. What to do?
DPR decides to take them all out, and he sends
five hundred thousand dollars worth of bitcoin to Red and White.
A week later, the Hell's Angels Red and White confirms
the murder was completed with a message quote that problem
was dealt with end quote, And just like that, DPR
(35:32):
ordered and paid for the assassination of a total of
six people that were threatening his Silk Road empire. Apparently,
Silk Road went from a high minded libertarian marketplace to
a bloodthirsty drug cartel. Around this time, another silk Road
user named Death from Above approach DPR, claiming that he'd
(35:54):
reveal his identity to law enforcement unless he paid hundreds
of thousands of dollars. DPR didn't bite. As you can see,
DPR was constantly getting confronted with these kinds of situations.
With the murders and the thwarting of extortion, it appeared
that all of DPR's loose ends were tied up, but
behind the scenes, the federal investigation was gaining steam. By
(36:16):
May twenty thirteen, the federal task force from Baltimore and
the one from New York had already been sharing notes
in parallel. The NSA quietly made Bitcoin its number one priority,
and it began focusing on the digital currency. The agency's
surveillance program was reportedly code named Monkey Rocket, and it
targeted both Bitcoin and another cryptocurrency called Liberty Reserve. The
(36:40):
fruits of their labor became public in late May.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
US prosecutors have described Liberty Reserve as the financial hub
of the cybercrime world, based in Costa Rica. It's alleged
the currency transfer and payment processing company allowed its customers
to move money anonymously from one account to another via
the Internet with virtually no questions asked. US Attorney for
the Southern District of New York, York Pret Barrara.
Speaker 14 (37:04):
Today we announced charges in what may be the largest
international money laundering case ever brought by the United States. Specifically,
we unseal charges against Liberty Reserve and seven of its
principles and employees, who for years have operated one of
the world's most widely used digital currencies.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
The takedown included an outfit called Techno Cash. You may
remember that name. That's the same anonymous wire transfer service
DPR used to pay for his fake hit on Curtis Green.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Liberty Reserve allowed users to open accounts using fictitious names,
including Russian Hakka. One person was registered under the name
Joe Bogus with the address one two three Fake Main Street.
Forty five bank accounts have been restrained or seized. According
to the indictment, three Westpack accounts containing thirty eight million
dollars were involved in this scandal. The accounts were held
(37:54):
under the name Techno Cash Limited.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Having just used techno cash to pay for Curtis Green's murder.
It's highly likely that DPR was aware of the company
Andy's takedown. DPR must have been feeling the heat as
the months progressed. DPR was approached by yet another site
user looking for a payout, going by the name french Maid.
This user sent DPR a message saying quote, I have
(38:17):
received important information that you need to know a SAP.
He signed the note Carl. A few hours later, french
Maid followed up with DPR, claiming that his name was
not Carl, but rather Carlo Sophia. She claimed to have
access to an insider of the federal investigation into Silk Road.
This caught DPR's interest, and he began purchasing information from
(38:40):
french Maid with bitcoin. Do you remember what we said
about bitcoin being the DNA of currency. Well, anyway, we'll
get to that later. Even with a supposed insider feeding
DPR information, the investigation began closing in on a suspect
for dread Pirate Roberts. Their suspect was living in San
(39:01):
Francisco and his name was Ross Ulbricht, but the task
force didn't want to just arrest the guy. They wanted
to try to catch him in the act of operating
the Silk Road. By tracking his IP address, they learned
that Ross often logged in at the Glen Park Library
in San Francisco, So a team of federal agents set
up at the library ready to pounce, and when they did,
(39:23):
it set off a chain of events that showed that
the technology driving bitcoin could be viewed as the DNA
of currency and used to hunt down criminals. Really coming
up on part three of Crypto who Stole the Bitcoin
from Silk Road?
Speaker 12 (39:40):
Going back to the blockchain and looking at the stolen
twenty one thousand bitcoin, we saw that the patterns of
the theft were very different from French maize and death
from aboves. The stolen funds from the Silk Road accounts
went straight to one place.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Was there more than one DPR that you knew of?
Speaker 8 (39:59):
As I know it?
Speaker 5 (40:03):
That kind of took on the role.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Who was the Hell's Angel hitman?
Speaker 9 (40:06):
Why do they target it? Because Wall Street wanted to
destoy bitcoin before it could get big enough to compete
for them, Because a lot of people don't want to
have to deal with central bankers.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Did anyone really get murdered?
Speaker 10 (40:17):
They needed a scapegoat, and Ross's their scapegoat, and I think,
I personally think it was because of the bitcoin.
Speaker 5 (40:23):
And the real question becomes is just like armies, you know,
it's illegal to have a private army in the United States,
should it be illegal to have private money?
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Is bitcoin really dangerous for America?
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned
and produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adrianna Cortez of
Informed Ventures. Now. You can get ad free access to
our entire archive of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber.
