US President Donald Trump has granted full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road – a notorious dark web marketplace. Ulbricht’s 2015 conviction narcotics and money laundering conspiracy had earned him a life sentence in prison.
Just after granting the pardon, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he had called Ulbricht’s mother to inform her.
Silk Road, was shut down in 2013 after US police apprehended Ross Ulbricht who sold illegal drugs using Bitcoin, as well as hacked equipment and stolen passports.
In a post he shared online on Tuesday evening, the US president, Trump said;
“The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”
Ross Ulbricht was found guilty of charges including conspiring to commit drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking.
During his trial, prosecutors said Ulbricht’s Silk Road website, hosted on the hidden “dark web”, sold more than $200m (£131m) worth of drugs anonymously.
He operated Silk Road under the alias ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’, a reference to a character in the 1987 film The Princess Bride.
Prosecutors also said he solicited six murders-for-hire, including one against a former Silk Road employee, although they said no evidence existed that any killings were actually carried out.
The Silk Road’s name was gotten from the notorious trade routes spanning Europe, Asia and parts of Africa. The site achieved notoriety through media reports and online chatter. However, users were only able to access the site through Tor – a system that allows people use the web without revealing who they are or which country they are in.
Court documents from the FBI revealed the illegal wevsite had just under a million registered users, but investigators said they did not know how many were active.
Sentencing Ulbricht - who has two college degrees – District Judge Katherine Forrest said he was “no better a person than any other drug dealer”.
She said the site had been his “carefully planned life’s work”.
The judge noted the lengthy sentence also acted as a message to copycats that there would be “very serious consequences”.“I wanted to empower people to make choices in their lives and have privacy and anonymity,” Ulbricht said at his sentencing in May 2015.
Trump previously hinted that he planned to commute Ulbricht’s sentence during a speech in 2024 at the Libertarian National Convention.
The Libertarian party had been calling for Ulbricht’s release and said his case was an example of government overreach.
