The 6 Murders Ordered by Ross Ulbricht: When the DEA Agents Were the Killers

The story initially seemed straightforward: Ross Ulbricht, a mild-mannered student turned founder of Silk Road, had attempted to order the assassination of people who threatened him. Six times. The chat logs seized on his laptop at his 2013 arrest prove it in black and white. The scandal and shock of the affair weighed heavily on his 2015 double-life sentence. But the story took an unexpected turn: none of these six people died. Five of the six attempts were staged by corrupt US federal agents themselves, who pocketed Ulbricht's money and simultaneously embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin from the investigation. Here is the full story of the scandal — from the manipulative extortion to the mirror-image arrests of the investigators.

The 6 murder orders: a timeline

The chat logs and documents seized on Ross Ulbricht's MacBook Pro at his arrest in October 2013 document six distinct murder-order attempts between February and May 2013. Here is the summary list before diving into the details.

1. Curtis Green, alias "Flush" — Silk Road employee wrongly suspected of stealing $350,000. Order placed February 4, 2013. Price: $80,000 USD.
2. "FriendlyChemist" — supposed blackmailer threatening to reveal vendor names. March–April 2013. Price: $150,000 USD in Bitcoin.
3. Three associates of "FriendlyChemist" — to make an example and neutralize the network. April 2013. Price: $500,000 USD for all three.
4. A sixth target — identity and circumstances remain unclear; mentioned in a journal entry dated May 2013 with no known outcome.

The fundamental point: none of these people died. Curtis Green is alive and later testified at the trial. The other names correspond to fictitious identities invented by the corrupt agents or were never verifiable.

The first: Curtis Green and the fake death

Curtis Green was a Silk Road employee based in Utah, responsible for moderation and customer support. In January 2013, federal authorities detained him as part of the ongoing investigation and offered him a cooperation deal. He accepted. Agents used his access and credentials to penetrate Silk Road's infrastructure, which allowed Shaun Bridges (more on that shortly) to steal $350,000 in Bitcoin from the operational wallet.

Ross Ulbricht, then Dread Pirate Roberts, noticed the theft. He suspected Curtis Green and decided to have him eliminated. He contacted agent Carl Force — who had been presenting himself under the pseudonym "Nob," embedded for several months as a supposedly successful drug dealer — and ordered Green's death for $80,000 in Bitcoin.

The DEA, informed, staged a photographic fake execution. Agents set up a scene with Green's body — makeup, lying position, a death simulation — and sent the photos to Ulbricht as proof of the "completed murder." Ulbricht paid the $80,000. Curtis Green, meanwhile, was placed in a witness protection program. He resurfaced at the 2015 trial, where his testimony made a strong impression.

This first episode is already instructive: Ulbricht was willing to kill even without certainty about Green's actual guilt (Green had in fact stolen nothing — the thief was agent Bridges, operating from inside using Green's credentials). The US investigation system, from this phase onward, was mixing standard infiltration with borderline covert operations.

The betrayal by Variety Jones

The second wave of orders concerns "FriendlyChemist" and his supposed associates. To understand, we must introduce another key figure: Variety Jones, Ulbricht's strategic advisor, later identified as Roger Thomas Clark, a Canadian who was eventually extradited from Thailand to the US in 2018 and convicted in 2020.

Variety Jones encouraged Ulbricht to take a hard line. In their chats, he advised treating threats against Silk Road with the same coldness as a cartel boss. When, in March 2013, a user calling himself "FriendlyChemist" claimed to have obtained a list of Silk Road clients (and vendors) and threatened to publish it unless paid, Variety Jones pushed Ulbricht toward a violent response.

Ulbricht then contacted "redandwhite" — yet another pseudonym, behind which stood Carl Force again — and ordered FriendlyChemist's death for $150,000 in Bitcoin. Payment was made. A few days later, "redandwhite" provided supposed photos of the victim, and Ulbricht expressed his thanks.

Then, another escalation: Variety Jones and Ulbricht decided it was necessary to "neutralize the associates" of FriendlyChemist. Three more orders were placed for a total of $500,000, also paid in Bitcoin to "redandwhite." Doctored photos were sent back, followed by thanks, and the matter was considered closed.

All these "victims" were fictitious. FriendlyChemist himself was probably just a pseudonym Force used to extort Ulbricht. The story of the associates is entirely fabricated. The $500,000 went directly into Force's pocket, laundered through intermediary wallets.

Carl Force: the undercover DEA agent turned extortionist

Carl Mark Force IV was, at the time, a seasoned DEA special agent assigned to the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force, a joint DEA-IRS-Secret Service unit dedicated to the Silk Road investigation. His official role: to infiltrate the site under cover, gain the trust of Ulbricht/DPR, and collect evidence.

