It's 11:00 a.m. 47year-old Curtis Green is washing down some powdered mini donuts with a bottle of Coke. He's home alone when suddenly his doorbell rings and his two Chihuahua start barking. Surprised, Green gets up and grabs his wife's pink walking cane. They live in a suburban neighborhood in Spanish Fork, Utah, and don't get visitors often. Shuffling over to the window, he sees a postman hurrying away from the door, but he looks weird. Instead of a full uniform, he's wearing the US Postal Service jacket with jeans and sneakers. And instead of the normal posting van,

he's heading to an unmarked white van parked across the street. Nonetheless, lying on the porch is a book-sized package. It has a Mryland postmark on it, but no return address. When Green picks it up, he can feel how heavy it is. He examines the package. Then he limps over the lawn to his trash can and simply throws it away. Then he goes back inside and closes the door. But he doesn't trust his gut instincts for long. After a few minutes, he brings the package inside and grabs a pair of scissors. One cut is all it takes for a plume of white powder to fill the air and cover his face. At this exact moment, the unlocked front door flies off its hinges. A SWAT team bursts into the living room. The package contains

over 1 kilogram of highquality cocaine stamped with a red dragon. Green drops it and gets down. He doesn't even think about resisting. Officers search him at gunpoint and find $23,000 in cash in his fanny pack. They seize his computer, Bitcoin mining rig, and Samsung phone. Curtis Green is arrested on cocaine possession with intent to distribute. He has just been the target of a controlled delivery sting operation by the Marco Polo Task Force, a special unit operating out of the Baltimore Homeland Security Investigations Office. It was assembled to bring down one man, Dread Pirate Roberts, the mysterious figure behind

the dark web drug empire, the Silk Road, and Curtis Green's boss. Green suspects that being a highle moderator with access to the inner workings of the infamous site makes him extremely valuable to law enforcement. As long as he cooperates and DPR doesn't find out, maybe he'll be all right. What he doesn't know is that one of the agents who just busted down his front door will frame him for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Silk Road vendors. and his partner will torture Green and force him to help bring down the biggest online drug market in the world.

Fern, hey, do you enjoy our videos and work in journalism or even better video journalism? We're looking for an experienced writer to join Fern as editor-inchief. You can find all the details on our new website. Link is in the description. Parts of this video are based on the phenomenal book American Kingpin by Nick Bilton. You'll find a link in the description. These are special agent Carl Force and Special Agent Sha Bridges. Force is DEA in charge of the unit's undercover operations and drugrelated crimes. He's a veteran with over 15 years of experience under his belt, some of which

he worked as an undercover agent. He's no stranger to crafting elaborate personas to avoid detection, infiltrating criminal groups and dismantling them from the inside out. Bridges a secret service specializing in computer forensics and Bitcoin. For the past 6 years, he was part of the Secret Services electronic crimes task force. He has plenty of experience conducting forensic computer investigations to locate and identify targets. He's also well-versed in the anonymity software, tour, or the onion router was developed by the US Navy. It's a specialized

software that makes it practically impossible to locate the computer's hosting or accessing websites on the network. It's the backbone of the dark web and used to access sites not found on the public internet. Sites like the Silk Road, the largest online black market in the world. Here, vendors sell illicit goods like drugs for Bitcoin, and the two agents just got one step closer to bringing it down. Together, they're sitting behind the computer of Silk Road moderator Flush, otherwise known as the scared old man still being interrogated in the other room. He is one of their first major arrests in this case. A breakthrough. Terrified, Greens officers direct access to one of his accounts.

They immediately change the password and secure it. Green is a bigger fish than they originally thought. Special moderator privileges given by DPR allow him to change people's passcodes and lock them out of their accounts. But that's not all. Digging a little deeper, they discover that he has access to the Bitcoin of all users. Hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin. With a digital currency that was considered pretty much untraceable at the time, it's surprising that Green has this much trust. He could easily steal the money and run, but it's clear that for some reason Green is deafly afraid of his boss. As he's being taken to the squad car, he begs the agents not to take him to jail.

