AT 6:56pm, President Donal J. Trump released a statement saying that he had signed a full and unconditional pardon Ross Ulbricht.

‍♂️ Who is Ross Ulbrich?

Ross William Ulbrich was born on May 27th, 1984, in Austin, Texas. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at Dallas and a master's from Pennsylvania State University. For more than two years between 2011 and 2013, Ross operated Silk Road which was a darknet market that he created. He went by many aliases, but the one he was most well-known for is Dread Pirate Roberts which is a name he took from the movie The Princess Bride. Then, in 2013, he was sentenced to a double life sentence without parole along with a fine over $183 Million.

‍♂️ What did he do?

Silk Road was created by Ulbricht to be a place "where people could buy anything anonymously, with no trail whatsoever that could lead back to them." Silk road used Bitcoin and the Tor network to allow people to buy drugs and contraband with almost complete anonymity.

What was he charged with?

Once the investigations began the Federal Bureau of Investigations built a large case against Ulbricht. After he was arrested at the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public Library he was charged and later convicted of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, distributing narcotics, distributing narcotics by means of the Internet, conspiring to distribute narcotics, conspiring to commit money laundering, conspiring to traffic in false identity documents, and conspiring to commit computer hacking.

️ Where is he now?

President Donald Trump had said during his campaign that if he were re-elected as president he would pardon Ulbricht, and the day after his inauguration President Trump kept his word in regard to that promise. There are many people that feel like Ross Ulbricht received an appropriate sentence for his crimes, but there are many more who have argued that the double life sentence crossed over into the cruel and unusual area of the law. Ulbricht spent over 11 years of a lifetime sentence in three different federal penitentiaries. As of January 21st, 2025 he is a free man that has been pardoned for his crimes by President Donald J Trump.

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