Trump Pardons Silk Road Founder Ulbricht

Donald Trump has used his presidential powers to pardon convicted felon Ross Ulbricht, the founder of notorious dark web marketplace Silk Road.

Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison in 2015, on charges related to distributing narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic in false identity documents, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

At the time, prosecutors alleged that nearly a million registered users spent 9.5 million bitcoins (around $1.2 billion at the time) on the site, generating more than $13m in commission for the Silk Road.

It was the first site of its kind to combine Tor and crypto-payments for anonymity, enabling drug dealers, cybercriminals and others to freely trade their goods and services. Although drugs comprised the majority of listings, others advertised hacking services, malware and pirated media content.

Read more on dark web marketplaces: Dark Web Market Revenues Sink 50% in 2022.

Silk Road also pioneered Amazon-like features such as user ratings, consumer reviews and even an online forum, designed to improve the customer experience and discourage fraud and malpractice.

Trump Calls Conviction “Ridiculous” 

Using his Truth Social digital megaphone, Trump relayed news of the pardon on January 22, portraying Ulbricht’s conviction as government overreach and attempting to connect it to a conspiracy theory about his own political persecution.

“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,” he wrote.

“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!”

Trump had previously committed to free Ulbricht after heavy lobbying from the Libertarian Party, whose votes he sought during the race for the White House.

Silk Road has subsequently been copied many times in what has become a game of whack-a-mole for global law enforcers.

Most recently, German police have taken down Kingdom Market and the Crimenetwork marketplace, while Finnish authorities shuttered a similar platform known as Piilopuoti.

Known by his online moniker “Dread Pirate Roberts,” Ulbricht was apprehended in 2013, two years after launching Silk Road. According to the FBI, his identity was revealed after a tax agent spotted a job posting on an online forum, requesting interested parties to send their responses to an email account registered to Ulbricht.