President Trump announced the pardon Tuesday. Ross UlbrichtFounder of Silk Road, an underground website once run by the FBI called “It is the most sophisticated and widespread criminal marketplace on the Internet.”
Ulbricht something sentenced Sentenced to life imprisonment in 2015.
President Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social that he spoke with Ulbricht’s mother on his first day in office.
“I am delighted to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon for her son Ross,” he wrote. “The scumbags who helped convict him were some of the same lunatics involved in weaponizing modern government against me.”
He called Ulbricht’s prison sentence “ridiculous.”
During the campaign he promised to help Ulbricht. in a speech At the Liberal Party National Convention last May.
Liberal activists who generally oppose criminal drug policies have long believed that government investigators went too far in making the case against Silk Road. Many people held “Free Ross” signs.
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The Silk Road site was installed by Ulbricht in 2011 on the dark web, a part of the Internet that is inaccessible to traditional search engines. We do not accept cash or credit cards. Users had to pay with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. All transactions are encrypted and untraceable.
It became a place where people bought and sold illegal drugs, weapons, poisons, and services such as computer hacking.
“Silk Road was the Amazon of drug sites” former FBI Special Agent Milan Patel said in an interview This is from the CBS News series “FBI Declassified.”
“We’ve seen murder-for-hire posts and hack-for-hire posts that say, ‘Give me two bitcoins and I’ll hack your ex-wife or ex-husband’s email account,’” Patel said. “…it was completely anonymous, and the person who requested it could never be traced back.”
Ulbricht ran the site until his arrest in 2013. confiscated by the FBI. During the trial, prosecutors said at least six people had died from overdoses of drugs purchased on Silk Road. They alleged that Ulbricht raked in $18 million through commissions on the sale of tens of thousands of drugs. present evidence He claimed he tried to kill people for threatening his business.
After President Trump took office, he also forgave Approximately 1,500 defendants were convicted in connection with the case. January 6th Capitol Riot.
