I see. The more of this story that comes out of the woodwork, the more I'm wondering how Ulbrecht didn't get caught doing something else dumb IRL (the sending of fake IDs to the address he lived at being the only example of this I've heard). Was he having delusions of grandeur, drug induced or otherwise? Could he have contact with a friend with federal agency insider status that helped him to establish such delusions? It's difficult to imagine someone being so wreckless as all this, it seems too bold without some other part to the story. Or maybe it's just about right seeing as how long it's taken for him to end up in custody.
He certainly got caught up in playing the role of DPR. He attracted an almost cult-like following amongst SR users and plenty of people wanting to establish more personal relationships with him for the reflected glory.
When you're living a "nobody" life in the real world, and getting all this adoration in the online world, over time it's got to be difficult to maintain your distance from those who are validating you as some kind of revolutionary hero.
People get reckless over time. They sacrifice security for convenience in what seem like little, unimportant ways. When they've "gotten away with" something over a sustained period of time, they come to believe in their own invincibility - and DPR had a hell of a lot of SR users reinforcing the belief that he and SR were invulnerable.
Hell, take a look at the various SR 2 projects happening now. They're all claiming that they'll be more secure than SR and bigger and better when in truth analysing exactly what went wrong and working out how to prevent it happening again should take at least weeks, if not
months - especially when only some of the information the feds have about SR and DPR is currently known.
Human beings have a habit of idealising people. We believe that people who are "smart" don't do dumb things. Yet time and again people enterprises fail because those who conceived them lacked the skills to properly execute them or because those who should have remained in the shadows sought public validation.
Take a look at the new SR 2 forums. The very first post is a "debut speech" by the "new DPR". Posting long philosophical ramblings provides opportunities for your speech patterns to be analysed and compared to other online writings. Anything the "new DPR" feels compelled to post should be short and clinical, but that horse has already bolted.