The Hunt for the First Dark Web King
fern
0:02 It's 11:00 a.m.
0:03 47year-old Curtis Green is washing down some powdered mini
0:07 donuts with a bottle of Coke.
0:09 He's home alone when suddenly his doorbell rings
0:11 and his two Chihuahua start barking.
0:14 Surprised, Green gets up and grabs his
0:16 wife's pink walking cane.
0:18 They live in a
0:19 suburban neighborhood in Spanish Fork,
0:21 Utah, and don't get visitors often.
0:24 Shuffling over to the window, he sees a
0:26 postman hurrying away from the door, but
0:29 he looks weird.
0:31 Instead of a full
0:32 uniform, he's wearing the US Postal
0:34 Service jacket with jeans and sneakers.
0:36 And instead of the normal posting van,
0:38 he's heading to an unmarked white van
0:40 parked across the street.
0:42 Nonetheless, lying on the porch is a book-sized
0:45 package.
0:46 It has a Mryland postmark on
0:48 it, but no return address.
0:50 When Green picks it up, he can feel how heavy it
0:53 is.
0:54 He examines the package.
0:56 Then he limps over the lawn to his trash
0:58 can and simply throws it away.
1:02 Then he goes back inside and closes the
1:04 door.
1:06 But he doesn't trust his gut instincts
1:08 for long.
1:10 After a few minutes, he brings the
1:12 package inside and grabs a pair of
1:14 scissors.
1:15 One cut is all it takes for a
1:17 plume of white powder to fill the air
1:19 and cover his face.
1:21 At this exact moment, the unlocked front door flies
1:25 off its hinges.
1:26 A SWAT team bursts into
1:28 the living room.
1:29 The package contains over 1 kilogram of highquality cocaine
1:33 stamped with a red dragon.
1:35 Green drops it and gets down.
1:37 He doesn't even think about resisting.
1:40 Officers search him at gunpoint and find
1:42 $23,000 in cash in his fanny pack.
1:45 They seize his computer, Bitcoin mining rig,
1:48 and Samsung phone.
1:50 Curtis Green is arrested on cocaine possession with
1:52 intent to distribute.
1:54 He has just been
1:55 the target of a controlled delivery
1:56 sting operation by the Marco Polo Task
1:59 Force, a special unit operating out of
2:01 the Baltimore Homeland Security
2:03 Investigations Office.
2:04 It was assembled to bring down one man, Dread Pirate
2:08 Roberts, the mysterious figure behind
2:11 the dark web drug empire, the Silk Road,
2:14 and Curtis Green's boss.
2:17 Green suspects that being a highle moderator with
2:19 access to the inner workings of the
2:21 infamous site makes him extremely
2:23 valuable to law enforcement.
2:25 As long as he cooperates and DPR doesn't find out,
2:28 maybe he'll be all right.
2:31 What he doesn't know is that one of the agents
2:33 who just busted down his front door will
2:35 frame him for stealing hundreds of
2:37 thousands of dollars from Silk Road
2:39 vendors.
2:40 and his partner will torture
2:41 Green and force him to help bring down
2:44 the biggest online drug market in the
2:46 world.
2:55 Fern,
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3:05 Parts of this video are
3:06 based on the phenomenal book American
3:08 Kingpin by Nick Bilton.
3:10 You'll find a link in the description.
3:14 These are special agent Carl Force and
3:16 Special Agent Sha Bridges.
3:19 Force is DEA in charge of the unit's undercover
3:22 operations and drugrelated crimes.
3:24 He's a veteran with over 15 years of
3:26 experience under his belt, some of which
3:28 he worked as an undercover agent.
3:30 He's no stranger to crafting elaborate
3:32 personas to avoid detection,
3:34 infiltrating criminal groups and
3:36 dismantling them from the inside out.
3:39 Bridges a secret service specializing in
3:41 computer forensics and Bitcoin.
3:43 For the past 6 years, he was part of the Secret
3:46 Services electronic crimes task force.
3:48 He has plenty of experience conducting
3:50 forensic computer investigations to
3:52 locate and identify targets.
3:54 He's also well-versed in the anonymity software,
3:57 tour, or the onion router was developed
4:00 by the US Navy.
4:02 It's a specialized software that makes it practically
4:04 impossible to locate the computer's
4:06 hosting or accessing websites on the
4:08 network.
