Pierluigi Paganini
January 23, 2025
Donald Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, creator of Silk Road, who was convicted in 2015 for narcotics and money-laundering conspiracy and sentenced to life.
In October 2013, the FBI shut down the popular black market Silk Road after many years of investigation and identified its founder Ross Ulbricht, who was using the moniker “who then went by the online moniker “Dread Pirate Roberts.” Ulbricht was arrested in October 2013 and in 2015 he was sentenced to life. He spent 11 years in a federal jail.
Ulbricht expressed regret for Silk Road’s impact.
“I believed at the time that people should have the right to buy and sell whatever they wanted so long as they weren’t hurting anyone else,” Ulbricht said at the time. “Silk Road turned out to be a very naive and costly idea that I deeply regret.”
Prosecutors claimed Ulbricht solicited six murders-for-hire, including one against a former Silk Road employee, however, there was no evidence to indicate that any killings took place.
Trump, supporting claims of government overreach in Ulbricht’s case, informed Ulbricht’s mother of his pardon during a call on Tuesday.
“I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht 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. 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!” President Trump wrote on Truth Social.
A 2012 study estimated Silk Road’s drug market earned $22M annually, with sellers making $1.9M monthly and operators earning $143K monthly in commissions.
According to the FBI, between February 2011 and July 2013, Silk Road managed $1.2 billion worth of transactions for 957,079 users, the total earnings for Ulbricht were nearly $80 million.
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