The Silk Road quickly ballooned into a $1.2 billion enterprise, and Ross embraced his new role as kingpin. All the investigators knew was that whoever was running the site called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts. Spurred by a public outcry, the federal government launched an epic two-year manhunt for the site's elusive proprietor, with no leads, no witnesses, and no clear jurisdiction. It wasn't long before the media got wind of the new website where anyone - not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers - could buy and sell contraband detection-free. In 2011, a 26-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine website hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything - drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons - free of the government's watchful eye. The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom - and almost got away with it
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