4:09 It's the backbone of the dark
4:10 web and used to access sites not found
4:12 on the public internet.
4:14 Sites like the Silk Road, the largest online black
4:18 market in the world.
4:19 Here, vendors sell illicit goods like drugs for Bitcoin,
4:23 and the two agents just got one step
4:25 closer to bringing it down.
4:28 Together, they're sitting behind the computer of
4:30 Silk Road moderator Flush, otherwise
4:32 known as the scared old man still being
4:34 interrogated in the other room.
4:36 He is one of their first major arrests in this
4:39 case.
4:39 A breakthrough.
4:41 Terrified, Greens officers direct access to one of his
4:44 accounts.
4:46 They immediately change the password and
4:48 secure it.
4:50 Green is a bigger fish than they
4:52 originally thought.
4:53 Special moderator privileges given by DPR allow him to
4:57 change people's passcodes and lock them
4:59 out of their accounts.
5:00 But that's not all.
5:02 Digging a little deeper, they
5:03 discover that he has access to the
5:05 Bitcoin of all users.
5:08 Hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin.
5:11 With a digital currency that was considered pretty much
5:13 untraceable at the time, it's surprising
5:15 that Green has this much trust.
5:18 He could easily steal the money and run,
5:22 but it's clear that for some reason
5:24 Green is deafly afraid of his boss.
5:27 As he's being taken to the squad car, he
5:29 begs the agents not to take him to jail.
5:32 Agent Forest just finds his begging
5:34 pathetic.
5:35 He puts his number into
5:36 Green's phone, tells him to call when he
5:38 gets out, and sends him on his way.
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6:55 Curtis Green is sitting on his bed
6:58 looking down the barrel of his dad's 32.
7:01 He was just released on bail.
7:03 It's only a matter of time before his muckshot is
7:05 made public.
7:06 It's either this or being
7:08 hunted down by one of DPR's goons.
7:12 But maybe there's a third option.
7:16 He throws the gun across the room, picks
7:18 up his phone, and dials the number of
7:20 special agent force.
7:26 The agents continue to poke around
7:28 Green's moderator account, and one thing
7:30 becomes abundantly clear.
7:32 On the Silk Road, he's a top left tenant.
7:35 Exactly the type of informant they hoped to flip
7:38 with their sting operation.
7:40 They meet with Green at the Marriott Hotel in Salt
7:42 Lake City.
7:43 There, the agents give him
7:44 the new password for his account.
7:46 As long as their mole acts like nothing
7:48 happened, everything should be fine.
7:59 This is Dread Pirate Roberts.
8:01 He's the mastermind behind the Silk Road and one
8:04 of the most wanted men on the internet.
8:06 His identity is a mystery, but his
8:09 mission is clear to create global
8:11 enterprise whose purpose it is to
8:13 empower people to live as free
8:14 individuals.
8:15 He often posts about his
8:17 libertarian ideals on chat rooms and
8:19 Silk Road forums.
8:20 He talks about Austrian economics and agorism, the
8:23 practice of engaging in black market
8:25 activity as a form of nonviolent
8:27 revolution.
8:28 He frequently makes his
8:29 distaste for government regulation
8:31 heard.
8:32 Those on the inside support his
8:33 vision by any means necessary.
8:36 At the moment, he's staring at a message from
8:39 one of his moderators, Enigo.
8:41 I detected a possible theft of approximately 20,000
8:44 bitcoins.
8:45 I think the funds were stolen
8:46 by Flush.
8:47 It looks like he reset the
8:48 passwords of individual Silk Road users.
8:52 A bunch of Silk Road vendors have just
8:54 been robbed.
8:55 At the time, 20,000
8:56 bitcoins are worth about $350,000.
9:00 He knew that something was up when Flush
9:02 didn't lock in for work.
9:03 Why aren't you clearing out your
9:04 account?
9:05 Get back to me ASAP.
9:07 To confirm his suspicions, he pulls up
9:09 the photocopy of Flush's ID that he
9:11 asked for when he hired him.
9:13 A quick Google search of his real name leads him
9:15 to a website cataloging recent arrests.
9:18 It confirms his worst fears.
9:20 One of his top left tenants is compromised.
9:23 A man he thought he could trust.