To subscribe, visit Red Pilled America dot com and click
join in the top menu. That's Red Pilled America dot
(40:58):
com and click join in the top menu. Thanks for listening,
god boy
Speaker 5 (41:04):
You go guy inside to boll
This is Red Pilled America.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Before we start the show, just a reminder to share, like,
and subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening to it,
and please give us a five star rating. Help us
save America one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Bitcoin's is a remarkable cryptographic achievement. Previously on Red Pilled America.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Do you think this is a currency, a currency that's
really going to work eventually?
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Well, I think it is working.
Speaker 5 (00:30):
A look for colleagues to join with me in introducing.
Speaker 6 (00:34):
A bill to outlaw cryptocurrency?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Is Bitcoin dangerous to America?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Throughout history, people have used all kinds of physical currency.
Speaker 7 (00:44):
The one thing that's missing but that will soon be developed,
is a reliable e cash.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Satoshi Nakamoto wrote a white paper entitled Bitcoin a Peer
to peer Electronic hash System.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Because of the two thousand and eight financial crisis in
which bitcoin was created and can be seen as a
catalyst for interest than Bitcoin, people have decided that perhaps
this monetary system is not the best one.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
I was looking for more places than bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Well I came up the product that would eventually make
Silk Road and national headline were the drugs. Many believe
bitcoin is dangerous because it lets criminals get away with
dirty deeds anonymously. President Trump is one of those people.
Speaker 7 (01:28):
Crypto assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and
other illegal activity, rights the president.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
But the President is getting some bad advice on this topic.
And we know this because it was bitcoin's lack of
complete anonymity that saved Curtis Green from spending perhaps the
rest of his life behind bars. I'm Patrick CORELCI and
this is Red Pilled America. It's our second episode looking
into the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. In part one, we explained how
(01:57):
we've been hearing a lot of concern about the new
Internet cash called Bitcoin, so we wanted to find find
out if it was really dangerous to America. To do this,
we first needed to understand what money actually is, so
we started by delving into the origin of cash. Throughout history,
people used all kinds of things as currency. Indians used
shell wampum, Ethiopians used rock salt, Malaysians even used crocodile figurines,
(02:23):
and practically everyone used gold and silver. Each of these
currencies had value because the people agreed they had value. Eventually,
gold and silver became one of the most universal forms
of currency, but Over time, even these precious metals became
difficult to handle. The Federal Reserve began circulating money, with
each bill representing a portion of gold held in our
(02:44):
US treasury. This gold backed currency system was the norm
for many years until President Nixon dropped this so called
gold standard in nineteen seventy one, and from then on,
our paper money was backed by a promise from the
US government. By the early eighties, a small group of
privacy enthusiasts began to f They were concerned about how
(03:05):
the government could easily track every financial transaction, so they
began developing this concept of an anonymous digital cache outside
of Big brother's watchful eye. They called themselves cipherpunks, and
by the late nineties a few of them actually tried
to market their digital cash idea, but the demand for
an internet currency wouldn't arise until the two thousand and
(03:26):
eight financial crisis. That's when a mysterious figure named Setoshi
Nakamoto developed the idea for Bitcoin, an Internet cash that
could bypass the Federal Reserve. Satoshi's technology removed the need
for banks by using a network of computers to automate
the banking system's accounting function, but Bitcoin needed a large
(03:47):
scale test case to prove its utility. That would come
with the launch of silk Road, an anonymous marketplace on
the dark Web, a portion of the Internet that is
invisible to regular Internet browsers and where anonymity is sacrosancd.
Curtis Green, an early bitcoin enthusiast, was drawn to silk
Road's message boards because it was a hot spot for
(04:08):
people interested in cryptocurrency. But silk road quickly became the
eBay for selling illegal drugs with bitcoin as the currency.
The administrator of the site eventually made Curtis a moderator
of a new community message board that helped people on
the site that were showing signs of self harm. But
Curtis would soon find out that by participating in silk Road,
(04:30):
he put his life in jeopardy. In early twenty eleven,
at about the time that Curtis Green became the moderator
of silk Road's harm reduction forum, news of the site's
existence hit the media.
Speaker 8 (04:51):
There really is something exciting about buying stuff online. You
pull the trigger, click the purchase confirmed button, then comes
that unbearable three to seven day weight, and finally, the
package of your new shoes from Zappo's those books you
ordered from Amazon, and then there's your LSD. You heard right,
pot acid cocaine delivered right to the front door in
(05:13):
a small, inconspicuous envelope from silk Road. The transactions are
anonymous and the website's owner claims untraceable. That is, if
you can figure out how to get to the website.
Adrian Chen wrote a piece about silk Road for Gawker
dot Com. Adrianchen is in our New York bureau. Adrian, welcome,
Thank you, so tell us more about this website, silk Road.
(05:35):
How is it even possible that this site exists? I mean,
this is all totally illegal, right.
Speaker 9 (05:40):
It is illegal, and the only way that it possibly
exists is the fact that the people on it think
that they are completely anonymous. They are using technologies like
tor and only exchanging in the untraceable digital currency Bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
The shaker here was not that you could acquire illegal
drugs online. People have been doing that on places like
Craigslist for years. No real story here was that illegal
drugs could be purchased online using bitcoin, and many believe
that this new internet cash was entirely untraceable.
