NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom—and almost got away with it In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything—drugs, hacking software, forged … software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons—free of the government’s watchful eye.
It wasn’t long before the media got wind of the new Web site where anyone—not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers—could buy and sell contraband detection-free. Spurred by a public outcry, the federal government launched an epic two-year manhunt for the site’s elusive proprietor, with no leads, no witnesses, and no clear jurisdiction. All the investigators knew was that whoever was running the site called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts.
The Silk Road quickly ballooned into $1.2 billion enterprise, and Ross embraced his new role as kingpin. He enlisted a loyal crew of allies in high and low places, all as addicted to the danger and thrill of running an illegal marketplace as their customers were to the heroin they sold. Through his network he got wind of the target on his back and took drastic steps to protect himself—including ordering a hit on a former employee. As Ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren’t sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet.
Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, Vanity Fair correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It’s a story of the boy next door’s ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, anonymous, decentralized Web advocates and the old world of government control, order, and the rule of law. Filled with unforgettable characters and capped by an astonishing climax, American Kingpin might be dismissed as too outrageous for fiction. But it’s all too real.
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This story of Silk Road and the dark web gave me insight into a world I knew little about. Written with the taut action of a crime novel I held my interest almost from the first page.
Very interesting story about drug sales on the dairy web. It was all very unfamiliar to me, but I enjoyed the book, especially how the agencies worked to find him.
It’s all about the dark web. Interesting and true.
This book is a terrific blend of storytelling and informative analysis. The thought of a failed PhD. creating one of the most prolific drug trafficking sites on the planet and thus changing the business forever is crazy until you read this book. The book also subtly captures the way racism plays into how law enforcement failed to capture the storied “Dread Pirate Roberts” for so long. They ignored his profile bc he didn’t fit the typical “trafficker” profile. And they ignored their Black colleague, who sussed out who he was long before they did.
Always interested in the dark web which the US Navy invented and lost control of immediately to hackers.
Nick Bilton’s American Kingpin describes the rise and fall of the darknet market The Silk Road, and its creator, Ross Ulbricht. The book focuses primarily on Ulbricht and a handful of agents from the DEA, FBI, IRS, and Homeland Security who wage a semi-coordinated effort to identify and capture the Silk Road leader, who was known online as the Dread Pirate Roberts.
Ulbricht grew up in Austin, Texas, a middle-class kid with strong libertarian leanings. According to Bilton, he had thought about creating an unregulated online marketplace long before the Silk Road went online in 2011, but the technology he needed didn’t exist yet. By 2011, those technologies were widely available. The Tor web browser provided online anonymity, while Bitcoin allowed users to complete purchases without the buyer or seller having to reveal their idenities.
Ulbricht taught himself to code and created a website like eBay that initially sold only psychadelic mushrooms. He posted news of the site’s existence to a few user forums, and from there it grew into something beyond Ulbricht’s wildest dreams. New sellers signed on, peddling cocaine, heroine, LSD, designer drugs, guns, explosives, hacking kits, and human organs for transplant. Much of the book describes Ulbricht’s frantic attempts to keep up with the unstoppable growth of site he created.
Caught off guard by the site’s wild success, Ulbricht enlisted the help of a number of colorful characters to improve security, monitor user forums, and resolve disputes between buyers and sellers.
About six months after launch, Gawker published news of the site’s existence, describing it as the Amazon.com of drugs. This caught the attention of political figures and law enforcement, who vowed to shut the site down and arrest whoever ran it. The problem was that Tor, which had been created by the US government to protect the online anonymity of informants and political dissidents living under repressive regimes, also did a good job hiding the identity of The Dread Pirate Roberts. As Roberts/Ulbricht posted openly about his libertarian views and plans for The Silk Road, no one could figure out who or where he was. If anyone were to unmask him, it could only be due to an error on his part–some misuse of the technology that protected him, or some slip-up in the real world outside of Tor and the dark web.
American Kingpin does an excellent job chronicling how a number of low-level federal law enforcement agents found little clues here and there: a pink pill the in mail in Chicago, a few stray and seemingly unrelated posts in online forums, an envelope full of fake IDs. The government ultimately identified Ulbricht in spite of a poorly coordinated investigation marked by lack of communication and inter-agency turf wars.
In fact, the final identification came almost as a matter of chance, during a conference call when an IRS inspector made an offhand comment about a username Ulbricht had chosen on StackOverflow. Another agent listening in on the call was able to connect that information to a detail in the FBI’s investigation.
Ulbricht’s arrest, which was widely reported at time, is one of the most thrilling moments in contemporary crime, and Bilton does an excellent job recounting the minutes leading up to the unplanned encounter, in which a number of agents had to make a impromptu split-second decisions.
A number of reviewers have criticised Bilton’s writing for its hyperbole and occasional inaccuracies. Part of his job as writer is to flesh out a description of characters he has not met and scenes he did not witness. It’s impossible to do this with one-hundred percent accuracy, so the writer has to work with the facts he has. When the facts are limited, as they are about Ulbricht’s personality and private life, the author must resort to repeating them, and that can wear a little thin.
Bilton also has a bad habit of throwing in unnecessarily heavy-handed foreshadowing. The effect is like lathering cheap ketchup on a fine filet mignon. This story is so fascinating, it doesn’t need any dressing up.
On the plus side, Bilton’s research is thorough, and he does a good job handling a large cast of characters and a great deal of technical information. To get the full impact of a story as complex as this one, you need to keep all the details and players straight. This is where Bilton’s work shines. If you like a good crime read or a good procedural, or if you just want to learn about how online crime works in the twenty-first century, this is an excellent read.
This book is very hard to put down. It shows how small decisions along the way compound to generate massive consequences. What started out as the dream of an incredibly smart libertarian and anarchist to circumvent government intervention, spiraled into real people getting killed.
It is a tragic story that so much potential was squandered in a fruitless and destructive quest.
A good read for action and unpredictability!
A real-life, cyber Breaking Bad with a tremendous cast of eccentric characters.
Fantastic read about the true story of Ross Ulbriht, the creator of the Silk Road…an underground internet site to sell drugs, etc. to people for mega profits. Reads just like a novel and gets you thinking about right vs wrong in the 21st century. I could not put this book down until I had finished reading the entire story…and then went to the Internet to learn even more about Ross and his family today. Love the fast pace, all of the research information, and the portrayal of all the people involved….and includes color photos! Highly recommended to all my friends who loved it too! Grab this one for sure!!
I knew very little about the dark web. This was an amazing story of a young man with so much potential