Silk Road founder allegedly admitted site origins to friend

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 coding 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 questioning by the prosecution. “He told me about it.”