9:26 Did he start stealing because the fats are onto him?
9:29 Grab some cash and make a run for it.
9:31 It doesn't matter.
9:32 DPR knows he's left with
9:34 three options.
9:35 Scare him, beat him, or
9:37 kill him.
9:38 And he can't do it alone.
9:40 It's a job for someone with connections in
9:42 the underworld.
9:43 And one man immediately
9:45 comes to mind.
9:46 A Silk Road user he has
9:47 gotten to know well over the past 9
9:49 months.
9:50 Knob is a cartel operative and
9:51 high rolling drug smuggler from the
9:53 Dominican Republic.
9:54 He first contacted DPR on Torchet, offering to buy the
9:58 business, but the 9 figure valuation
9:59 that DPR countered with was a bit steep.
10:02 The deal didn't go through, but the two
10:04 men never stopped chatting.
10:06 Knob is clearly an admirer of what DPR has built
10:09 and was quick to give advice.
10:11 With over 20 years experience in the drug
10:13 business, he's a wealth of information
10:15 and a man with connections.
10:17 Just the kind of man DPR needs to carry out his
10:20 dirty work.
10:21 I have a problem that
10:22 requires violence.
10:23 One of my employees
10:24 stole from me.
10:26 Not a lot, but it pisses
10:27 me off to no end.
10:28 Do you want him beat
10:29 up, shot, just paid a visit?
10:31 I'd like to beat him up, then force him to send the
10:33 bitcoins he stole back.
10:35 Like sit him down at his computer and make him do it.
10:38 Who is it and where is he?
10:40 I'll send you his ID.
10:52 Car Force is sitting in the Marriott
10:54 hotel staring at the ID of the man
10:56 sitting across the table from him eating
10:58 French fries.
11:00 Curtis Green Force and his
11:02 partner Bridges have just completed a
11:04 2-hour interrogation with their
11:05 informant.
11:06 His lawyer had also been
11:07 present but left early, instructing
11:09 Green to just tell them everything he
11:11 knows.
11:12 Working undercover as the South
11:13 American drug smuggler, Eladio Guman, or
11:16 Knob, has been relatively fruitful so
11:18 far.
11:18 Force used it to orchestrate the
11:20 sting operation that led to Green's
11:22 arrest.
11:22 He offered to supply a kilo of
11:24 cocaine to a buyer through DPR who
11:26 proposed Green to act as the middleman
11:28 that would hold onto the coke for the
11:29 buyer.
11:30 That worked like a charm, but
11:32 Force didn't expect it would lead to
11:34 this.
11:35 He didn't think Green had the
11:36 balls to steal from his boss, especially
11:39 right under their noses.
11:41 He looks up from his laptop.
11:43 You stole money from DPR?
11:46 Green looks up panicked.
11:48 No, you got to be kidding me.
11:49 I wouldn't even know how to steal a penny from him.
11:52 At first, Bridges is quiet, but then he
11:54 jumps into, "Just admit you stole the
11:58 money."
11:58 The men know that with just a little bit
12:00 of pressure, they can get their new
12:01 informant to agree to anything.
12:03 And Force has a plan.
12:05 They just need one
12:06 little signature to put it into action.
12:15 Agent Bridges is standing in the door of
12:17 the Marriott Hotel bathroom watching
12:19 Curtis Green get waterboarded.
12:22 After all, he agreed to it in writing.
12:24 When his partner got that message from DPR,
12:26 Bridges knew it would play right into
12:28 his hands.
12:30 Blame the informant for the
12:31 theft, carry out a fake hit for 80k in
12:33 Bitcoin, and use it as evidence to put
12:35 DPR away.
12:37 None of the other men in the
12:38 room will ever know that the real thief
12:40 is Bridges himself.
12:42 I swear I didn't steal the money.
12:45 Just admit it.
12:46 Stop trying to protect DPR.
12:49 The third agent dunks Green's head under
12:51 water over and over as he struggles
12:53 violently, screaming bubbles.
12:56 Green is begging the man to stop, but they have
12:58 to make it look real for the camera.
13:00 After all, DPR requested photo evidence
13:03 from Knob.
13:05 Force takes photo after photo and
13:07 Bridges just lets it happen.
