I went to college with Ross. I didn't know him personally, but we had a few friends in common (even looking at his Facebook page now, we have a few mutual friends, and I know others who were friends with him but don't have him on FB).
To think that something as huge and infamous as the Silk Road was created by a dude I went to college with just blows my mind.
On top of that, the article also mentions Richard Bates, who I knew personally. We were in some of the same clubs, we had a couple of classes together, and we were even friends for a short time before we had a falling out, involving Richard treating one of my best friends like shit and then treating me like shit when I tried to play mediator. After that, the aforementioned friend and I ended up coming up with a few juvenile nicknames for Richard Bates based on his name... I don't think I'll post them here, but you can probably guess, because his name is very unfortunate. By the time I graduated, Richard wasn't very well-liked... IMO, he wasn't a good friend or a good person.
As mind-blowing as Ross was, this was even more shocking, and it's still hard for me to believe that Richard, somebody I personally knew, was part and parcel of the Silk Road.