President Donald Trump said Tuesday evening he has issued a full pardon to a man serving a life sentence for creating and running what prosecutors have called the "sprawling black-market bazaar" Silk Road.
Ross William Ulbricht, known online by the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts," ran the website from 2011 until his arrest two years later. Ulbricht, a Texas native and Eagle Scout, operated the site as a hidden service on the Tor network, facilitating the sales of more than $200 million in narcotics and other illegal products and services, authorities said.
The vast majority of items for sale on Silk Road were illegal drugs, which were openly advertised as such on the site. In September 2013, the site's home page displayed nearly 13,000 listings for controlled substances, listed under such categories as “Cannabis,” “Dissociatives,” “Ecstasy,” “Intoxicants,” “Opioids,” “Precursors,” “Prescription,” “Psychedelics,” and “Stimulants,” prosecutors said at the time.
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Narcotics distributed on Silk Road were linked to at least six overdose deaths worldwide, including the death of a 27-year-old Microsoft employee who was found unresponsive in front of his computer, which was logged onto Silk Road at the time. The man died as a result of heroin and other prescription drugs that he had ordered off the site.
Ulbricht was arrested by the FBI and convicted in 2015 of charges including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, distributing narcotics, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit computer hacking.
“Make no mistake: Ulbricht was a drug dealer and criminal profiteer who exploited people’s addictions and contributed to the deaths of at least six young people,” Preet Bharara, then-U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at the time. “Ulbricht went from hiding his cybercrime identity to becoming the face of cybercrime and as today’s sentence proves, no one is above the law.”
But Ulbricht's incarceration at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson is about to end, Trump announced Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social.
"I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbright to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross," he 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!"