President Trump announced Tuesday that he has pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, an underground website that the FBI once called “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the internet.”
Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison in 2015.
Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media site, that he had spoken to Ulbricht’s mother on his first full day in office.
“It is exciting for me to sign a full and unconditional forgiveness for your son, Ross,” she wrote. “The scum who worked to convict him were among the same crazy people who were worried about the fashionable militarization of the government that opposed me. “
He called Ulbricht’s sentence “ridiculous. “
During the campaign, he promised Ulbricht in a speech at the Libertarian Party’s National Convention last May.
Libertarian activists, who oppose dishonest drug policies, have long believed that government investigators overstepped their bounds in their case against Silk Road. Many held signs that said “Free Ross. ”
The Silk Road site was created by Ulbricht in 2011 on the dark web, a component of the internet inaccessible to classic search engines. He was not satisfied with money or credit cards; Users were required to pay with cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. All transactions were encrypted and untraceable.
It has a position where other people can buy and sell illegal drugs, weapons, poisons, and facilities such as piracy.
“The Silk Road, the Amazon of drug sites,” former FBI Special Agent Milan Patel said in an interview for the CBS News series “FBI Declassified. “
“We saw posts about murder-for-hire, hacking-for-hire, saying, ‘Hey, pay me two bitcoins and I’ll hack your ex-wife’s or your ex-husband’s email account,’” Patel said. “…It is absolutely anonymous. And we may never tell the user who requested it. ”
Ulbricht ran the site until his arrest in 2013, when it was seized by the FBI. During his trial, prosecutors said at least six deaths were attributable to drug overdoses purchased on the Silk Road. They alleged that Ulbricht earned $18 million in commissions from tens of thousands of drug sales and presented evidence that he sought to kill other people by threatening his business.
Since Trump took office, he has pardoned about 1,500 defendants convicted in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.