13:09 The funny thing is, if he hadn't stolen the money,
13:12 Green never would have been a suspect
13:13 for the theft and Force never would have
13:15 gotten such compromising messages from
13:17 DPR.
13:18 With his background in blockchain
13:20 tech, stealing the Bitcoin was easy.
13:22 He logged into the Flush moderator account
13:24 and used its administrative privileges
13:26 to reset the passwords and pins of
13:28 several Silk Road vendors.
13:29 He then emptied their accounts and moved 20,000
13:32 Bitcoin to a private wallet.
13:34 He knew he had to hide his trail.
13:35 So he rapidly transferred the bitcoin through multiple
13:38 digital wallets to the Japanese crypto
13:40 exchange Mount Gaus.
13:41 He is storing his
13:42 loot there for now.
13:44 And by a stroke of
13:45 luck, Green turned out to be the perfect
13:47 little scapegoat.
13:49 The man is spluttering and crying on the
13:52 bathroom floor.
13:53 He dunked four times to
13:54 get the shot.
13:56 But while the agents are
13:57 busy pretending to carry out DPR's
13:59 orders, the Silk Road Kingpin has a
14:02 change of heart.
14:03 Okay, so you can change
14:04 the order to execute rather than
14:05 torture.
14:06 He was on the inside for a
14:08 while, and now that he's been arrested,
14:09 I'm afraid he'll give up info.
14:11 The order to torture is now an order to kill.
14:19 DPR is staring at the picture he just
14:21 received from Knob, a lifeless,
14:23 overweight body, pale, wet, and covered
14:26 in puke.
14:27 A few days earlier, he had
14:28 gotten confirmation that the hit was
14:30 complete.
14:31 Green was waterboarded, almost
14:32 drowning once, but kept alive with CPR
14:35 just to be tortured more.
14:37 But before Knob could get the money back, Green
14:39 died of asphixxiation and heart failure.
14:41 The description was disturbing, but the
14:44 picture confirms the story.
14:46 DPR saves it to an encrypted folder and transfers the
14:48 second half of the ADK in Bitcoin to
14:50 Knob.
14:51 The job is done.
14:52 He knows it was
14:53 necessary to protect his business.
14:56 What he doesn't know is that it will also be
14:58 his downfall because Green didn't die in
15:01 a pool of his own vomit.
15:03 He played dead in a pool of Cample soup.
15:09 Now that Green is dead, or rather laying
15:12 low at his home in Utah, Agent Force is
15:14 back in Baltimore.
15:16 He's sitting behind his DEAisssued laptop, continuing his
15:19 undercover work as a knob.
15:20 After 15 years of working on the front lines of
15:23 the drug war, he's gotten pretty good at
15:25 creating alternate personas.
15:27 Compared to his old undercover roles, pretending
15:29 you're someone else online is easy.
15:32 He just threw on a dark hoodie, put on an
15:34 eye patch, and held a sign reading all
15:35 hail knob.
15:36 Asked his daughter to take a
15:38 grainy profile picture, and voila, he's
15:40 a South American drug smuggler.
15:43 He spent a lot of late nights sitting in his
15:45 launch chair, cultivating a friendship
15:47 with DPR.
15:48 They talk about everything.
15:50 diet, music, family, personal issues,
15:53 the drug trade.
15:54 Force even gives advice
15:55 on 30-second escape plans, legal
15:57 counsel, and moving to another country.
16:00 It takes months for DPR to trust him,
16:02 but once he does, his efforts pay off.
16:05 Now, they have damning evidence that DPR
16:07 paid someone to murder for him.
16:09 Still, it's not worth much if they don't know
16:11 who the man behind the mask really is.
16:14 But Knob sees firsthand that DPR is
16:16 beginning to show cracks.
16:18 With his first murder out of the way, he becomes more
16:21 fanatical and eager to hand out
16:23 punishments.
16:24 Force knows it's only a
16:25 matter of time before he slips up and
16:27 gets caught.
16:30 Homeland Security, the DEA, IRS, and the
16:33 FBI are all claiming jurisdiction over
16:35 the case.
16:36 Illegal narcotics being sold,
16:37 packages crossing borders through the
16:39 mail, transactions hosted on servers,
16:41 Bitcoin being laundered.
16:43 The Silk Road represents a new wave of crime that
16:45 somehow touches on the purview of each
16:48 agency.
