TRACERS IN THE DARK

A sinuous, eminently readable story of the darker corners of cyberspace.

Who would have thought an IRS agent could become a legal superhero? That’s just the case with a criminal investigator named Tigran Gambaryan, who had been assigned to “busting gangs in Oakland who had graduated from dealing drugs to filing fraudulent tax returns with stolen identities,” a switch that had the benefit of bringing in more money while carrying less jail time. Fearing that he’d spend his career chasing down small fry, Gambaryan turned his attention to cybercrimes, which in turn led him to Bitcoin. Then at Forbes and now at Wired, technology journalist Greenberg was exploring cryptocurrency himself and trying to land an interview with the legendary Silk Road mastermind known as the Dread Pirate Roberts, who was “making millions of dollars in highly illegal narcotics sales…while evading every global law enforcement agency.” DPR assumed that cryptocurrency was an impregnable fortress that couldn’t be “de-anonymized.” Not so, and he was finally taken down after e-chatting for months with a supposed online moderator who was in reality a Homeland Security agent. With sometimes competitive agencies working together—even the IRS, which one judge called “the redheaded stepchild of law enforcement”—and spreading the net to include both criminals and police agencies abroad, the chase quickened after DPR fell. Greenberg tells the stories of demolishing crime empires like AlphaBay and Hansa and their bosses with verve that’s refreshing for a book full of computers, code-breaking, and electronic cat-and-mouse games, including one memorable moment in which the object of an international police hunt “had, entirely by chance, arrived at a meeting at the exact hotel where they were staying and sat down at the table next to them.” Greenberg’s book is reminiscent in all the best ways of Clifford Stoll’s Cuckoo’s Egg, smoothly blending crime writing with matters of the deepest techno-geekery.

An absorbing work of true crime—and, as the bad guys will tell you, true punishment.