Secret history of Bitcoin: the black man behind the Silk Road extortion case is an American DEA agent

Source: Hash Pie

Author: LucyCheng

Editor's Note: The original title was "The Secret History of Bitcoin: The Black Man Behind the Silk Road Extortion Case Is an American DEA Agent"

In May 2013, anonymous hackers used technical means to close the Silk Road in the dark web market for a week. In order to seek the stable operation of the website, the helpless founder Ross Ulbricht had to pay the hacker every Friday. "Protection fee" of 10,000 US dollars. What's magical is that the anonymous person turned out to be the ForceCarl Mark Force, who is investigating the Silk Road's Drug Enforcement Agency. At the same time, he was also a confidant with Ross during that period.

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Image from: cryptocrooks.com

In June 2011, Karl, a veteran of the Drug Enforcement Agency, who has won numerous honors, was drowsy at an interdepartmental meeting. In fact, Carl's enthusiasm has been obliterated by years of anti-drug work, but this time it seems different. The investigation target "Silk Road" mentioned at the meeting immediately aroused his interest. Just a few days ago, Carl has started following this black market website through a drug addict's sharing on Gawker.

In fact, the website soon attracted the attention of various law enforcement agencies in the United States, but under the double encryption of Bitcoin and Tor network, the police investigation on the Silk Road has been no progress. To break the deadlock, the FBI, the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Revenue Service, the National Security Agency, and the United States Postal Service jointly convened the meeting and plan to conduct an in-depth investigation code-named "Marco Polo". After the discussion, each department was divided into four different groups to investigate, but they were not a cooperative relationship but a competitive relationship. Carr, who has decades of experience dealing with drug traffickers, was the first person inside to enter the Silk Road.

In January 2012, Carl, who had only a little bit of knowledge about Bitcoin, started his undercover life. In order to penetrate the enemy camp, he kept his long hair, pierced his ears, put on exaggerated earrings, stabbed a tribal tattoo on his back, and created a credible case in the drug dossier wanted file in the United States. Disguised as a drug smuggler Eladio Guzman from the Dominican Republic. Ready to be fully armed, Carl contacted Ross on the Silk Road as Nob. At that time, Carl, who observed a certain number of scammers on the website, sent an e-mail to the founder of the Silk Road with an old computer distributed by the government, proposed to the website rectification, and stated that he hoped to spend tens of millions of dollars to buy silk road.

Ross did not agree to the offer, but considered Carl's proposal to be of reference value. At the close, the two began frequent exchanges as the founder of the Silk Road, DPR, and Nobun, the drug lord. Slowly, Carl also played the role of Ross mentor, not only discussing the creation of a website parallel to the Silk Road, Masters of Silk Road, which also established a Bitcoin payment center server in Iceland on the advice of Carl.

Here things have come, Carl's undercover operation can actually end perfectly; but he did not stop or report Ross's criminal evidence to his superiors. Instead, he sunk in a life of gold and continued to play with Ross's supreme trust. The identity of the top players on the site. And after recognizing the anonymity of bitcoin, Carl no longer reported his income to the top, and directly rewarded the bitcoin obtained by helping the website purchase, and put all of his money in his pocket in peace.

Network Investigator Taber (Image: Web)

Later, Carl also asked for a home loan through the quietly sold bitcoin, and in order to continue to immerse himself in luxury, he even repeatedly disclosed the progress of the police investigation on the Silk Road to Ross. Carl's double-sided spy game was not over until the FBI's new agent, Taber, discovered a flaw in the Icelandic server.

At the time, Carl thought that, just like Bitcoin's anonymity, his criminal behavior would not be discovered. Fortunately, even after the case was over, he tried to contact book publishers and Hollywood film producers, hoping to sell his story and publicize the image of a drug war hero. But Carl was wrong. The FBI quickly came to his door and prosecuted Carl for multiple thefts of government property, wire transfer fraud, money laundering, and benefit delivery; the court eventually sentenced him to 78 months in prison.

At this point, Karl, who has experienced dangerous games again and again, allowed himself to indulge in the role he played, and himself sent him to prison.

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