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

On October 5, 2011, at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Mike Weinthaler, a Customs and Border Protection officer, pulled a white square envelope from the Netherlands with a typed address and a small bump. Inside it, he found a single, pink MDMA pill. Following earlier guidance, he alerted Jared Der-Yeghlayan, a Homeland Security agent. Jared took the envelope, but his unconcerned training officer delayed discussing the discovery with the package’s intended recipient for one week. When they finally visited the West Newport Avenue address in Chicago, they met the recipient’s roommate, who agreed to let them inside.

When Jared and his training officer questioned the roommate about the package, the young man explained that his roommate occasionally received drugs by mail. He then named the Silk Road, describing an Amazon-like site accessed via the anonymous Tor web browser where customers could buy any drug online using Bitcoin, an untraceable digital currency. On the way back to their vehicles, Jared’s training officer claimed many cases on the Silk Road already existed, but when Jared searched the Department of Homeland Security database an hour later, he found no open investigations. He turned to Google’s search engine and discovered a June