Speaker 8 (06:12):
And explain to us what a bitcoin is.
Speaker 9 (06:14):
A bitcoin is a virtual currency that is basically the
digital equivalent of cash. It's completely peer to peer. There
are no banks acting as middleman. Transaction goes right from
buyer to seller, just like a cash transaction in the
real world.
Speaker 8 (06:29):
So how do you even buy a bitcoin?
Speaker 9 (06:31):
Bitcoins are for sale on all sorts of exchanges. You
can use, dollars, you can use, you know, most other
real world currencies, and they are buying and selling them
on markets online just like a real world stock exchange.
But there's not a lot of things that you can
buy with them so far, except, you know, apparently illegal drugs.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
The development whipped New York Senator Chuck Schumer into action.
He called a press conference to discuss Silk Road.
Speaker 7 (06:57):
It's a certifiable one stop shop for illegal drugs that
represents the most brazen attempt to pedal drugs online that
we have ever seen. It's more brazen than anything else.
By light years.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
The dark web marketplace was not so dark anymore.
Speaker 6 (07:12):
LSD, cocaine, and ecstasy are now just a click of
a mouse away. A new website sells illegal drugs to
anyone who was willing to pay. But as it team
investigator Michael George on Coover. The people who run the
site stand by what they're doing, and for now business
is booming.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
With all of the hoopla, the public was not only
introduced to the site, we also met the Silk Road
administrator for the very first time.
Speaker 10 (07:36):
Dan van Baummel is a recovering addict and an addiction
therapist to Turning Point of Tampa. He says silk Road
is a dangerous new concept.
Speaker 11 (07:44):
A drug addict will look for any way to get
their addiction fed, and so when you provide an avenue
that makes it easier for them, they're going to abuse it.
Speaker 10 (07:57):
An administrator who runs the website disagrees. He answered my
questions by email, though he wouldn't give us his none.
He writes that silk Road is satisfying people and enriching
their lives. I asked the administrator of the site about
the atticts who could die because a products sold through
silk Road. He said, quote, I'm so sorry if someone
you know has been hurt by drugs, But it's my
(08:17):
sincere hope that by making drugs available in a safe,
secure and predictable way, that we will eliminate the violence
and danger of obtaining and using drugs through traditional methods.
Even the administrator of the website admitted to me he's
not sure how long silk Road will last, but in
his own words, he says it's worth the risk.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
I think Chuck Schumer get the best advertising for the
site that anybody could.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Again, Curtis Green, author of silk Road Takedown, you.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Know, instead of keeping it quiet, he goes to the
world and says, look at this side, Look what you
can buy, look what you can do, look at all this,
and then that droves tens of thousands of people to decide.
That's kind of amazing how he brought so much attention
to that you can want people looking at.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
And Curtis is right before Schumer's press conference, Google registered
very little public interest in the search term silk Road. However,
after the senator's media blitz, web searches for the site's spiked.
But perhaps even more notable was the curiosity of this
new Internet cash. Google searches for the term bitcoin dwarfed
that of silk Road. The first major test case for
(09:29):
this new Internet cash was Undeniable. Bitcoin was a smashing
success in the free market of the dark web, so
it should come as no surprise that bitcoin became a
major target of our government and Curtis would eventually find
himself in the crosshairs. There's nothing more that makes me
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(09:50):
popping on a movie, and curling up next to the
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If you've been listening to RPA for some time, then
you know that licorice is my jam and that it
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(10:12):
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living life right. Trust me, you will not regret it.
It's time to dump that store bought liquorice that's so
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(10:33):
about the Liquorice Guy is that it's an American family
owned business. It's made right here in the beautiful US
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licoriceguy dot com. They ship daily. Treat yourself and those
(10:55):
you love, and taste the difference.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Welcome back. I'm Adriana Cortez. So after a story about
silk Road hit the news, New York Senator Chuck Schumer
held a press conference about the dark web marketplace. People
have been acquiring illegal drugs online for years, but silk
Road was something new. It used the new internet cash
bitcoin as the only way to purchase products on the site,
(11:22):
and this new technological innovation freaked the government out.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
And I think what really bothered them was that at
the beginning, people thought Bitcoin was totally anonymous. It is.
You couldn't get more non anonymous at all. Cash is
ten times more anonymous than Bitcoin is because everything on
the Bitcoin letter stays there forever.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
What Curtis means here is that every Bitcoin transaction that
has ever been made lives on a publicly viewable ledger
called the blockchain. This is a crucial point that eventually
saved Curtis from spending the rest of his life behind bars.
To grasp its significance. To understand what this so called
blockchain thing is, you can literally spend months on just
(12:09):
this topic alone. So I'm going to keep it really
simple here so you not only get a feel for
this groundbreaking technology, but also understand how blockchain is kind
of like the DNA of currency. So what is blockchain?