Agent Forest just finds his begging pathetic. He puts his number into Green's phone, tells him to call when he gets out, and sends him on his way. Hey, as you hopefully know, our videos are animated by humans, and I'm one of those. My name is Thomas. I art directed this video, and I made all the 3D scenes. Now, my job actually requires a surprising amount of math, and if you're a regular viewer of Fern, you already know about Brilliant. It's a learning platform for students who are serious about math and coding. Every lesson is interactive, and they break down concepts step by step, like your own

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far and as fast as you want. Go learn for free on Brilliant for a full 30 days at brilliant.org/burn or just scan this QR code. Our viewers get 20% off a premium annual subscription. Curtis Green is sitting on his bed looking down the barrel of his dad's 32. He was just released on bail. It's only a matter of time before his muckshot is made public. It's either this or being hunted down by one of DPR's goons. But maybe there's a third option. He throws the gun across the room, picks up his phone, and dials the number of special agent force.

The agents continue to poke around Green's moderator account, and one thing becomes abundantly clear. On the Silk Road, he's a top left tenant. Exactly the type of informant they hoped to flip with their sting operation. They meet with Green at the Marriott Hotel in Salt Lake City. There, the agents give him the new password for his account. As long as their mole acts like nothing happened, everything should be fine. This is Dread Pirate Roberts. He's the mastermind behind the Silk Road and one of the most wanted men on the internet. His identity is a mystery, but his mission is clear to create global enterprise whose purpose it is to empower people to live as free

individuals. He often posts about his libertarian ideals on chat rooms and Silk Road forums. He talks about Austrian economics and agorism, the practice of engaging in black market activity as a form of nonviolent revolution. He frequently makes his distaste for government regulation heard. Those on the inside support his vision by any means necessary. At the moment, he's staring at a message from one of his moderators, Enigo. I detected a possible theft of approximately 20,000 bitcoins. I think the funds were stolen by Flush. It looks like he reset the passwords of individual Silk Road users. A bunch of Silk Road vendors have just been robbed. At the time, 20,000 bitcoins are worth about $350,000.

He knew that something was up when Flush didn't lock in for work. Why aren't you clearing out your account? Get back to me ASAP. To confirm his suspicions, he pulls up the photocopy of Flush's ID that he asked for when he hired him. A quick Google search of his real name leads him to a website cataloging recent arrests. It confirms his worst fears. One of his top left tenants is compromised. A man he thought he could trust. Did he start stealing because the fats are onto him? Grab some cash and make a run for it. It doesn't matter. DPR knows he's left with three options. Scare him, beat him, or kill him. And he can't do it alone. It's a job for someone with connections in the underworld. And one man immediately

comes to mind. A Silk Road user he has gotten to know well over the past 9 months. Knob is a cartel operative and high rolling drug smuggler from the Dominican Republic. He first contacted DPR on Torchet, offering to buy the business, but the 9 figure valuation that DPR countered with was a bit steep. The deal didn't go through, but the two men never stopped chatting. Knob is clearly an admirer of what DPR has built and was quick to give advice. With over 20 years experience in the drug business, he's a wealth of information and a man with connections. Just the kind of man DPR needs to carry out his dirty work. I have a problem that requires violence. One of my employees stole from me. Not a lot, but it pisses

me off to no end. Do you want him beat up, shot, just paid a visit? I'd like to beat him up, then force him to send the bitcoins he stole back. Like sit him down at his computer and make him do it. Who is it and where is he? I'll send you his ID. Car Force is sitting in the Marriott hotel staring at the ID of the man sitting across the table from him eating French fries. Curtis Green Force and his partner Bridges have just completed a 2-hour interrogation with their informant. His lawyer had also been present but left early, instructing Green to just tell them everything he knows. Working undercover as the South American drug smuggler, Eladio Guman, or Knob, has been relatively fruitful so far. Force used it to orchestrate the

sting operation that led to Green's arrest. He offered to supply a kilo of cocaine to a buyer through DPR who proposed Green to act as the middleman that would hold onto the coke for the buyer. That worked like a charm, but Force didn't expect it would lead to this. He didn't think Green had the balls to steal from his boss, especially right under their noses. He looks up from his laptop. You stole money from DPR? Green looks up panicked. No, you got to be kidding me. I wouldn't even know how to steal a penny from him. At first, Bridges is quiet, but then he jumps into, "Just admit you stole the money."

The men know that with just a little bit of pressure, they can get their new informant to agree to anything. And Force has a plan. They just need one little signature to put it into action. Agent Bridges is standing in the door of the Marriott Hotel bathroom watching Curtis Green get waterboarded. After all, he agreed to it in writing. When his partner got that message from DPR, Bridges knew it would play right into his hands. Blame the informant for the theft, carry out a fake hit for 80k in Bitcoin, and use it as evidence to put DPR away. None of the other men in the room will ever know that the real thief is Bridges himself.

