President Trump says he has pardoned Ross William Ulbricht, who went by the name "Dread Pirate Roberts" when he ran the Silk Road drug marketplace on the dark web. In a Truth Social post Tuesday, Trump said he had called Ulbricht's mother "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." Ulbricht, 40, was arrested in the sci-fi section of his local library in San Francisco in 2013. He was sentenced to life in federal prison with no possibility of parole in 2015.
"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," Trump said. "Ridiculous!" Silk Road was one of the first places where bitcoin was used in transactions, and Ulbricht remained a "cult hero in the cryptocurrency and libertarian worlds" after his conviction on charges including conspiracy to distribute narcotics, the New York Times reports. Prosecutors said drugs bought on Silk Road caused at least six deaths. Ulbricht was never tried on allegations that he sought to have people who threatened his enterprise killed.
An appeals court panel upheld Ulbricht's sentence in 2017, though it said it "might not have imposed" a sentence as harsh. His supporters noted that other people received much lesser sentences for similar crimes, including Blake Benthall, who was sentenced to time served plus probation for running Silk Road 2.0, the Verge reports. Trump spoke in support of Ulbricht on the campaign trail last year and used the hashtag #FreeRossDayOne in a pro-cryptocurrency Truth Social post in October. (More Ross William Ulbricht stories.)
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