During two and a half years as an Internet drug kingpin, Silk Road owner Ross Ulbricht allegedly paid for the murder of individuals he deemed threats to his empire on two separate occasions, according to court documents.
The documents, an indictment and a criminal complaint filed by the FBI, allege that Ulbricht paid a sum of $230,000 for the two hits, one of which was staged by the FBI. The Bureau said it did not stage the other, for which a body has not been recovered. Details of these incidents began to surface Wednesday, when it came to light that FBI agents arrested Ulbricht at a San Francisco public library the day before and seized the Silk Road website.
See also: Exclusive: Inside the World of a Silk Road Drug Dealer
Two key court documents have revealed details about the alleged murder for hire. The indictment, (.PDF) filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland, charges Ulbricht with three criminal counts based on investigations by FBI agents from the Baltimore office. The criminal complaint (.PDF) was filed in New York by Christopher Tarbell, an FBI special agent from the agency's New York office.
The FBI has informed Mashable exclusively that the Maryland and New York offices were, in fact, aware of each others' actions throughout the investigation.
"We were in constant communication with them," a New York FBI spokesperson said. "We were aware of everything they were doing, as they were of us."
That helps answer some, but not all, of the questions surrounding Ulbricht's alleged solicitation of murder for hire. Here's what we know so far about the two incidents.
The Maryland indictment says that on or about Jan. 27 of this year, Ulbricht asked an undercover FBI agent to murder a former Silk Road employee. The undercover agent was posing as a wholesale cocaine dealer and Ulbricht helped facilitate a deal between the undercover agent and a Silk Road vendor.
When an employee, who was the target of of the deal, was arrested and apparently released, Ulbricht first asked the undercover agent to beat the employee to force him to return Bitcoin supposedly stolen from Silk Road users. Then, Ulbricht had a change of heart.
"Can you change the order to execute rather than torture?" he asked the undercover agent. "[The employee] was on the inside for a while, and now that he's been arrested, I'm afraid he'll give up info."
Ulbricht paid $80,000, half before the supposed hit and half after. The FBI agents sent Ulbricht staged photos to make it look like the employee had been beaten then killed.
"I'm pissed I had to kill him ... but what's done is done," Ulbricht told the agent. "I just wish more people had some integrity ."
Ulbricht told the FBI agent it was the first time he had a man killed but it was "the right move in this case" because "considering his arrest, I have to assume he will sing."
The indictment document doesn't make clear how the employee ended up out of custody after he was supposedly arrested. Marcy Murphy, a public affairs specialist for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland, told Mashable she could not provide information to clarify the matter beyond what's in the indictment.
About two months later, Ulbricht would order another murder, but the details of that incident aren't quite as conclusive.
Agents from the New York FBI office intercepted communications showing that Ulbricht, going by his Silk Road moniker "Dread Pirate Roberts," asked Silk Road user "redandwhite" to kill yet another Silk Road user who went by "FriendlyChemist," according to the criminal complaint signed by FBI Special Agent Tarbell.
"I'd like to put a bounty on his head if it's not too much trouble for you," Ulbricht told redandwhite. "Necessities like this do happen from time to time for a person in my position."
FriendlyChemist had tried to extort $500,000 from Ulbricht by threatening to release the real names and addresses of Silk Road vendors and customers, which he supposedly obtained by hacking into the computer of a large Silk Road dealer. The document says FriendlyChemist provided Ulbricht with a sample of the names, addresses and transaction details he planned to leak.
"This type of behavior is unforgivable to me," Ulbricht told redandwhite. "Especially here on Silk Road, anonymity is sacrosanct ."
When redandwhite quoted Ulbricht a price of $150,000 to $300,000, depending on whether he wanted a "clean" or "non-clean" hit, Ulbricht asked him for a lower price. He told redandwhite he recently paid $80,000 for a clean hit, presumably referring to the aforementioned FBI setup.
They settled on a price of about $150,000, and Ulbricht provided FriendlyChemist's real name and address in British Columbia, Canada, as well as information on his family — that he had a wife and three children. The criminal complaint does not make clear how Ulbricht obtained this information.
On March 31, redandwhite wrote that he had received payment and, about 24 hours later, sent a message saying, "Your problem has been taken care of ... rest easy though, because he won't be blackmailing anyone again." Later messages indicate that redandwhite sent Ulbricht photo proof after the job was done, according to the FBI's affidavit.
The plot thickened, however, when FBI Special Agent Tarbell went on to report that he contacted Canadian law enforcement authorities who said that there was no record of the person Ulbricht identified to redandwhite, nor was there any record of a homicide occurring in the area at the specified date.
If it was another setup, the FBI is not taking responsibility for it. An FBI spokesperson told Mashable that the second alleged murder-for-hire incident was not staged by the FBI as the first one was. While it's possible investigative groups from other countries may have been trying to shut down Silk Road, no country has yet disclosed any such investigation.
As the case proceeds, more information may come to light and help unravel this mystery.
It's worth noting that in Mashable's interactions with Silk Road vendors before the site was shuttered, they heralded the site as a better way to sell drugs that eschewed Breaking Bad-esque violence. From his alleged propensity to solicit murder for hire, however, could it be that the Dread Pirate Roberts is a bit less like his genial namesake from The Princess Bride and more like Walter White, after all?
Image: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images