Trump pardons the founder of the Silk Road drug trade.
Ross Ulbricht was serving a life sentence for setting up a website to sell heroin, cocaine, and other illegal drugs in a dubious area of the internet.
Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road drug marketplace and a cult figure in the Bitcoin and libertarian communities, was pardoned by President Trump on Tuesday.
By doing this, Mr. Trump followed through on a pledge he made during the campaign to solicit political donations from the cryptocurrency business, which spent over $100 million to sway the election. In 2015, a 40-year-old Bitcoin pioneer named Mr. Ulbricht was found guilty of trafficking drugs online and given a life sentence without the chance of release.
In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump misspelled Mr. Ulbricht’s name and mentioned federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, saying, “I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbright to let her know.” “Some of the same crazies who were involved in the weaponization of government against me in the modern era were the ones who worked to convict him.”
Over the course of its nearly three-year existence, Silk Road—which functioned in the shadowy dark web—became a global drug bazaar that facilitated over 1.5 million transactions, including the selling of cocaine, heroin, and other illegal narcotics. (Authorities claim that the facility brought in over $200 million.) Prosecutors stated in court that Mr. Ulbricht had also encouraged the killings of individuals he deemed to be threats, but they admitted there was no proof the murders actually occurred.
Since the Silk Road was one of the first places where people used Bitcoin to buy and sell products, Mr. Ulbricht has maintained his popularity among cryptocurrency aficionados despite his crimes. His fans have been using the phrase “Free Ross” online and at industry events for years, claiming that his sentence was excessively harsh.
According to Pete Rizzo, an editor at the news outlet Bitcoin Magazine, “it’s hard to argue that Ross Ulbricht wasn’t the most successful and influential entrepreneur of the early Bitcoin era.” “This is the industry coming together and deciding to take back our own.”
Crypto aficionados eagerly awaited Mr. Ulbricht’s pardon. One of Trump’s most ardent fans, Elon Musk, wrote in response to a worried post on X on Monday that “Ross will be freed too” after the president granted amnesty to almost 1,600 individuals accused of involvement in the Capitol incident on January 6.
Born in Austin, Texas, Mr. Ulbricht was detained in 2013 when the FBI found him at a San Francisco library. Two years later, a judge in Manhattan’s Federal District Court sentenced Mr. Ulbricht, calling him “the kingpin of a worldwide digital drug-trafficking enterprise” and describing his acts as “terribly destructive to our social fabric.”
Prosecutors said that narcotics purchased on the Silk Road were responsible for at least six deaths. “All Ross Ulbricht cared about was his growing pile of Bitcoins,” the father of one of the deceased claimed in a court statement.
However, many commentators felt that the life sentence was harsh. When it upheld Mr. Ulbricht’s conviction in 2017, the federal appeals court for the Second Circuit recognized the harshness of the penalty.
The court stated, “On the facts of this case, a life sentence was within the range of permissible decisions that the district court could have reached, even though we might not have imposed the same sentence ourselves in the first instance.”
In Tucson, Arizona, Mr. Ulbricht has been incarcerated at a federal prison for the duration of his term. Crypto industry supporters have called for his release, pointing out that he was found guilty of a nonviolent felony and was never put on trial for the most shocking accusation made by prosecutors: that he paid to have people killed. In 2021, Mr. Ulbricht’s followers broadcast a recording of him speaking from prison during a Bitcoin conference in Miami.
He remarked, “I had a lot of big dreams for Bitcoin.”
On the campaign trail last year, Mr. Trump supported Mr. Ulbricht’s cause, first during a speech at a libertarian gathering and then at the annual Bitcoin conference in Nashville. On his own website, Truth Social, he posted the slogan #FreeRossDayOne, doubling down on social media.
Mr. Ulbricht expressed his “immense gratitude to everyone who voted for President Trump on my behalf” in a post on X following the election.
The message stated, “I can finally see the light of freedom at the end of the tunnel.”