The Silk Road Creator, Ross Ulbricht, has been released after spending 11 years in prison
Trump Pardoned the Silk Road founder: Bringing down the scum that stole my life, and helping me recover my bitcoins,” he told his mother
On his second day in office, President Donald Trump fulfilled a campaign promise by pardoning the founder of the underground e-commerce website known for drug traffickers.
For close to two and a half years after Ulbricht created the Silk Road in 2011, the dark-web site facilitated the sale of vast amounts of narcotics, as well as counterfeit documents, money laundering services and, at times, guns, for hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin payments. After the FBI located the Silk Road’s server in Iceland in 2013 and arrested then 29-year-old Ulbricht in San Francisco, he was convicted on seven charges relating to the distribution of narcotics, money laundering, and computer hacking, as well as a “continuing criminal enterprise” statute—sometimes known as the “kingpin statute”—usually reserved for mob bosses and cartel leaders. He was sentenced to life in prison, more than the 20 years that prosecutors requested for him in the case.
“After talking with the mother of Ross William Ublingt who supported me so much, I signed a full and unqualified pardon of her son,” Trump said on his site. “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 sentenced to 2 life sentences and 40 years. Ridiculous!”
At the time of his sentencing in San Francisco in 2015, Ulbricht was 31 years old. He was convicted of distributing narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit computer hacking, and conspiring to create fake identities and launder money. He was sentenced to life in prison.
The Justice Department pursued charges against Ulbricht’s people who claimed to have committed five murders, though the government couldn’t prove those murders were actually committed.
Towards the Crypto Capital of the Planet: Indictment against U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on “Silk Road”
In an indictment, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara described Silk Road as a meeting place for criminals hoping to “buy and sell illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services anonymously and outside the reach of law enforcement.”
President Trump has a good relationship with the Libertarians. He promised to commute Ulbricht’s sentence during the Libertarian National Convention in Washington in May of 2024, and has gotten close to so-called “techno libertarians,” like Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The United States will be the “crypto capital of the planet” if Trump is successful in his campaign.
Ulbricht, for his part, took to social media to celebrate Trump’s election victory and remind him of his promise. One week after the election, he wrote on X that he “can finally see the light of freedom at the end of the tunnel.”
There are allegations that Ulbricht intended to have six people killed who posed a threat to him. There were six murders for hire which were fake and five more that were a scam. The case against Ulbricht in Maryland was dropped after he received a life sentence in his New York trial. But evidence presented at Ulbricht’s trial showed him allegedly arranging those killings and even pinpointed transactions on Bitcoin’s blockchain that showed a payment for them from Ulbricht’s laptop to the would-be killer.
