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

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The unbelievable true story of the person who constructed a billion-dollar on-line drug empire from his bed room – and nearly obtained away with it

In 2011, a 26-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the final word free market: the Silk Highway, a clandestine web site hosted on the Darkish Internet the place anybody might commerce something – medicine, hacking software program, cast passports, counterfeit money, poisons – freed from the federal government’s watchful eye.

It wasn’t lengthy earlier than the media obtained wind of the brand new web site the place anybody – not simply youngsters and weed sellers however terrorists and black hat hackers – might purchase and promote contraband detection-free. Spurred by a public outcry, the federal authorities launched an epic two-year manhunt for the positioning’s elusive proprietor, with no leads, no witnesses, and no clear jurisdiction. All of the investigators knew was that whoever was operating the positioning known as himself the Dread Pirate Roberts.

The Silk Highway rapidly ballooned right into a $1.2 billion enterprise, and Ross embraced his new position as kingpin. He enlisted a loyal crew of allies in excessive and low locations, all as hooked on the hazard and thrill of operating an unlawful market as their prospects had been to the heroin they offered. By way of his community he obtained wind of the goal on his again and took drastic steps to guard himself – together with ordering successful on a former worker. As Ross made plans to vanish endlessly, the feds raced in opposition to the clock to catch a person they weren’t certain even existed, looking for a needle within the haystack of the worldwide Web.

Drawing on unique entry to key gamers and two billion digital phrases and pictures Ross left behind, Self-importance Honest correspondent and New York Occasions best-selling creator Nick Bilton provides a story stuffed with twists and turns, fortunate breaks, and unbelievable shut calls. It is a story of the boy subsequent door’s ambition gone felony, spurred on by the conflict between the brand new world of libertarian-leaning, nameless, decentralized net advocates and the previous world of presidency management, order, and the rule of legislation. Full of unforgettable characters and capped by an astonishing climax, American Kingpin could be dismissed as too outrageous for fiction. But it surely’s all too actual.