Proof of Multiple Administrators (DPRs)

“It is common knowledge that there was more than one DPR. Anyone who even remotely followed the trial could see that the jury was aggressively obstructed from knowing this and many other material facts.”
– Will Pangman. Bitcoin and Blockchain Consultant.[1]
Ross did not control Silk Road from start to finish and he was not the only person behind the accounts of the top administrator, “Dread Pirate Roberts” (DPR). There is hard evidence and testimony—including from the lead Silk Road investigator—that shows more than one person controlled the DPR accounts over time. Yet, this was precluded at Ross’s trial and hidden from the jury.
Interview with Curtis Green, August 8, 2018
“Everybody says there were multiple DPRs. Absolutely. I was DPR once. So if I was, who else was?” – Curtis Green, former Silk Road admin.[2]
With no programming experience, Ross did not have the technical skills required to maintain Silk Road and became overwhelmed after its launch.[3][4] He handed control off within a year of starting the website. In 2012, the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts” (DPR) appeared for the first time on the Silk Road forum: a character from the film The Princess Bride who passes his name and identity on to his successors.

Private Statements from Ross

Richard Bates, a college friend with a Computer Science degree, provided Ross with programming help when he first launched Silk Road. Bates is the only government witness who ever linked Silk Road to Ross. He testified at trial that Ross told him in November 2011 that he had distanced himself from the website.[5] Two years after, when Bates casually referred to Silk Road in a private online chat, Ross said: “Glad that’s not my problem anymore.☺” [6]

Excerpt from Ross and Richard Bates’s chat,
Feb 5, 2013 (trial exhibit 1004)

DPR’s Forbes Interview

Excerpt from Forbes interview between Andy Greenberg and DPR, Aug 14, 2013

In 2013, DPR granted Forbes an exclusive interview and revealed he had inherited the site from its creator. “I didn’t start Silk Road, my predecessor did,” DPR told the reporter. He said that it was the creator’s idea to “pass the torch” after the soon-to-be owner had discovered a “big vulnerability” in his code.

DPR added: “At first he ignored me, but I persisted…[It] was a transition that took some time. I was in his corner from early on and eventually it made sense for me to take the reins,” saying that his predecessor was “happy with our arrangement.”

Silk Road Investigation

The government did not target Ross until the very end of their lengthy investigation. From early on, HSI Special Agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan, the lead investigator on the case, believed that the DPR accounts were controlled by Mark Karpeles, a foreign French national, and Ashley Barr, a Canadian computer scientist.[7][8] In an August 2012 email, Der-Yeghiayan wrote that these men were “running the Silk Road.”[9]

An experienced programmer and self-proclaimed hacker, Karpeles owned and operated hundreds of websites.[10] He was the owner of Mt. Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange at the time. Der-Yeghiayan had found “strong ties between those controlling the bitcoin markets and those operating the Silk Road.”[11]

Mark Karpeles (left) – Ashley Barr (right)
Excerpt from Agent Der-Yeghiayan’s investigation report

In mid-2013, Karpeles was in contact with at least one of the corrupt agents investigating Silk Road. In a meeting with federal prosecutors, his lawyers provided the name of someone else to target as DPR instead of Karpeles, in exchange for legal immunity.[14] Not long after, Ross was arrested.

Ten days before Ross’s arrest, Der-Yeghiayan sent an email to his boss worrying about “the other two admins getting away.”[15] He later wrote that Karpeles was “purging everything after [Ross’s] arrest.”[16]

Excerpt from Agent Der-Yeghiayan’s email to his boss ten days before Ross’s arrest

Years after Ross’s sentencing, Karpeles revealed in 2018 that “a third to half of the transactions on Mt. Gox were linked to Silk Road.”[12] (In 2015, Karpeles was prosecuted and served time in a Japanese prison for “data manipulation” and fraud related to Mt. Gox’s collapse.[13])

DPR Logs In While Ross is in Prison

Motherboard article, Dec 1, 2016

After Ross’s trial, new evidence was discovered revealing that DPR continued logging into his account on the Silk Road forum while Ross was being held in solitary confinement with no access to the outside world, let alone the Internet.

A record in the Silk Road forum database shows that the last time the DPR forum account was logged into was November 18, 2013, nearly seven weeks after Ross was arrested and four days before law enforcement took the forum offline. This information was buried in four terabytes of data dumped on Ross and his lawyers before trial, and wasn’t discovered until many months later when it could no longer be used.

DPR’s Failed “Handshake”

A Silk Road employee, Andrew Jones, told federal prosecutors that, in October 2012, he and DPR had agreed upon a “handshake,” a unique question and response that only they would know. If Jones ever doubted he was talking to the same DPR, he could ask the secret question to determine if DPR knew the response.

Just weeks before Ross was arrested, Jones asked DPR for a book recommendation (the question). DPR should have known the correct response (anything by Rothbard), but was unable to provide it.[17][18]

Despite Ross’s lawyer’s objections, the judge prevented the defense from presenting this information to Ross’s jury at trial.[19]

Andrew Jones

“One year [or] two years later when I messaged [DPR]—I’m pretty certain it was not the same guy. The tone was completely different. He had no recollection of the events that happened before, and his attitude to me was in stark contrast to the exuberant and wordy Dread Pirate Roberts of the early days.”
– Amir Taaki, leading Bitcoin developer.[20]

There were “at least two other people—if not three”—who were administering Silk Road.
– pseudonymous Silk Road vendor.[21]

References