As you know by now, bitcoin is Internet cash, and
(12:30):
blockchain is a technology that allows Bitcoin to be transferred
from one person to another. Before Bitcoin arrived, if I
wanted to transfer money to you from a distance, I
needed to use a trusted third party what we know
of as a bank, or a credit card company or PayPal.
To illustrate this, let's take, for example, the many people
that bought are awesome Red Pilled America baseball cap. To
(12:53):
buy it, many of you went to Redpilled America dot com,
clicked the shop button, selected the hat, went into your
pocket or purse, pulled out your wallet, grabbed your debit card,
and entered the number into our website. You eventually clicked
a button that told your bank to transfer a specific
amount of money from your bank account to our bank account.
Both of our banks were the trusted third parties that
(13:14):
recorded this transaction by logging it into our account ledger,
or what we refer to as our bank statement. The
process of buying this same hat works differently in the
world of bitcoin. Instead of a bank account, people that
own some of this Internet cash typically store in a
digital account called a bitcoin wallet. That wallet can live
on your computer, your smartphone, or a separate hard drive
(13:36):
that's not connected to the Internet. Just like your bank
account has a number, your bitcoin wallet has a unique
series of letters and numbers called a wallet address. When
you send me bitcoin to purchase our red pilled America hat,
for example, there is no bank middleman that records the transaction.
The transaction is instead performed by a decentralized system of
(13:57):
computers and is recorded to the public ledger called the blockchain.
This removes the middleman bank and the large fees they
deduct with every purchase. The blockchain is basically one big
banking statement for all bitcoin transactions. Since I don't have
the luxury of drawing this out on a whiteboard, I'm
going to explain how blockchain technology works through a visual
(14:19):
analogy without boring you with the technical details. This is
how blockchain works. Let's say I give you one hundred bitcoins.
Now imagine that transaction is written down on a piece
of paper. The paper is placed into a clear box.
That box is sealed so that it can never be opened,
(14:41):
and then the clear box is placed on a table
that everyone can see. Anyone can look into the clear
box and see the amount of money that was exchanged,
who sent it, and who received it? Following me, Then,
let's say that from the bitcoins I gave you, you
turn around and give ten of those bitcoins to a friend.
That transaction is also recorded onto a piece of paper.
(15:01):
That paper is placed in into a different clearbox. That
box is sealed so that it can never be opened.
Then the second box is stacked like a lego brick
on top of the first box. Again, anyone can look
into the first and second box and follow each transaction,
but no one can open the boxes and make edits
to the exchange. The transactions are immortalized in this blockchain. Next,
(15:27):
your friend takes five of the bitcoins that you gave
him and turns around and gives them to me. Again,
that transaction is recorded onto a piece of paper. The
paper is placed into a new clearbox. That box is
sealed so that it can never be opened and the
transaction inside can never be altered. And then this third
box is stacked like a lego brick on top of
(15:47):
the second box, which is on top of the first box.
Every future transaction of these bitcoins are recorded in a
similar way and stacked on top of the last transaction.
Anyone can look into every single clear box and follow
each transaction, but no one can make a change to
any of the past exchanges. That is the blockchain. It's
(16:08):
a complete history of all transactions ever made with bitcoin,
and this history can never be changed or hacked. If
you gave five bitcoins to someone three years ago, you
can go back to the blockchain and see that transaction forever.
This is an effect what the blockchain computer program does.
It records and creates a history of every single Bitcoin
(16:29):
transaction that has ever been made, and that history can
be tracked and never be changed. It's permanent. You may
remember from part one that the very first bitcoin transaction
was when the founder of bitcoin, Satoshi na Kimoto, sent
ten bitcoins to the cipherpunk. How Finny that exact transaction
(16:51):
can still be seen in the blockchain. In fact, it's
the very first lego block in the long chain of
bitcoin transactions that have occurred ever since. By storing transactions
in this fashion, the blockchain can he keeps track of
how many bitcoins everyone has, just like a bank statement
keeps track of how much money you have in the bank. Now,
you may say, yuck, I don't want everyone knowing that
(17:11):
seven years ago I purchased nosehair clippers from overstock dot
com for three bitcoins. Well, you don't have to worry
about that. First, the blockchain doesn't record what you purchased
unless you write it in as a note, kind of
like writing in the memo section of a banking check. Second,
the blockchain does not record the buyer's name or the
seller's name in the transaction. It instead records the bitcoin
(17:33):
wallet address of the buyer and the bitcoin wallet address
of the seller. It's like recording the banking account numbers
with no attached name to either account. So the only
practical way that someone would know that you bought nosehair
clippers seven years ago with three bitcoins is if the
person knew your bitcoin wallet address to tie you to
the purchase. Otherwise the transaction is anonymous. This is what
(17:55):
Curtis meant when he said, at the beginning.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
People thought bitcoin was totally anonymous. You couldn't get more
non anonymous at all. Cash is ten times more anonymous
than Bitcoin is because everything on the Bitcoin leader stays
there forever.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
If you, let's say, transfer fifty coins from your bitcoin
wallet address to a cocaine vendor on Silk Road, that transaction,
along with your Bitcoin wallet address, was forever recorded on
the blockchain. All an FBI agent would need to do
is find out who owns that Bitcoin wallet address, and
they could tie you to the purchase of an illegal drug.
