Other issues that arise: the federal govt is a behemoth that is markedly useless in many of the functions it’s been designed to combat. DEA, FBI, DHS, have to hold regular “deconfliction” meetings bc of all the bureaucratic infighting. These sessions rarely result in ameliorating the pissing contests. Also, two feds ended up doing time for stealing Bitcoin from the Dreadpirate operation. 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

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.” 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. One of the things I really liked about American Kingpin is it is a book with two interwoven stories: A top nuclear scientist goes mad and takes an innocent family hostage at gunpoint, killing one and causing a massive standoff. From the New York Times bestselling author The Four Winds, a moving, powerful novel about the fragile threads that bind together our lives and the astonishing potential of second chances

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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. 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) 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. It's a fascinating story that I will likely read again, because it very subtly makes you question your beliefs, morals and integrity as it paints you a portrait of a small idea taken to the grandest of scales and turned awry as a result of its successes. 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.

I loved how the author shared Ulbricht's thought process on the daily decisions he made about the Silk Road, which was driven by his hardcore libertarian philosophy. I've definitely never thought about trying to apply a political philosophy to something like selling human organs. Regardless of whether I agreed with his arguments, Ulbricht's musings sparked my curiosity and led me on more than one internet rabbit hole of researching libertarian views. Fry, Naomi (2021-02-20). "Fake Famous" and the Tedium of Influencer Culture?". The New Yorker . Retrieved 2022-02-16.The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. Ross sat staring at a concrete wall, frightened by where he found himself but unfazed by how long he might be in jail. He had played through this scenario a thousand times before.” 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. Bilton helps the reader understand how the Government hunted down this elusive criminal. It wasn’t easy, and there were a lot of jurisdictional squabbles as different agencies grabbed pieces of the evidence that would eventually bring down Ross Ulbricht (aka, Dread Pirate Roberts). It wasn’t until the Department of Justice forced the agencies to collaborate that significant progress was made. The individuals who made up this formidable team were amazing.

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.”One of the things I really liked about American Kingpin is it is a book with two interwoven stories: The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom – and almost got away with it.

The story remains fascinating, but doesn't tread any new ground if you already know the DPR deets. Do kids still say deets? Apparently yeet is a thing and I still have no clue what that means. Only that my 20 year old coworkers say it and it makes me feel super old.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... 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 ] The picaresque story of Ross Ulbricht before, during, and after his fateful decision to develop and operate 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.