16:49 And they all want the glory of
16:50 bringing the site and its mastermind
16:52 down.
16:53 So Force has to capitalize before
16:55 the inevitable arrest.
16:56 He saw how easily
16:58 DPR would transfer ADK to a sanctioned
17:00 government wallet for the supposed hit
17:02 on Green.
17:03 But why not get more without
17:05 them knowing?
17:06 Just like Bridges, he
17:07 assumes the nature of crypto will allow
17:09 him to steal without getting caught.
17:11 So he moves his conversations with DPR to
17:14 an encrypted chat his colleagues don't
17:15 have access to.
17:17 In June, Knob sells DPR
17:18 some fake IDs for 400 Bitcoin, which he
17:21 likely needs to evade police and to rent
17:23 more servers to handle the rapid
17:24 expansion of his empire.
17:26 In August, Knob introduces him to Kevin, another persona
17:30 he created, a corrupt law enforcement
17:32 official who could sell DPR insider
17:34 information on the ongoing Silk Road
17:36 investigation.
17:37 For 525 Bitcoin, he does
17:40 just that.
17:41 Then force creates even more
17:42 fake personas.
17:44 Frenchmate for 100k in Bitcoin.
17:46 He provides insider information to DPR
17:48 claiming that the former CEO of Mount
17:50 Gaus has allegedly leaked his real name
17:52 to the Department of Homeland Security.
17:54 Albert Pacino for $500 a week.
17:57 He positions himself as a DEA spy,
17:59 providing insider scoops on the ongoing
18:02 Silk Road investigation.
18:04 Death from above.
18:05 He threatens to expose DPR's real
18:07 identity unless he's paid $250,000 in
18:10 Bitcoin, but DPR doesn't seem to take
18:12 too kindly to blackmail and calls his
18:14 bluff.
18:15 Either way, Force manages to
18:17 steal hundreds of thousands of dollars
18:19 from the Silk Road Kingpin.
18:20 And like Bridges, he tries to hide the money
18:22 trail and bounces the Bitcoin around a
18:25 variety of wallets and exchanges,
18:28 but the amount of money he's moving is
18:30 suspicious.
18:33 Then one day, Force hears a rumor.
18:36 Dread Pirate Roberts might have been found.
18:38 The Baltimore task force receives an
18:40 official standown order.
18:42 The FBI team in
18:43 New York has beaten them to it.
18:45 For Force, it's bad news.
18:47 Really bad.
18:48 If the agents manage to arrest DPR on his
18:51 laptop, they will definitely find his
18:53 chats with him.
18:54 In a panic, he messages
18:55 DPR.
18:56 My informant Kevin is certain that you
18:58 are going to be identified and caught.
19:01 You are like one of my family.
19:03 But I have to tell you that I have had several
19:05 people killed who were sent to jail.
19:07 It is very easy and cheap.
19:10 I trust that you
19:11 have destroyed all messages, chats, etc.
19:14 between us.
19:14 Force never finds out if DPR
19:16 did.
19:17 On October 1st, 2013, Ross Olrich
19:20 is arrested in a public library in San
19:22 Francisco.
19:23 While he's distracted by two
19:25 agents, another manages to snatch his
19:27 laptop from him.
19:28 He's still logged into
19:29 the So Road as Dread Pirate Roberts.
19:32 The site is shut down almost immediately.
19:35 The FBI sees all data from its servers
19:37 and confiscate the 144,000 bitcoins
19:40 found in Old Brick's cold wallet.
19:42 At the time, they're worth between 16 to 18
19:44 million.
19:45 Just under 1 million users are
19:47 locked up forever.
19:49 1 month and 3 days
19:50 later, Silk Road 2.0 goes live on the
19:52 dark web.
19:53 It was launched by admins of
19:55 the original site who were still at
19:56 large.
19:57 Carl Force is hailed as one of
19:59 the heroes who brought down Dread Pirate
20:01 Roberts.
20:02 His sting operation and the
20:03 resulting fake assassination help build
20:05 a strong case against painting him as a
20:08 bloodthirsty kingpin.
20:09 For a while, Force
20:10 thinks he's gotten away with it.
20:12 With his newfound fame at the DEA and
20:15 hundreds of thousands of dollars of
20:16 crypto sitting in several wallets and
20:18 exchanges, he starts to get cocky.
