Ross William Ulbricht, 29, was arrested on Tuesday and is alleged to be the "Dread Pirate Roberts" behind Silk Road's drug black market. (Photo: LinkedIn)  If you ask his family members, Ross William Ulbricht did not seem like a criminal mastermind.  “He’s an exceptionally bright and smart kid,” said his half-brother Travis Ulbricht. “He’s always been upstanding and never had any trouble with the law that I knew of.”  But according to the FBI, Ross Ulbricht is the owner and manager of the Silk Road, an anonymous narcotics marketplace that has been responsible for over $1.2 billion in transactions since early 2011. On Tuesday afternoon, the FBI arrested Ulbricht at a San Francisco public library. The 29-year-old now faces charges of money laundering, narcotics trafficking conspiracy and computer hacking.  A criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York portrays Ulbricht as a notorious criminal who knowingly violated the law by cultivating an anonymous online drug bazaar and soliciting the murder of a person who threatened to reveal site users. Calling himself the “Dread Pirate Roberts,” the complaint alleges Ulbricht generated more than $80 million in commissions from running the site, which was shut down by the FBI as of Wednesday.  FORBES interviewed the Dread Pirate Roberts in August in an exclusive, anonymous interview via an online chat after refusing to meet in person. Back then he wouldn’t reveal his full name or even nationality, stating that “the highest levels of government are hunting me.”  “I don’t meet in person even with my closest advisors,” the Dread Pirate said at the time.  According to interviews with his family members, however, Ulbricht did meet with relatives, who had no idea of his alleged illegal online activities. Half-brother Travis mentions meeting with and talking with Ulbricht “a few weeks ago” in the San Francisco area, while his parents also visited him in California after making the trip from Texas.  “This is somewhat shocking and the first I’ve heard of it,” said Travis Ulbricht when contacted for comment on the arrest. “I really don’t know anything about Silk Road … I know it’s part of the underweb essentially.”  In an interview with technology news site, The Verge, close friend René Pinnell, who lived with Ulbricht in San Francisco, was in disbelief that his roommate could have been the notorious drug kingpin named after a masked protagonist from fantasy film, The Princess Bride. He said he thought Ulbricht was trading the anonymous currency Bitcoin to make a living.  “I don’t know how they messed it up and I don’t know how they got Ross wrapped into this, but I’m sure it’s not him,” Pinnell said.  A Texas native who moved to San Francisco in the fall of 2012, Ulbricht listed himself as an “investment adviser and entrepreneur” on his LinkedIn page, though there is no mention of current employment. The only son in a two-child family, he attended the University of Texas at Dallas, where relatives say he was on full scholarship and studied physics. From there, he went on to be a graduate research assistant at Penn State University, earning his Master’s Degree in Materials Science and Engineering with a thesis entitled “Growth of EuO Thin Films By Molecular Beam Epitaxy.”  While at Penn State, Ulbricht was also politically active. A member of the school’s College Libertarians group, he took part in on-campus debates that were documented by the school’s newspaper, The Daily Collegian. In one article from March 2008, Ulbricht is identified as a supporter of Ron Paul who had attempted to become a delegate for the then-presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention.  “There’s a lot to learn from him and his message of what it means to be a U.S. citizen and what it means to be a free individual,” he told the school paper. “He doesn’t compromise his integrity as a politician and he fights quite diligently to restore the principles that our country was founded on.”  In Silk Road’s community forums, the Dread Pirate Roberts always made the libertarian underpinnings of his organization clear. In Oct. 2012, he noted in a post: “Silk Road was founded on libertarian principles and continues to be operated on them … The same principles that have allowed Silk Road to flourish can and do work anywhere human beings come together. The only difference is that the State is unable to get its thieving murderous mitts on it.” He called Paul “a mighty hero in my book” in a note from Nov. 2012.  After leaving Penn State in 2010, Ulbricht mentioned on his LinkedIn page that his “goals have shifted” and that he was moving away from his physics education and toward the study and use of economic theory to “abolish the use of coercion and aggression against mankind.”
Family and friends never suspected Ross Ulbricht to be the alleged drug kingpin behind the notorious Silk Road marketplace.