by Ciro Santilli (@cirosantilli, 35)

Tagged

Ciro Santilli has become slightly obsessed with this story, and the main mastermind Ross Ulbricht.
Figure 1.
Ross Ulbricht's open laptop shortly after his arrest at the Francisco Public Library
. Source. He was running some GNOME based distro, could be Ubuntu from that photo, and likely is given that Ross once recommended Ubuntu to his flatmate.
The best article available so far is: www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/29/how_i_caught_silk_road_mastermind (archive) which summarizes what one of the investigators said in a 2019 French computer security conference.
The key living posts are:
The big question is of course how libertarian free market ideologically motivated the website was, and how purely criminal greed it was.
The magnitude of the early operational security mistakes does make Ciro think that Ross did it "because he could" and "for the lolz" in a real world Breaking Bad way.
The entry in Ross' diary does resonate a lot with Ciro and any entrepreneur, full diary at: www.wired.com/2015/01/heres-secret-silk-road-journal-laptop-ross-ulbricht/ (archive).
[i]n 2011," [I believe I will be] "creating a year of prosperity and power beyond what I have ever experienced before,
Silk Road is going to become a phenomenon and at least one person will tell me about it, unknowing that I was its creator."
Having this kind of feeling, is the greatest thing any human can have, and what motivates all great things.
Capitalizing in illegal things though is a cheat, big things take longer than a few years to reach, but reaching them is that much more satisfying as well.
Other interesting quotes:
I hated working for someone else and trading my time for money with no investment in myself.
which Ciro also feels, see don't be a pussy, and:
Everyone knows I am working on a bitcoin exchange. I always thought honesty was the best policy and now I didn't know what to do. I should have just told everyone I am a freelance programmer or something, but I had to tell half truths. It felt wrong to lie completely so I tried to tell the truth without revealing the bad part, but now I am in a jam. Everyone knows too much. Dammit.
Also very worth reading is the San Francisco flat mate account: www.vice.com/en_us/article/ae3q8g/my-roommate-the-darknet-drug-lord (archive).
The murder for hire allegations are also interesting: mashable.com/2013/10/03/silk-road-hits, he paid 80k dollars to undercover DEA agents!
Except for the fact that Ross was an 80 million Dollar drug lord, those accounts sound exactly like what you would expect from any other nerdy startup founder! The:
  • "just do it" strategy effectively going to a minimal viable product (manual transaction management!), while making many mistakes along the way, including hiring mistakes and successes when scaling is needed
  • the hardship of self bootstrapping your own social network (here with some kilos of mushrooms)
  • the variety of periods, from relatively calm, to hair pulling stress during big changes
It is also amusing to see very concretely the obvious fact that the FBI can get a subpoena for all accounts you ever had, e.g. they knew his laptop model from Amazon and brought a corresponding power cable to the arrest! If you are going to be a cyber criminal, don't use your real name, ever!
Should justice be blind? Maybe. But it does hurt for mere non-blind men to see it sometimes. Especially when drug liberalization is involved.
Video 1.
One Mistake Took Down a 29-Yr-Old Dark Web Drug Lord by Newsthink (2022)
Source. Wow nice video, covers most of the interesting annecdotes and the (alledged) investigation procedure.

Tagged

The article that put Silk Road on the public map!
A very good information dump! Notably it has a very timeline.
We need a mini-series, this just doesn't have enough time. Notably, too much focus on dob, and not enough on the development of Silk Road iteslf. Though it is cool to see what his motivations might have been like. One wonders how realistic the character is. Though him meeting Ross Ulbricht personally sounds exceptionally unlikely.
Figure 1.
Ross Ulbricht's LinkedIn profile picture
. Source. Still up as of 2023: www.linkedin.com/in/rossulbricht/
Ross Ulbricht told her about Silk Road, but then later said he had sold the website to someone else, without really doing that.
As of 2023, she's apparently a photographer with a porny focus (boudoir photography).
Figure 1.
Julia Vie and Ross Ulbricht
. Source.
youtu.be/HBTYVVUBAGs?t=178 claims to contain a photo of him without source. He has no easy to find online profiles.
Variety Jones: IRL, is there anyone with a clue at all? A girlfriend, boyfriend, buddy you talk to, etc?
myself: Unfortunately yes, there are two but they think I sold the site and got out, and they're quite convinced of it.
His email was published: baronsyntax@gmail.com. They actaully talked on Google Chat. OMG.
Her maiden name is very likely "Caroline Debrion" as per stalking of her online accounts below. Her middle name might start with an L giving "Caroline L. Debrion", but this is less certain.
Likely accounts:
Possibly related profiles but uncertain:
Ciro Santilli first found her name mentioned without source at: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ross_Ulbricht_Released_from_Prison_(cropped).jpg. Her first name "Caroline" was given by Ross at: x.com/RealRossU/status/1888299042146578925 on February 8th 2025.
As of 2025 most Google hits currently give "Rebecca Caroline Ulbricht Ferreira" however, an unrelated Brazilian molecular biology researcher from UNICAMP. So a good Google search is "caroline ulbricht" -Rebecca to remove the overlap. This leads to www.linkedin.com/in/carolineld/ hits.
x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1882489065167356024 has a photo of them hugging at the jail parking lot just after he was released in 2025.
Figure 1.
Ross Ulbricht with his wife soon after he was released from jail in 2025 in front of a mural
. Source. He still seems to be in jail clothes?
Figure 2.
Ross Ulbricht with his wife soon after he was released from jail in 2025 on the road
. Source.
Figure 3.
Ross Ulbricht's wife LinkedIn profile picture according to facecheck.id
.
Figure 4.
Ross Ulbricht's wife's wife credly.com profile picture according to facecheck.id
.
Figure 5.
Ross Ulbricht's wife's wife meetup.com profile picture according to facecheck.id
.
2023 Silk Road's Second-in-Command Gets 20 Years in Prison www.wired.com/story/silk-road-variety-jones-sentencing/
2015 The Variety Show On the trail of the man believed to be Variety Jones, one of the architects of the defunct drug marketplace Silk Road. www.vice.com/en/article/wnx5qn/the-variety-show
www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/file/797251/download some kind of case file of his trial.
The curious thing about VJ is that he actually has some culture and says cool things, e.g.:
IRL - is there anyone with a clue at all? Girlfriend, boyfriend, bunny you talk to, online buddy's who you've know for years? Gramma, priest, rabbi, stripper?
Figure 1. Source.
Full name Carl Mark Force IV, the fourth! As mentioned at www.vice.com/en/article/vv7dgj/great-moments-in-shaun-bridges-a-corrupt-silk-road-investigator (this made Ciro Santilli laugh quite hard:
Carl Mark Force IV - the other corrupt cop charged alongside Bridges - is pretty hard to beat, just name-wise.

Ancestors (6)

  1. Cybersecurity
  2. Computer
  3. Information technology
  4. Area of technology
  5. Technology
  6. Home

Synonyms (1)

View article source

Discussion (0)

+ New discussion

There are no discussions about this article yet.

Articles by others on the same topic (1)

Cybercrime by Wikipedia Bot 0 1970-01-01
Read the full article
See all articles in the same topic + Create my own version