20:21 He keeps triggering anti-moneyaundering
20:23 checks on services like Venmo and
20:25 exchanges like Bitstamp.
20:26 when he moves or liquidates his Bitcoin.
20:29 When his accounts get flagged, he tries to bypass
20:31 the blocks by throwing his DEA agent
20:33 status around.
20:35 Eventually, Bitstam support asks him why he's logging into
20:38 the service through tour.
20:40 I utilize tour for privacy.
20:42 Don't particularly want NSA looking over my
20:44 shoulder.
20:45 This reply raises more red flags and
20:47 Bitstam contacts law enforcement and
20:50 they promptly kickstart an investigation
20:52 into force.
20:53 Meanwhile, he becomes more
20:54 and more brazen.
20:56 Without his boss's knowledge, he begins to work as the de
20:58 facto chief compliance officer for the
21:00 crypto exchange Coin MKT.
21:02 Using his authority as a DEA agent, he instructs
21:05 Coin MKT to freeze the balance of a
21:07 user's account and tells them to
21:09 transfer the $337,000 to a government account.
21:13 Then he transfers 300K of those funds to a
21:16 private wallet.
21:17 To cover for his crimes,
21:18 he creates false reports to mislead his
21:20 superiors, claiming that only 37K had
21:23 been seized.
21:25 Shortly after, he sends an
21:26 unauthorized Justice Department subpoena
21:28 to Venmo, ordering them to unfreeze his
21:31 personal account, which had been frozen
21:32 due to suspicious activity.
21:35 Every move he makes becomes another breadcrumb in
21:37 the investigation against him, making
21:39 the money trail easier and easier to
21:42 follow.
21:47 By spring of 2014, a massive
21:49 investigation into force is in full
21:51 swing.
21:52 At its center is IRS special
21:53 agent Tigron Cambarion, an expert in
21:56 cyber and digital currency crimes.
21:58 Under his guidance, a team of agents unravels
22:00 forces transactions.
22:02 They track his finances by carefully analyzing the
22:05 blockchain, a public ledger of all
22:07 Bitcoin transactions.
22:08 Combined with the data that was recovered from Silk Road
22:11 servers after the takedown, a picture
22:13 begins to form.
22:14 The funds from the Silk
22:15 Road are first tracked down to specific
22:17 wallets, then to specific bank accounts.
22:20 But to the agent's surprise, not all
22:22 were owned by force.
22:24 When analyzing the outflow of Bitcoin from Silk Road, they
22:27 noticed that some of the transactions
22:29 lead to his partner.
22:33 Bridges had since liquidated his 20,000
22:35 Bitcoin for $800,000 and attempted to
22:38 hide the money in a variety of offshore
22:39 shell companies.
22:41 What the special agents
22:42 thought to be an untraceable currency
22:44 actually left a clear trail leading
22:46 right to their doors.
22:48 The ongoing investigation into force and bridges is
22:51 intentionally suppressed during the
22:52 trial against Ross Alrich.
22:54 The jury never hears of their corruption before
22:57 DPR is convicted.
22:58 He is found guilty on
22:59 seven counts and gets two life terms
23:01 plus 40 years without the possibility of
23:03 parole.
23:04 In March 2015, both Force and
23:06 Bridges are arrested.
23:08 Force is charged with moneyaundering, obstruction of
23:10 justice, and extortion.
23:12 He gets 6 and
23:12 1/2 years and a 340k fine for stealing
23:15 more than $700,000 worth of Bitcoin.
23:18 Bridges is charged with moneyaundering
23:20 and obstruction of justice.
23:21 He gets 6 years for stealing more than $800,000
23:24 worth of Bitcoin and a $651,000 fine.
23:28 One day before he's supposed to report
23:29 to prison, he is caught while apparently
23:31 trying to flee the country.
23:33 He had just stolen another 1,600 Bitcoin from a
23:36 government wallet, earning him another
23:37 24 months.
23:39 Curtis Green originally faces
23:41 a maximum sentence of 40 years for his
23:43 cocaine and trafficking charges.
23:45 But because he was real tortured and fake
23:47 murdered, he's ultimately let go with
23:48 time served.
23:50 In 2025, President Donald
23:51 Trump signed a full and unconditional
23:54 pardon for Ross Albert.