Jared Der-Yeghiayan described his undercover work as Silk Road staff member Cirrus and testified that his arrest-day DPR chat matched the conversation on Ross Ulbricht's laptop. Cross-examination tested that identification's reach, eliciting that credentials could be shared and that the arrest-day match did not identify participants in other DPR conversations.
WitnessHomeland Security Investigations
Jared Der-Yeghiayan
Special agent with Homeland Security Investigations.
Appeared2015 Federal Trial
2,613 lines·31 proceedings·17 mentions
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Jared Der-Yeghiayan testified for the prosecution as the HSI agent who investigated Silk Road through drug purchases and undercover staff access. He described linking O'Hare seizures to vendors through drug appearance, shipping origins, packaging, and controlled purchases. He then explained bitcoin payments, escrow, dispute resolution, and commissions. A separate laboratory stipulation reported that all but one of 52 submitted substances tested positive for illegal drugs. He also made clear that Tor and bitcoin use were not inherently illegal.
Der-Yeghiayan described taking over the Cirrus support account in late July 2013, moderating discussions, answering support questions, and receiving bitcoin pay from DPR. His account of October 1, 2013 connected that undercover work to the arrest operation: he asked DPR to inspect flagged messages, interpreted a reply as indicating administrator access, and signaled agents to make the arrest. He testified that he subsequently saw the same conversation on Ulbricht's library laptop, along with the flagged message. His PGP demonstration established use of the same private key for selected posts, not how many people possessed it.
On cross-examination, Joshua Dratel challenged the leap from an online account to a particular person. Der-Yeghiayan agreed that passwords and PGP keys could be transferred or copied, that some accounts were shared, and that he could not know how many people operated the account communicating as DPR. He distinguished personally tested signatures from reported verification failures and qualified his technical knowledge. He also acknowledged that the recovered ratings notes did not name Silk Road or illegal drugs; the court admitted them to show their words, not their truth.
The defense examined Der-Yeghiayan's earlier suspicions involving Mark Karpeles and Ashley Barr, his sworn investigative assessments, and disagreements with Baltimore investigators. He acknowledged that he had not examined several alternative subjects' devices and that Ulbricht entered his investigation only after Gary Alford brought him to his attention around September 10 or 11, 2013. The court later instructed jurors to disregard Der-Yeghiayan's suspicions about others, while permitting consideration of his other testimony under the final instructions.
On redirect, Der-Yeghiayan distinguished Karpeles' hosting business and silkroadmarket.org from the actual marketplace. He described registration details matching information on Ulbricht's computer, while acknowledging that the hosting service did not require verification of submitted information. Recross preserved an important limit: identifying Ulbricht in the arrest-day chat did not identify the participants in other DPR conversations. He confirmed factual writing similarities without establishing an authorship conclusion, and disclaimed participation in the commission calculations, which the court left for another witness.
Trial Record (31)
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