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

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In 2016, he left The New York Times to become a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, [3] where he writes features and columns. He co-wrote the 2015-2019 Vanity Fair New Establishment List. [4] Fake Famous [ edit ] American Kingpin is both a staggering feat of investigative journalism and a triumph of edge-of-your-seat storytelling. This is what true-crime writing should be.” At first I wasn't sure about how short some of the chapters were, and the ends of some of them didn't leave me NEEDING to continue reading right away. But with so much of the story to be set up, it's understandable why the story was written this way. Ross is not “dangerous.” All his convictions were non-violent. He has no record of hurting anyone. No victims came forward at trial to claim that Ross had harmed them in any way. Rather, he is widely known as peaceful and compassionate. Read what 100 people who actually know him have to say.

You can’t protect people from themselves. Drug enforcement is a Sisyphean task at best and at worst the attempt to interdict drugs is a colossal waste of all kinds of resources in the vain attempt to stop people from short term pleasure against longer term pain. Story #1 opens with young Ross with his family in his hometown of Austin, Texas. Ross seems like an average American kid – good home, boy scout, college graduate, etc. Ross is considered an exceptionally bright kid, albeit a bit quirky and disorganized. The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom — and almost got away with it.I loved how the author shared Ulbricht's thought process on the daily decisions he made about the Silk Road, which was driven by his hardcore libertarian philosophy. I've definitely never thought about trying to apply a political philosophy to something like selling human organs. Regardless of whether I agreed with his arguments, Ulbricht's musings sparked my curiosity and led me on more than one internet rabbit hole of researching libertarian views. Other issues that arise: the federal govt is a behemoth that is markedly useless in many of the functions it’s been designed to combat. DEA, FBI, DHS, have to hold regular “deconfliction” meetings bc of all the bureaucratic infighting. These sessions rarely result in ameliorating the pissing contests. Also, two feds ended up doing time for stealing Bitcoin from the Dreadpirate operation. Finally, to my earlier point of futility, just a week after the Feds shut down the silkroad imitators popped up. The Feds shut down a few of those but you can see where the story goes. Bilton extensively quotes Ross’ journal. Yet, as technical experts know, digital evidence is vulnerable to planting, deleting, altering. Incriminating content could have easily been planted when Ross was arrested (he was on an open source network), or at other times before or after. There are many issues with the laptop investigation, among them: the laptop crashed during investigation and one agent testified that he didn’t follow the guidelines when investigating it. Ross Ulbricht was an Eagle Scout, a good kid, a very smart kid, who developed a strong libertarian ethos.

Engrossing account of the rise and fall of Ross Ulbricht, founder of the now-shuttered online drug bazaar the Silk Road. Or put simply, inmates manage to get drugs in prison. How then is any force going to stop people not incarcerated, who live freely, to stop? Where Ross slipped over the line was when he started allowing, not just drugs, but guns and poison. No one can spray heroin on a group of bystanders like a gun(though regardless his gun sales were never much bc it turns out it’s way easier to send a few tabs of ecstasy through the mail than an AK 47) I have not read Bilton’s other books, but I definitely would give them a shot after reading American Kingpin. I found his writing easy to follow (great for audio) and containing the perfect amount of description and detail. As this book also contained technology I was unfamiliar with, I thought Bilton did an excellent job describing it for the layman. In addition, Bilton wrote the story in a way that allowed easy identification of the more minor characters every time they were discussed.I guess the most important part of me reading this book is that even though the entire thing was a giant neon flashing sign of Ross's guilt - with his association to the sales of drugs, guns and anything else illegal that the Silk Road wanted to dabble in.... At the end of the day I am not entirely convinced that Ross Ulbricht is DPR. Because...