In this courtroom sketch, defendant Ross Ulbricht listens to proceedings from the defense table during opening arguments in his criminal trial in New York, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015. Elizabeth Wlliams/AP
As the the trial of alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht unfolds, its transcript has read like a manual of things not to do when running a secret, billion-dollar online drug conspiracy. But on Thursday, the jury heard about the most human of all the human errors Ulbricht may have made: confessing his creation to an in-real-life friend.
In a Manhattan courtroom Thursday, Austin, Texas-based eBay software engineer Richard Bates took the stand to testify against Ulbricht, his college friend and one-time programming partner. From late 2010 until at least 2011, Bates says he gave Ulbricht programming advice on a project Ulbricht described as “top secret.” And when Bates ultimately refused to offer any more assistance unless Ulbricht shared the details of that project, he says that Ulbricht showed him the Silk Road for the first time on a laptop in Bates’ home.
“I told him, tell me about this or leave me out of it,” said Bates, a pale programmer with slicked-back hair and black-rimmed glasses who wore a worried grimace during his entire time on the stand. “He told me about it.”
According to Bates, Ulbricht said that he was working on a “website where people can buy drugs.” Then, using a neighbor’s open Wi-fi to assuage Bates’ concerns, he showed Bates the site. “I remember seeing the home page, the green camel [of the Silk Road logo] for the first time, and pictures of drugs,” Bates said in response to questions from prosecutor Timothy Howard. “I was shocked and very intrigued. I didn’t know how something like this could be possible.”
Despite all the evidence piled against Ulbricht—which includes screenshots of his seized laptop taken from him while he was logged into the Silk Road’s “mastermind” page and a journal on that PC documenting his thoughts and activities allegedly running the site—Bates’ testimony could be particularly damning.
The defense, after all, has argued that Ulbricht created the Silk Road only as an “economic experiment” before giving it up to the real operators of the site who would expand it into a narcotics empire and then later frame Ulbricht. Bates’ story captures Ulbricht’s intention to sell drugs, specifically, and also indicates Ulbricht ran the site longer than the few months his attorneys have claimed.
Bates told the jury that he had first met Ulbricht during their time together as undergraduate students at the University of Texas at Dallas. Theey once went on a spring break trip together, according to Bates. In 2010, they reconnected when Bates moved to Austin, where Ulbricht lived at the time, and went cliff-jumping a few weeks later. By late 2010, Bates says, they saw one another on a weekly basis.
Around that time, Ulbricht began to ask Bates “very frequent” questions about PHP and server administration, often over Google chat, Bates said. But when Bates asked about the nature of Ulbricht’s project, Ulbricht refused to say more. Eventually Bates wrote to Ulbricht, “I’m officially forbidding you from mentioning your secret project to me again unless you’re going to reveal it.” Soon after that, Ulbricht revealed his secret, Bates said.
Despite his initial shock, Bates said he continued to advise Ulbricht on his Silk Road programming problems, helping him in March of 2011, for instance, to deal with a major site outage. The two would later work together on plans for a bitcoin exchange, Bates confirmed in response to prosecutor Howard’s questions. And Bates also used the Silk Road to buy drugs under the pseudonym “melee”, listing marijuana, ecstasy, psychedelic mushrooms, Vicodin and antibiotics among those he’d purchased. He also told the jury that Ulbricht had personally given him a bag of psychedelic mushrooms he’d grown and stored in a large black trash bag, offering more evidence that Ulbricht had sold his own homemade mushrooms as the first product on the Silk Road.
When Ulbricht was arrested in October 2013, Bates said he was visited by FBI agents, and initially lied to them about his involvement and drug purchases before confessing. He eventually agreed to testify to avoid prosecution.
Over the course of its first 45 minutes interviewing Bates, the prosecution showed him multiple chats between Ulbricht and Bates. One read as follows:
Ulbricht: You gotta keep my secret, buddy
Bates: I haven’t told anyone and I don’t intend to
…
Ulbricht: I know I can trust you
As Bates testified, Ulbricht stared straight ahead, offering no hint of his facial expressions to the press gallery. When the court adjourned, prosecutor Howard hadn’t yet finished questioning his friend. And Bates’ testimony, of course will no doubt be picked apart in cross-examination by the defense.
Stay tuned for an update later today.
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