(18:31):
But finding out who owns the wallet is the challenge.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
So all you need is if you've found a Bitcoin
address that I use, you could see that whole history
forever at All you need to do is attach a
name to that address, and those theaterything. So at the beginning,
they thought bitcoin was totally anonymous, and that scared the government.
They're like, oh my gosh, they're going to be able
to do this. We won't be able to do anything.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
After Schumer's big media blitz as twenty eleven, progressed, Curtis
continued acting as a moderator for silk Roads harm Reduction Form.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
And I wanted to help people that had questions and
track the medical background and to help them if you know,
if they wanted wanted to do it suicide or they
were wanting to think about doing drugs, I wouldn't hear
them away from it.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
But while Curtis was volunteering as a foreign moderator, several
federal task forces were being assembled to find the captain
of silk Road. The site was an entirely new thing.
It was an anonymous marketplace on the encrypted dark Web
using bitcoin to buy and sell illegal drugs. The government
didn't know who was running the site, or even know
how to find out who was manning the wheel, because
(19:42):
Bitcoin and the dark Web were hiding the identity of
the sellers, purchasers, and the site administrators. The emergence of
this new cryptocurrency woke up every law enforcement agency in
the government. Two separate federal task forces were formed to
find the mastermind behind silk Road, one in Baltimore and
another New York. They included agents from the doj, FBI,
(20:04):
Homeland Security, DIA, Secret Service, Treasury Department and the Postal Inspector.
That's how much the government feared the power of this
new Internet cash. One of their primary objectives was to
shut down not only Silk Road but also Bitcoin.
Speaker 12 (20:22):
The first time I ever heard the word bitcoin was
back in twenty twelve when I was a federal prosecutor
at the US Department of Justice.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
That's former Department of Justice prosecutor Katie Hahn giving a
speech published in December twenty eighteen. She led an investigation
involving Silk Road.
Speaker 12 (20:39):
And I heard the word bitcoin because I was asked
to prepare an investigation in a case against it and
to help shut it down.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
By the time twenty twelve rolled along, Silk Road had
become more than just an anonymous marketplace. It had become
a social gathering spot of libertarian minded people, with the
Silk Road Administrator as their spiritual leader. The purveyor of
Silk Road, no doubt recognized his growing prominence, and on
February fifth, twenty twelve, the Silk Road Administrator announced his
(21:15):
new name as Dread Pirate Roberts or DPR for short.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
I know who you are.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Your cruelty reveals everything You'll The Dread pirate Roberts aquitit
with pride?
Speaker 13 (21:28):
What can I do for you?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Dread Pirate Roberts was a fictitious character from the novel
and movie The Princess Bride. In the story, the original
dread Pirate Roberts was a feared pirate that developed a
near mythical reputation because of his ruthlessness and fighting prowess
and eyes.
Speaker 13 (21:43):
You know Roberts.
Speaker 8 (21:44):
But how's that possible? Since he's been moralding twenty years
and jo only left me five years ago.
Speaker 13 (21:49):
Roberts are growing so rich he wants to retire.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Once he pillaged enough money, he retired to enjoy his riches,
passing on his name and persona to another chosen person,
and the cycle would repeat through each successor.
Speaker 13 (22:01):
So he took me to his cabin told me a secret.
I am not the dread Pirate Roberts, he said, I
inherited the ship from the previous dread Pire Roberts, just
as you will inherit it from me. The man I
inherited from was not the real dread Pirate Roberts Eason.
His name was Kamabu. The real Roberts has been retired
fifteen years and living like a king of pat Gun.
Then he explained that the name was the important thing
(22:22):
for inspiring a necessary fear. So we sailed ashore, took
an entirely new crew, and he stayed aboard for a
while as first mate all the time, according me, Roberts.
Once the crew believed he left the ship, and I
have been Roberts ever since.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Dread Pirate Roberts or DPR, became the primary voice of
Silk Road, posting grand statements on the site's community forum.
He claimed Silk Road was built on libertarian principles and
saw it as a grand experiment in free market principles.
DPR felt that the war on drugs was a massive
failure and that people should be able to put in
their bodies what they see fit, as long as they
(23:01):
weren't hurting anyone else. DPR even had a book club
where he promoted the study of Austrian economics, a form
of libertarian free markets. As the site progressed, Curtis was
in regular contact with DPR as a moderator of the
community boards. He knew that there was a lot of
illegal sales happening on Silk Road, but he rationalized his
involvement with the fact that he was only an unpaid
(23:23):
volunteer for the Harm Reduction Forum, but that would change
in November twenty twelve when DPR contacted Curtis and offered
him a job.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
The DPR reached out to me and he said, hey,
he said, your work is not done unnoticed. I think
that's the exact term he used, and said I would
like you to become on board as an admin to
help with customer service issues.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
The job description was to change passwords for users and
mediate disputes between buyers and sellers. DPR said the job
would take eighty hours a week and he'd pay Curtis
thirty two hundred dollars a month. Curtis wasn't sure if
he should take the job. It was one thing to
be a volunteer moderator of a forum, but it was
quite another to be a paid employee of a site
(24:10):
that was involved with the sale of illegal drugs. But
after the two thousand and eight financial crisis, jobs were
hard to come by and Curtis needed the money. After
consulting with his wife and brother and convincing himself that
he wasn't involved in the sale of drugs, he decided
to take the job as a paid employee, DPR required
that Curtis sent him a copy of his driver's license.