I swear I didn't steal the money. Just admit it. Stop trying to protect DPR. The third agent dunks Green's head under water over and over as he struggles violently, screaming bubbles. Green is begging the man to stop, but they have to make it look real for the camera. After all, DPR requested photo evidence from Knob. Force takes photo after photo and Bridges just lets it happen. The funny thing is, if he hadn't stolen the money, Green never would have been a suspect for the theft and Force never would have gotten such compromising messages from DPR. With his background in blockchain tech, stealing the Bitcoin was easy. He logged into the Flush moderator account and used its administrative privileges

to reset the passwords and pins of several Silk Road vendors. He then emptied their accounts and moved 20,000 Bitcoin to a private wallet. He knew he had to hide his trail. So he rapidly transferred the bitcoin through multiple digital wallets to the Japanese crypto exchange Mount Gaus. He is storing his loot there for now. And by a stroke of luck, Green turned out to be the perfect little scapegoat. The man is spluttering and crying on the bathroom floor. He dunked four times to get the shot. But while the agents are busy pretending to carry out DPR's orders, the Silk Road Kingpin has a change of heart. Okay, so you can change

the order to execute rather than torture. He was on the inside for a while, and now that he's been arrested, I'm afraid he'll give up info. The order to torture is now an order to kill. DPR is staring at the picture he just received from Knob, a lifeless, overweight body, pale, wet, and covered in puke. A few days earlier, he had gotten confirmation that the hit was complete. Green was waterboarded, almost drowning once, but kept alive with CPR just to be tortured more. But before Knob could get the money back, Green died of asphixxiation and heart failure.

The description was disturbing, but the picture confirms the story. DPR saves it to an encrypted folder and transfers the second half of the ADK in Bitcoin to Knob. The job is done. He knows it was necessary to protect his business. What he doesn't know is that it will also be his downfall because Green didn't die in a pool of his own vomit. He played dead in a pool of Cample soup. Now that Green is dead, or rather laying low at his home in Utah, Agent Force is back in Baltimore. He's sitting behind his DEAisssued laptop, continuing his undercover work as a knob. After 15 years of working on the front lines of

the drug war, he's gotten pretty good at creating alternate personas. Compared to his old undercover roles, pretending you're someone else online is easy. He just threw on a dark hoodie, put on an eye patch, and held a sign reading all hail knob. Asked his daughter to take a grainy profile picture, and voila, he's a South American drug smuggler. He spent a lot of late nights sitting in his launch chair, cultivating a friendship with DPR. They talk about everything. diet, music, family, personal issues, the drug trade. Force even gives advice on 30-second escape plans, legal counsel, and moving to another country.

It takes months for DPR to trust him, but once he does, his efforts pay off. Now, they have damning evidence that DPR paid someone to murder for him. Still, it's not worth much if they don't know who the man behind the mask really is. But Knob sees firsthand that DPR is beginning to show cracks. With his first murder out of the way, he becomes more fanatical and eager to hand out punishments. Force knows it's only a matter of time before he slips up and gets caught. Homeland Security, the DEA, IRS, and the FBI are all claiming jurisdiction over the case. Illegal narcotics being sold, packages crossing borders through the mail, transactions hosted on servers, Bitcoin being laundered. The Silk Road

represents a new wave of crime that somehow touches on the purview of each agency. And they all want the glory of bringing the site and its mastermind down. So Force has to capitalize before the inevitable arrest. He saw how easily DPR would transfer ADK to a sanctioned government wallet for the supposed hit on Green. But why not get more without them knowing? Just like Bridges, he assumes the nature of crypto will allow him to steal without getting caught. So he moves his conversations with DPR to an encrypted chat his colleagues don't have access to. In June, Knob sells DPR some fake IDs for 400 Bitcoin, which he likely needs to evade police and to rent more servers to handle the rapid

expansion of his empire. In August, Knob introduces him to Kevin, another persona he created, a corrupt law enforcement official who could sell DPR insider information on the ongoing Silk Road investigation. For 525 Bitcoin, he does just that. Then force creates even more fake personas. Frenchmate for 100k in Bitcoin. He provides insider information to DPR claiming that the former CEO of Mount Gaus has allegedly leaked his real name to the Department of Homeland Security. Albert Pacino for $500 a week. He positions himself as a DEA spy, providing insider scoops on the ongoing Silk Road investigation. Death from above. He threatens to expose DPR's real identity unless he's paid $250,000 in Bitcoin, but DPR doesn't seem to take

