The Pirate, the Silk Road, and the Dark Web: Ross Ulbricht‘s Empire

Ross Ulbricht created the most notorious website in history when he launched the The Silk Road in 2011. An online marketplace for drugs, guns, poisons, and explosives, the Silk Road would become synonymous with the Internet's lawless new frontier: the so-called "Dark Web."

But what really IS the Dark Web? And how did a middle-class suburban kid become the notorious criminal kingpin known as the "Dread Pirate Roberts"?

Fire up your TOR browser and cover your digital tracks as you follow Shane and Duncan into the darkest depths of the web for a fascinating true story of drugs, contract killings, and betrayal.  

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In this episode:  

• Deep Vs Dark
• Ross Ulbricht, Libertarian
• TOR (The Onion Router) 
• The Bitcoin Connection
• 'Shrooms
• Altoid
• Dread Pirate Roberts
• Variety Jones
• The Kingpin Statute
• Gawker and Chuck Schumer
• Julia and Erica
• Ross's Rules and the "Nonaggression Principle"
• DEA, FBI, and IRS
• Agent Carl Force, aka Nob
• Curtis Green, aka ChronicPain
• Agent Shaun Bridges, Thief 
• Assassinations
• IRS Agent Gary Alford
• Caught
• Trial and Sentencing 
• Carla Sophia, the "French Maid"

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Episode Transcript

 

~ KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, AND SLEEP IS OVERRATED ~