He hesitated doing this, but eventually chalked it up to
(24:32):
a normal procedure that any employer would require, so he
sent DPR a picture of his license. Now the purveyor
of the world's biggest online illegal drug marketplace knew his
name and where he lived. As a customer service representative
for the site, DPR gave Curtis administrator access to Silk.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
Road, and this was the first time might actually get
seed it back again.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Curtis's relationship with DPR grew, but what he didn't know
was it, in just over two months, his boss was
going to target him for assassination. Do you want to
hear red Pilled America stories ad free? Then become a
backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilldamerica dot com and click
(25:15):
join in the topmenu. Join today and help us save
America one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Welcome back. So, in November twenty twelve, DPR hired Curtis
to work as a customer service representative for Silk Road.
As an employee, DPR required Curtis to send him a
copy of his driver's license. Now the purveyor of the
biggest online drug marketplace had his name and address, and
that was not a good place to be at for
(25:42):
what came next. On January seventeenth, twenty thirteen, Curtis received
a strange package at his front doorstep. The return address
carried the name Noob. Curtis heard rumors about Nob from
a Silk Road vendor. Nob was getting close with DPR
and was looking to sell high quantities of illegal drugs
(26:05):
to a Silk Road vendor. Why was Noob sending him
a package? He thought. He hesitated opening it, initially just
leaving it on a trash can, but ultimately his curiosity
got the best of him and he grabbed a knife
to open up the package. It was tightly wrapped, so
he wrestled with it to pry it open, and when
he did, the box burst open and a white powder
(26:26):
caked his face. Within seconds, he felt his face go numb,
but before he could react, his door was hit with
a battering ram and a full fleet of agents stormed
his house. Curtis was being raided by a federal task
force hunting for the Captain of Silk Road.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
When he first came bargin down my door. If you
have the mad abay man, I would push that upon
my worst enemy. It's something that he owned his shock,
and I was just willing to do whatever, say anything
to I'm trying to get myself out of his math.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Curtis says he hadn't ordered cocaine. He'd been set up
sort of. For a few weeks. A DEA agent by
the name of Carl Force had infiltrated the Silk Road
community under the user name Noob. Force was part of
the federal task force based in Baltimore that was investigating
Silk Road. To DPR, Nob portrayed himself as a big
(27:22):
time drug trafficker connected to the mafia that was not
looking for tiny sails like most of the site's vendors.
It wasn't worth his time. He was looking to move
kilos of cocaine. Nab got close to DPR and convinced
the Silk Road administrator to help him find a buyer
for his product, and DPR bit The Silk Road purveyor
connected Nob with a site vendor, but that vendor must
(27:45):
not have completely trusted the transaction, because instead of having
Knab mailed a cocaine directly to their address. The Silk
Road vendor had Knob send the cocaine to someone else,
and that someone else was Curtis. Now the Utah grandfather
was caught in the trap. When the task force rated
Curtis's house, his computer was running and he was logged
(28:06):
into silk Road. The federal agents likely assessed pretty quickly
that he wasn't the person that asked for the shipment
of cocaine. But the Federal task Force had hit a
gold mine, nonetheless, because they could see that Curtis had
administration privileges on the site, and this was a big deal,
especially for someone that had bad intentions. You see, silk
(28:27):
Road operated a lot like eBay. They used an escro
model to protect their buyers. When someone purchased something from
silk Road, the bitcoins weren't sent immediately to the cellar. Instead,
they were sent to silk Road where they sat in
their bitcoin wallet and escrow. Once the buyer received the shipment,
he sent a message to silk Road that the package
(28:48):
had arrived, and at that point the money was sent
from silk roads bitcoin wallet to the seller's bitcoin wallet.
