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THE founder of the dark web marketplace Silk Road has spoken of his gratitude after being pardoned by Donald Trump.
Ross Ulbricht had been holed up in a federal lockup in Arizona for almost a decade after being convicted in 2015.
Trump had promised to pardon Ulbricht in May and delivered on his word in the first week of his term in office.
Ulbricht released a video on X, where he thanked Trump.
“Thank you so much, President Trump, for giving me this amazing blessing,” he said.
“I am so, so grateful to have my life back, to have my future back, to have this second chance.”
He said the pardon marked an important moment for his family.
“This is an important moment for everybody, everybody who loves freedom and cares about second chances.”
In the video, Ulbricht said the feeling of being free was “overwhelming.”
And he said he was looking forward to re-engaging with the free world.
Ulbricht’s platform, Silk Road, allowed users to buy and sell illegal drugs anonymously.
He created the website in 2011 before it was shut down two years later.
Ulbricht, who operated under the name Dread Pirate Roberts, is said to have raked in more than $13 million in commission from the illegal sales.
In 2015, prosecutors labeled him a “drug dealer and criminal profiteer.”
They claimed people died from the drugs bought on Silk Road.
“Ulbricht went from hiding his cybercrime identity to becoming the face of cybercrime, and as today’s sentence proves, no one is above the law,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Protesters campaigned outside a Manhattan courthouse before Ulbricht was slapped with the sentence.
Ulbricht was convicted on a slew of charges, including distributing narcotics, distributing narcotics via the internet, and conspiring to distribute narcotics.
He was also convicted on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiring to commit computer hacking, engaging in a criminal enterprise, and conspiring to traffic in false identity documents.
In November 2020, officials claimed they had seized more than $1 billion worth of digital currency.
Inside Ulbricht’s double life
DESPITE being handed down the maximum sentence by prosecutors Ulbricht was never tipped as a criminal mastermind by those who knew him.
He was in Sydney, Australia, for some of the time Silk Road was active, with his friends saying they all believed he was simply a programmer.
Ulbricht managed to keep his illegal side hustle private until the FBI managed to link his laptop and accounts to the online pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts.
He even kept it quiet from those who he lived with for six months in a house share at Bondi Beach.
A friend said he was left “absolutely gobsmacked” after learning of Ulbricht’s double life.
They added: “He’s the nicest guy. He said he was a programmer consulting on projects, and you could do it from anywhere on the road using laptops.
“I’m totally spun out.”
Ulbricht has always maintained he never wanted or planned for the website to grow into the hotbed of crime it became.
He has held onto his innocence and continues to say he never sold illicit drugs or passports himself.
In a statement from prison from 2021 he said: “I was trying to help us move toward a freer and more equitable world.
“We all know the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and now here I am. I’m in hell.”
Trump issued the unconditional pardon and slammed the prosecutors.
“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 said in a Truth Social post.
Ulbricht tried to his appeal his sentence twice – once in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2017.
His team submitted an appeal with the Supreme Court in 2018 but was unsuccessful.
Trump called Ulbricht’s mom after issuing the pardon.
PARDON SPREE
The president has issued a flurry of pardons since his inauguration on Monday.
He pardoned 1,500 people convicted of their involvement in the January 6 Capitol protests.
Trump’s decision to pardon the January 6 rioters was not welcomed by senior Democrats.
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Emerita, branded the pardons “shameful.”
Trump also pardoned cops Andrew Zabavsky and Terence Sutton.
They were accused of covering up the death of Karon Hylton-Brown.
Hylton Brown, who was riding a moped, died after being hit by a car.
He was being hunted by cops in a police chase.
But Hylton Brown’s death sparked protests and his death came months after George Floyd was killed.