Force used at least three identities on Silk Road, without always informing his superiors: "Nob" (a successful dealer who conducted tens of thousands of dollars of transactions with Ulbricht), "French Maid" (a supposed informant who extorted Ulbricht in exchange for false information about the ongoing investigation), and "Death from Above." At some undetermined point in 2013, Force stopped separating his official operations from his personal ones: he kept a portion of the Bitcoins "received" under cover, extorted Ulbricht with fake threats, and invented fictitious events.

Investigators documented at least $700,000 in Bitcoin diverted by Force during the investigation, transferred to his personal accounts through various intermediaries. Force had set up a comfortable lifestyle without his superiors raising any concerns — he justified the funds as "legitimate undercover gains."

Shaun Bridges: the admin wallet thief

Shaun Bridges was a US Secret Service special agent also assigned to the Baltimore Task Force. His specialty: digital forensics and exploitation of compromised access.

After Curtis Green's detention in January 2013, Bridges used Green's credentials to access Silk Road's administrative interface. He then transferred 20,000 Bitcoins — worth approximately $820,000 at the time, and worth tens of millions at current prices — from the operational wallet to his own personal wallets. That theft, noticed by Ulbricht, was precisely what triggered the murder order against Green.

Bridges used Mt.Gox (the then-dominant Japanese exchange) to convert some of it into US dollars, transferred to bank accounts in London and Panama. A portion of the funds remained in crypto and appreciated considerably.

Staggeringly, Bridges stole a second time in 2015, while in pre-trial detention for the first theft. He had retained partial access to wallets seized by the government and transferred approximately $600,000 more, earning him an additional sentence in 2017.

Exposing the corrupt agents

Irregularities began to emerge in late 2013 and early 2014, after Ulbricht's arrest. Analysts at FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a US Treasury bureau) noticed abnormal flows: Bitcoins seized during the Silk Road investigation were turning up in individual accounts and being converted to dollars through atypical channels.

The Department of Justice opened an internal investigation in 2014 under seal. A deputy US attorney for the Northern District of California, Kathryn Haun (today a prominent figure in legitimate crypto), led the inquiry. She methodically documented the transfers, the fake identities used by Force, the cash-paid apartments, and the accounts in Panama.

Both agents were arrested in March 2015, a few weeks after Ulbricht's trial (which had taken place in January–February). This timing is crucial: Ulbricht had been judged using evidence that partly came from agents who were later exposed as corrupt — but the proceedings did not know this in time.

The trials of Force and Bridges

Both agents pleaded guilty rather than going to trial. Carl Force was sentenced on October 19, 2015, to 6 years and 6 months in federal prison for theft, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and conflict of interest. He served approximately 5 years before being released on parole.

Shaun Bridges was sentenced on December 7, 2015, to 71 months (5 years and 11 months) for the first theft. After his second documented theft, he was sentenced again in November 2017 to an additional 24 months. He spent close to 7 years total in federal prison.

Illegally acquired assets were forfeited to the federal government, although some Bitcoin had appreciated so dramatically that it is impossible to precisely assess the real total damage.

The impact on the Ulbricht case

Ross Ulbricht's lawyers attempted on several occasions to use the corruption of Force and Bridges to overturn the conviction or obtain a reduction. Their arguments:

• Tainted evidence was included in the case file by Force (notably the chats with "Nob" and "French Maid")
• The 6 murder orders were traps set by corrupt agents motivated by personal extortion rather than justice
• The personal journal seized on Ulbricht's laptop contained reactions to Force's provocations — and therefore reflected an intent influenced by a corrupt operation
• The "second Dread Pirate Roberts" hypothesis (that Ulbricht was a successor rather than the founder) was raised — a contested hypothesis

Federal appeals courts rejected all appeals. Their reasoning: the core material evidence against Ulbricht came directly from his seized, open laptop (conversations with Variety Jones, accounting records, day-to-day administration), not from the actions of Force or Bridges. The contamination would only invalidate a minor fraction of the case.

Despite this judicial defeat, the corrupt-agents affair became the pillar of the "#FreeRoss" movement, which lobbied for a presidential pardon over ten years. That movement finally succeeded on January 21, 2025, when Donald Trump granted a pardon on his first day of his second term. Ross Ulbricht had by then served 11 years and 4 months. He walked out a free man.

The case remains a textbook example in US federal criminal law courses: how corrupt agents can simultaneously entrap a genuinely guilty criminal and poison the case to the point of making the conviction ethically debatable, even if legally valid.

FAQ on the murder orders