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

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Engrossing account of the rise and fall of Ross Ulbricht, founder of the now-shuttered online drug bazaar the Silk Road. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power. Thus, the Dread Pirate Roberts was born and just like in the movie, the character assumes mythical and sinister reputation – a ruthless pirate who heads an international drug market and rules his kingdom with an iron fist. Henceforth, Ross behaves like a syndicated crime boss, punishing those who get in his way while plotting his eventual getaway when the law catches up with him.

Overall, I really enjoyed American Kingpin. It was an impressive piece of journalism about a fascinating subject and filled with great storytelling. I highly recommend it whether you think the subject will interest you or not, because it will surprise you! Rating Bilton’s investigation of the Silk Road is dramatic and, at times, nearly unbelievable. It puts your favorite thriller novels to shame.” I knew nothing of this true story but became fascinated, as it was built slowly but with great detail, until the endOr 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? The inside story of WeWork and its CEO, Adam Neumann, which tells the remarkable saga of one of the most audacious, and improbable, rises and falls in American business history. 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... Bilton worked at The New York Times from 2003 to 2016, as a design editor in the newsroom and a researcher in the research and development labs. Before he left, he was a technology columnist and the lead writer for the Bits blog. [2] A triumph of investigative journalism.” —Tom Wright, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Billion Dollar Whale

American Kingpin is not your average true crime book. From the title, I initially thought it was about a mob boss or something similar. Instead, American Kingpin is the fascinating story of the Silk Road, a clandestine online drug bazaar hidden on the dark web, and its creator, Ross Ulbricht. Interwoven into Ross’s story is the stories of those trying to bring down the Silk Road. Unfortunately, the lure of untraceable bitcoin money proved too tempting for two Government employees. One stole directly from the Silk Road when the FBI nabbed one of Ulbricht’s employees and he learned how he could do it after interrogating the employee; and the other provided Government investigative progress to Ulbricht for a fee. I dare you not to read this book in one sitting. Masterfully reported and written, Bilton’s book drops you hard into the dark heart of the most famous Internet crime to date. A first-rate thrill.” 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.

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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) Just the headline and subhead demonstrate the hyperbole, sensationalism and inaccuracy of this coverage: The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom—and almost got away with it. An astonishingly well-researched narrative… Bilton's storytelling bears not so much as a trace of fat; the book he's conjured is so sharp and bright that it can be whipped through in the airport lounge before the flight takes off."

This book is nonfiction written like fiction, which means the author has to make up dialog and even scenes in many places throughout. This is both the best and worst thing about the book, as there are many gripping sequences, but many times the dialog between characters sounds fake. However, the eventual police takedown of DPR (Dread Pirate Roberts, the moniker taken on by Ross Ulbricht) by itself justifies the fiction-like storytelling. It has a great buildup and was one of the most memorable scenes I've read in a long time. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Ross Ulbricht the mastermind behind this massive network of drugs and other activities is hunted down by an array of government services and agents. 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. 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. This book that reads like a thriller is pure joy and information. The author did a great job creating all the events based on primary documents and interviews with the people who took down The Silk Road. His libertarian ideas that nothing should be controlled by the government gave him the seed to start this project that ravelled anything ever seen in our time.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. Additionally, American Kingpin follows the federal investigation, arrest, and conviction of DPR, weaving this thread throughout the entire book. Far from a highly organized federal investigation, the hunt for DPR begins by resembling a keystone cop’s episode as various individuals from different federal law enforcement agencies (DEA, DHS, FBI, IRS, etc.) jump on the case, buy drugs, arrest low-level dealers and drug buyers, and follow leads in pursuit of the Silk Road kingpin. Eventually, these individuals discover each other and cooperate on finding the Dread Pirate Roberts. While their collaboration leads to several dead ends, they eventually put their heads together, piece together all their individual breadcrumbs, and takedown DPR. 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 ] 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. An astonishingly well-researched narrative… Bilton’s storytelling bears not so much as a trace of fat; the book he’s conjured is so sharp and bright that it can be whipped through in the airport lounge before the flight takes off.”