Who is Ross Ulbricht? Silk Road creator pardoned by President Donald Trump
On his first day back in office, Donald Trump signed an unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, the creator of Silk Road.
Silk Roadwas a dark web marketplace where illegal items could be anonymously traded such as drugs, hacking equipment and stolen passports.
Ulbricht started creating the underground market in 2011 before being arrested in 2013 when the site was shut down.
According tocourtdocuments submitted by the FBI, when Ulbricht was arrested, the site had almost one million registered users, though it is not known how many were active at the time.
After an agent came across a post about Silk Road in an internet forum, they were able to identify the drug lord who operated the website under the alias Dread Pirate Roberts.
The same user returned to the forum eight months later advertising a job posting and directing all applications to an account registered to Ulbricht who was then identified as a suspect.
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After seizing his laptop, theFBIdiscovered that “the Silk Road generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and more than $13 million dollars worth ofBitcoinin commissions.”
“On November 3, 2020,lawenforcement seized over $1 billion worth of digital currency from this case.”
Ulbricht from Austin,Texas, was convicted inNew Yorkin 2015 after being found guilty of numerous charges including drug trafficking, computer hacking, andmoneylaundering.
At the time, he stated: “I wanted to empower people to make choices in their lives and have privacy and anonymity.”
The new president has now pardoned the cybercriminal who was given a life sentence without the possibility of release.
Trump’s pardon comes after Ulbricht tried to appeal his sentence twice – once in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2017 and then to theSupreme Courtin 2018.
Both efforts failed.
But on January 21, 2025, Trump posted on Truth Social that he had unconditionally pardoned Ulbricht after calling his sentence “ridiculous.”
The President 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 received 40 years in addition to two life sentences. Ridiculous!”
Trump informed Ulbricht’s mother of the good news over the phone.
Former District Judge Katherine Forrest who sentenced Ulbricht said at the time that Ulbricht’s actions were “unprecedented.”
“And in breaking that ground as the first person, you sit here as the defendant having to pay the consequences for that,” she added.
The judge noted that the Silk Road had been his “carefully planned life’s work” and that the “serious consequences” of his actions would deter like-minded individuals from similar endeavours.
The libertarian party, which has advocated for Ulbricht’s release and referred to his imprisonment as an instance of government overreach, has praised Trump’s decision.
The President said the move was made “in honor of [Ulbricht’s mother] and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly.”
Ulbricht’s lawyer Joshua Dratal toldThe Guardianthat he is “extremely gratified that an injustice has been corrected.”
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He added that his client “can have a life ahead of him to be the productive person he could have been all these years.”
It is unclear when Ulbricht will be released from the federal prison where he is now being imprisoned in Arizona.