US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a “full and unconditional pardon” for Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the notorious Silk Road drug market, after he spent 11 years behind bars.
“I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement that has so strongly supported me, I have just been pleased to sign a full and unconditional pardon for her son Ross,” Trump said in a message shared on Truth Social.
“The scum who tried to convict him were some of the same lunatics involved in the government’s modern weaponry against me. He was given two life sentences plus 40 years. It’s funny!”
Launched in February 2011, Silk Road has become a major hub on the dark web for illegal drugs and other illegal goods and services. According to authorities, the market has generated more than $200 million in revenue in its nearly three years of existence.
It was filmed in October 2013, at the same time as Ulbricht’s arrestwho then went by the internet moniker Dread Pirate Roberts. In 2015, he was awarded to life in prison without parole after pleading guilty to money laundering, drug trafficking and computer hacking charges.
Just over two years ago, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) revealed in November 2021, it seized 50,676 bitcoins that were stolen in the 2012 hack of the now-defunct dark web marketplace Silk Road, making it one of the largest cryptocurrency seizures to date.
James Ellingson (aka redandwhite), the Silk Road drug dealer who claimed to have arranged the killing of five people for Ulbricht, has since been is charged with drug trafficking and money laundering. However, the Department of Justice said there was no evidence that the killings actually took place.
In a letter to the judge asking for leniency before sentencing, Ulbricht said he was not looking for financial gain when he started Silk Road and that it was supposed to be “about giving people the freedom to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness, however they individually saw fit.”
“At the time, I believed that people should have the right to buy and sell whatever they wanted, as long as they didn’t harm anyone,” he added. “The Silk Road turned out to be a very naive and expensive idea, which I deeply regret.”
