Yeah. He should have lammed it as soon as the feds first talked to him. Really he should have run much sooner. At that point, the only option for him would have been life as a fugitive on the FBIs most wanted list. It was too late.
The key question for me is still: how did the FBI locate the Silk Road hidden service servers? They never disclose how that was accomplished. If they had an assist from the NSA in breaking Tor, I would like to know. It has been shown that Tor hidden services are not anywhere near as secure as they are thought to be... but has anyone done a practical attack in the wild? Enquiring minds want to know!
Running probably wouldn't have helped too much. I think his Forbes interview was an advertisement for "hey, I want to cash out, buyers please contact me", and a weak attempt at throwing people off his personal trail.
I find it VERY odd how they mention they imaged the server with zero information on how they found it. Smells very funny, like they intentionally left that part out. If it was a simple "we asked Rackspace for files on a one Ross Ulbricht" then they'd have said so.
OTOH, they may want us to think it was a secret attack, when it was just more of DPR's poor opsec. If he ordered fake IDs to hire servers but with his real picture... who knows.
The key question for me is still: how did the FBI locate the Silk Road hidden service servers? They never disclose how that was accomplished. If they had an assist from the NSA in breaking Tor, I would like to know. It has been shown that Tor hidden services are not anywhere near as secure as they are thought to be... but has anyone done a practical attack in the wild? Enquiring minds want to know!
Edit: looks like he did move after the feds showed up. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2013/10/09/living-with-r...