DONALD Trump’s first day back in office saw him sign an unconditional pardon for Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht.
Silk Road was 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.
Court documents presented by the FBI revealed that at the time of Ulbricht’s apprehension, the website boasted close to a million registered users, although the actual number of active users remains undisclosed.
The individual overseeing the illicit operations of the platform, known as Dread Pirate Roberts, came under scrutiny when a tax agent stumbled upon a mention of Silk Road on a digital forum.
This user resurfaced on the forum eight months later to promote a job opportunity, instructing interested parties to apply through an account linked to Ulbricht, ultimately exposing him as a person of interest in the case.
After seizing his laptop, the FBI discovered that “the Silk Road generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and more than $13 million dollars worth of Bitcoin in commissions.”
“On November 3, 2020, law enforcement seized over $1 billion worth of digital currency from this case.”
Ulbricht from Austin, Texas, was convicted in New York in 2015 after being found guilty of numerous charges including drug trafficking, computer hacking, and money laundering.
At the time, he said: “I wanted to empower people to make choices in their lives and have privacy and anonymity.”
The cyber criminal was handed a life sentence without the chance of parole a decision that has now been pardoned by the new president.
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 the Supreme Court in 2018.
Both attempts were unsuccessful.
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 was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”
Trump called Ulbricht’s mom to tell her the good news.
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.
Trump’s decision has been celebrated by The libertarian party which has been fighting for Ulbricht’s release calling his sentencing a case of government overreach.
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 told The Guardian that he is “extremely gratified that an injustice has been corrected.”
He added that his client “can have a life ahead of him to be the productive person he could have been all these years.”
Ulbricht is currently being held in a federal prison in Arizona and it is not yet clear when he will be released.