too kindly to blackmail and calls his bluff. Either way, Force manages to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Silk Road Kingpin. And like Bridges, he tries to hide the money trail and bounces the Bitcoin around a variety of wallets and exchanges, but the amount of money he's moving is suspicious. Then one day, Force hears a rumor. Dread Pirate Roberts might have been found. The Baltimore task force receives an official standown order. The FBI team in New York has beaten them to it. For Force, it's bad news. Really bad. If the agents manage to arrest DPR on his laptop, they will definitely find his

chats with him. In a panic, he messages DPR. My informant Kevin is certain that you are going to be identified and caught. You are like one of my family. But I have to tell you that I have had several people killed who were sent to jail. It is very easy and cheap. I trust that you have destroyed all messages, chats, etc. between us. Force never finds out if DPR did. On October 1st, 2013, Ross Olrich is arrested in a public library in San Francisco. While he's distracted by two agents, another manages to snatch his laptop from him. He's still logged into the So Road as Dread Pirate Roberts. The

site is shut down almost immediately. The FBI sees all data from its servers and confiscate the 144,000 bitcoins found in Old Brick's cold wallet. At the time, they're worth between 16 to 18 million. Just under 1 million users are locked up forever. 1 month and 3 days later, Silk Road 2.0 goes live on the dark web. It was launched by admins of the original site who were still at large. Carl Force is hailed as one of the heroes who brought down Dread Pirate Roberts. His sting operation and the resulting fake assassination help build a strong case against painting him as a bloodthirsty kingpin. For a while, Force thinks he's gotten away with it. With his newfound fame at the DEA and

hundreds of thousands of dollars of crypto sitting in several wallets and exchanges, he starts to get cocky. He keeps triggering anti-moneyaundering checks on services like Venmo and exchanges like Bitstamp. when he moves or liquidates his Bitcoin. When his accounts get flagged, he tries to bypass the blocks by throwing his DEA agent status around. Eventually, Bitstam support asks him why he's logging into the service through tour. I utilize tour for privacy. Don't particularly want NSA looking over my shoulder. This reply raises more red flags and Bitstam contacts law enforcement and they promptly kickstart an investigation into force. Meanwhile, he becomes more

and more brazen. Without his boss's knowledge, he begins to work as the de facto chief compliance officer for the crypto exchange Coin MKT. Using his authority as a DEA agent, he instructs Coin MKT to freeze the balance of a user's account and tells them to transfer the $337,000 to a government account. Then he transfers 300K of those funds to a private wallet. To cover for his crimes, he creates false reports to mislead his superiors, claiming that only 37K had been seized. Shortly after, he sends an unauthorized Justice Department subpoena to Venmo, ordering them to unfreeze his personal account, which had been frozen due to suspicious activity. Every move he makes becomes another breadcrumb in the investigation against him, making

the money trail easier and easier to follow. By spring of 2014, a massive investigation into force is in full swing. At its center is IRS special agent Tigron Cambarion, an expert in cyber and digital currency crimes. Under his guidance, a team of agents unravels forces transactions. They track his finances by carefully analyzing the blockchain, a public ledger of all Bitcoin transactions. Combined with the data that was recovered from Silk Road servers after the takedown, a picture begins to form. The funds from the Silk Road are first tracked down to specific wallets, then to specific bank accounts. But to the agent's surprise, not all were owned by force. When analyzing the

outflow of Bitcoin from Silk Road, they noticed that some of the transactions lead to his partner. Bridges had since liquidated his 20,000 Bitcoin for $800,000 and attempted to hide the money in a variety of offshore shell companies. What the special agents thought to be an untraceable currency actually left a clear trail leading right to their doors. The ongoing investigation into force and bridges is intentionally suppressed during the trial against Ross Alrich. The jury never hears of their corruption before DPR is convicted. He is found guilty on seven counts and gets two life terms plus 40 years without the possibility of parole. In March 2015, both Force and Bridges are arrested. Force is charged with moneyaundering, obstruction of

justice, and extortion. He gets 6 and 1/2 years and a 340k fine for stealing more than $700,000 worth of Bitcoin. Bridges is charged with moneyaundering and obstruction of justice. He gets 6 years for stealing more than $800,000 worth of Bitcoin and a $651,000 fine. One day before he's supposed to report to prison, he is caught while apparently trying to flee the country. He had just stolen another 1,600 Bitcoin from a government wallet, earning him another 24 months. Curtis Green originally faces a maximum sentence of 40 years for his cocaine and trafficking charges. But because he was real tortured and fake murdered, he's ultimately let go with time served. In 2025, President Donald

Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Albert.