So at any given time, there was a lot of
internet cash sitting in the site's wallet waiting for shipments
to be verified. And as you may remember, in Curtis's
new customer service role, he was responsible for mediating disputes
between buyers and sellers, so he had control of the
(29:10):
bitcoins that sat in the Silk Road wallet. After the
agent's interrogated Curtis, they arrested him and booked him in
a local jail. During that time, DPR tried to contact Curtis,
wondering why he hadn't been communicating with the customers, but
DPR's messages went unanswered, so dread pirate Roberts cut off
(29:35):
Curtis's access to Silk Road. When he was released from jail,
DEA agent Carl Force, demanded Curtis contact DPR and regained
access to the site. So Curtis did what he was told.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
I gave DPR this big, long winded I'm sorry, I
was gone. I screwed up, so YadA, YadA, YadA, And
so he gave me a new log in, he admonished
me and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Curtis gave the new log in to Carl Force, and
then a few days later he handed over the username
and password to a room full of roughly twenty Baltimore
federal agents. That's when Curtis's troubles got exponentially worse. As
he was meeting with the federal agents, someone began draining
bitcoins out of Silk Roads vendor accounts.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
What he did was he changed my use name of
password so I couldn't log in, and he sent all
the bitcoin. He drained all the big these bitcoin account
sent it to my account on the site, so it
looked like I was the guy who was doing it,
because I'm the one who could have done it had
(30:39):
I been a dishonest person. And then from my site
it went out to other exchanges or other lawls.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
They were stealing the internet cash and trying to pin
it on Curtis. It wasn't long before a site administrator
alerted DPR to the theft. They quickly performed an internal
investigation and came to the conclusion that Curtis was the thief,
having his full name in driver's license. They dug a
little deeper and found out that he'd been arrested a
(31:08):
few days earlier. DPR needed to do something about this
immediately because the heist was massive, Approximately twenty thousand bitcoins.
So to figure out how to handle this crisis, DPR
turned to a trusted Silk Road administrator that he looked
to as a mentor. After some back and forth, DPR
(31:28):
came to the conclusion that Curtis needed to be terminated.
So he decided to put a hit on Curtis. And
who did he turn to to take him out? He
contacted a mafia guy he knew, Knob, the same undercover
DEA agent Karl Force, that sent Curtis the cocaine. DPR
agreed to pay Nob eighty thousand dollars for Curtis's assassination,
(31:49):
with half up front and the other half when the
job was complete. DPR wired Knob forty thousand dollars from
an anonymous wire transfer service called Techno Cash Limited. Once
he received the money, Karl Force and other agents and
staged Curtis's death by physically torturing him to get a
picture of Curtis authentically distressed. Then they faked a picture
(32:10):
of him dead. Carl Force then sent the image to DPR,
and according to the Department of Justice, the Silk Road
administrator wired the remaining forty thousand dollars to Knob using
the same anonymous wire transfer service. Curtis was temporarily in
the clear with Silk Road because DPR thought he successfully
(32:31):
had him murdered. But Curtis now had perhaps an even
bigger problem to deal with. He was being framed for
the theft of roughly twenty thousand bitcoins.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
The government was positive that I was guilty of stealing
all this money, and they were doing everything in their
power to try to pen it on me.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Just a few weeks after Curtis's fake murder, in March
twenty thirteen, DPR had another crisis. A site user going
by the moniker Friendly Chemist claimed to have been fronted
seven hundred thousand dollars worth of drugs from a Hell's
Angel and was in partnership with another Silk Road vendor
to sell the drugs on the site. But now that
vendor had skipped town, leaving Friendly Chemists on the hook
(33:15):
to pay back the Hell's Angels. So Friendly Chemist told
DPR that if he didn't pay him for his loss,
he'd release identifying information for dozens of Silk Road vendors
and thousands of buyers. DPR asked Friendly Chemists to put
him in contact with the Hell's Angels to see if
he could work out something with them, and within a
few days, a user named Red and White contacted DPR,
(33:38):
claiming to be the Hell's Angels member that friended Friendly
chemists the illegal drugs. After a back and forth, DPR
proposed hiring the Hell's Angel to kill Friendly Chemist, fearing
he would follow through on his threats to release the
names of Silk Road vendors in their customers. When the
Hell's Angel gave DPR a cost of between a hundred
fifty thousand and three hundred thousand dollars to kill Friendly Chemist,
(34:01):
DPR responded, don't want to be a pain here, but
the price seems high. Not long ago, I had a
clean hit done for eighty thousand dollars. Are the prices
you quoted the best you can do? End quote. The
two agreed to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to
murder Friendly Chemist, which at the time was roughly sixteen
hundred and seventy bitcoins, so DPR paid Red and White
(34:24):
in bitcoins and waited for confirmation of the murder. A
day later, Red and White confirmed that he killed Friendly
Chemist and followed up with a picture of the deceased.
But now there was another problem. Apparently, while the killers
were torturing Friendly Chemist, he divulged that he was working
with another user by the name of Tony seventy six,
and the pair were together ripping off other Silk Road vendors.
(34:47):
DPR knew Tony seventy six that user ripped off Silk
Road customers a year earlier, to the tune of hundreds
of thousands of dollars. What luck it was for that
scammer to fall into DPR's lap. So dread pirate Roberts
calls for a hit on Tony seventy seve as well,
but the Hell's Angels Red and White comes back with
another complication. Tony seventy six lives with three other drug dealers,
(35:12):
so taking him out alone would be hard. What to do?
DPR decides to take them all out, and he sends
five hundred thousand dollars worth of bitcoin to Red and White.
