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There Are Two Illustrious Characters Still Missing in the Silk Road Drama

Two of the most interesting online personas in the site’s history have yet to be tracked down.

Despite anonymity being central to the now-defunct digital black market Silk Road, which relied on identity-obscuring technologies like Tor addresses and Bitcoin, many of the top players in its history have been tracked down.

A criminal complaint against two federal agents arrested last week for stealing Bitcoin during their investigation of Silk Road unmasked one of them as being behind several prominent pseudonymous personalities on the site, including Nob, alpacino, french maid, and Death from Above.

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Meanwhile, several site administrators were arrested in 2013, including Inigo (Andrew Michael Jones from Virginia) and Libertas (Gary Davis from Ireland).

Samesamebutdifferent, Batman73, Symmetry, and Anonymousaashit were revealed to be Peter Nash, who pled guilty in March to charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit narcotics trafficking. Site admin chronicpain, the target of an alleged murder-for-hire plot, was identified in 2013 as Curtis Clark Green.

However, two important players in the Silk Road saga remain unaccounted for: Mr. Wonderful and Variety Jones.

During the trial of Ross Ulbricht, the 31-year-old who was ultimately convicted for creating and running the site, his defense team repeatedly tried to introduce a character named Mr. Wonderful into proceedings.

Perhaps the most important character in the success of Silk Road, Variety Jones also remains the most mysterious

The line of questioning was often met by objections from the prosecution, but from what we know, Mr. Wonderful was an Homeland Security (HSI) agent involved in the investigation of Silk Road. Ulbricht tried to get to the bottom of Mr. Wonderful's identity as well, a 2013 diary entry found on his laptop shows, with little success.

Haven't been logging. Tried counter intel on DEA's "mr wonderful" but led nowhere. tormail was busted by dea and all messages confiscated. "alpacino" from DEA has been leaking info to me. Helped me help a vendor avoid being busted.

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In his questioning about Mr. Wonderful, Ulbricht's lawyer Joshua Dratel appeared to be getting at some level of government wrongdoing, but the specifics were lost in objections, and the user remains an enigma.

Perhaps the most important character in the success of Silk Road, Variety Jones also remains the most mysterious.

The anonymous hacker entered the scene in 2011, after alerting Ulbricht to security holes on the site. He became a key mentor to Ulbricht, advising him on everything from security measures to business decisions, even coming up with the moniker he took on for the remainder of the site's lifespan: the Dread Pirate Roberts.

"He has advised me on many technical aspect of what we are doing, helped me speed up the site and squeeze more out of my current servers," a 2011 diary entry on Ulbricht's laptop read. "He also has helped me better interact with the community around Silk Road, delivering proclamations, handling troublesome characters, running a sale, changing my name, devising rules, and on and on. He also helped me get my head straight regarding legal protection, cover stories, devising a will, finding a successor, and so on. He's been a real mentor."

Variety Jones later changed his name to Cimon. There were four times as many chat logs between Dread Pirate Roberts and Variety Jones than with any other staffer, but the key mentor was oddly not listed on the payroll documents found on Ulbricht's computer.

Variety Jones/Cimon remains the most sought-after missing character from Silk Road, and the most difficult to find. As chats between the user and DPR show, he was particularly good at covering his tracks, often advising DPR against basic security failures and helping him develop escape plans should law enforcement come after him.

The story of Cimon/Variety Jones raises the question, is it possible that at least one person made money off the black market site and got away with it? Internet sleuths are still investigating; but if last week's bombshell revelations made anything clear about Silk Road, it's that there is a lot we still don't know.