A week later, the Hell's Angels Red and White confirms
the murder was completed with a message quote that problem
was dealt with end quote, And just like that, DPR
(35:32):
ordered and paid for the assassination of a total of
six people that were threatening his Silk Road empire. Apparently,
Silk Road went from a high minded libertarian marketplace to
a bloodthirsty drug cartel. Around this time, another silk Road
user named Death from Above approach DPR, claiming that he'd
(35:54):
reveal his identity to law enforcement unless he paid hundreds
of thousands of dollars. DPR didn't bite. As you can see,
DPR was constantly getting confronted with these kinds of situations.
With the murders and the thwarting of extortion, it appeared
that all of DPR's loose ends were tied up, but
behind the scenes, the federal investigation was gaining steam. By
(36:16):
May twenty thirteen, the federal task force from Baltimore and
the one from New York had already been sharing notes
in parallel. The NSA quietly made Bitcoin its number one priority,
and it began focusing on the digital currency. The agency's
surveillance program was reportedly code named Monkey Rocket, and it
targeted both Bitcoin and another cryptocurrency called Liberty Reserve. The
(36:40):
fruits of their labor became public in late May.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
US prosecutors have described Liberty Reserve as the financial hub
of the cybercrime world, based in Costa Rica. It's alleged
the currency transfer and payment processing company allowed its customers
to move money anonymously from one account to another via
the Internet with virtually no questions asked. US Attorney for
the Southern District of New York, York Pret Barrara.
Speaker 14 (37:04):
Today we announced charges in what may be the largest
international money laundering case ever brought by the United States. Specifically,
we unseal charges against Liberty Reserve and seven of its
principles and employees, who for years have operated one of
the world's most widely used digital currencies.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
The takedown included an outfit called Techno Cash. You may
remember that name. That's the same anonymous wire transfer service
DPR used to pay for his fake hit on Curtis Green.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Liberty Reserve allowed users to open accounts using fictitious names,
including Russian Hakka. One person was registered under the name
Joe Bogus with the address one two three Fake Main Street.
Forty five bank accounts have been restrained or seized. According
to the indictment, three Westpack accounts containing thirty eight million
dollars were involved in this scandal. The accounts were held
(37:54):
under the name Techno Cash Limited.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Having just used techno cash to pay for Curtis Green's murder.
It's highly likely that DPR was aware of the company
Andy's takedown. DPR must have been feeling the heat as
the months progressed. DPR was approached by yet another site
user looking for a payout, going by the name french Maid.
This user sent DPR a message saying quote, I have
(38:17):
received important information that you need to know a SAP.
He signed the note Carl. A few hours later, french
Maid followed up with DPR, claiming that his name was
not Carl, but rather Carlo Sophia. She claimed to have
access to an insider of the federal investigation into Silk Road.
This caught DPR's interest, and he began purchasing information from
(38:40):
french Maid with bitcoin. Do you remember what we said
about bitcoin being the DNA of currency. Well, anyway, we'll
get to that later. Even with a supposed insider feeding
DPR information, the investigation began closing in on a suspect
for dread Pirate Roberts. Their suspect was living in San
(39:01):
Francisco and his name was Ross Ulbricht, but the task
force didn't want to just arrest the guy. They wanted
to try to catch him in the act of operating
the Silk Road. By tracking his IP address, they learned
that Ross often logged in at the Glen Park Library
in San Francisco, So a team of federal agents set
up at the library ready to pounce, and when they did,
(39:23):
it set off a chain of events that showed that
the technology driving bitcoin could be viewed as the DNA
of currency and used to hunt down criminals. Really coming
up on part three of Crypto who Stole the Bitcoin
from Silk Road?
Speaker 12 (39:40):
Going back to the blockchain and looking at the stolen
twenty one thousand bitcoin, we saw that the patterns of
the theft were very different from French maize and death
from aboves. The stolen funds from the Silk Road accounts
went straight to one place.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Was there more than one DPR that you knew of?
Speaker 8 (39:59):
As I know it?
Speaker 5 (40:03):
That kind of took on the role.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Who was the Hell's Angel hitman?
Speaker 9 (40:06):
Why do they target it? Because Wall Street wanted to
destoy bitcoin before it could get big enough to compete
for them, Because a lot of people don't want to
have to deal with central bankers.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Did anyone really get murdered?
Speaker 10 (40:17):
They needed a scapegoat, and Ross's their scapegoat, and I think,
I personally think it was because of the bitcoin.
Speaker 5 (40:23):
And the real question becomes is just like armies, you know,
it's illegal to have a private army in the United States,
should it be illegal to have private money?
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Is bitcoin really dangerous for America?
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned
and produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adrianna Cortez of
Informed Ventures. Now. You can get ad free access to
our entire archive of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber.
To subscribe, visit Red Pilled America dot com and click
join in the top menu. That's Red Pilled America dot
(40:58):
com and click join in the top menu. Thanks for listening,
god boy
Speaker 5 (41:04):
You go guy inside to boll
Hosts And Creators
Adryana Cortez
Patrick Courrielche
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