President Donald Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, sentenced to after having been money laundering, drug trafficking and computer hacking. “I just called Ross William Ulbright’s mother [sic] to let him know that in his honor and in honor of the libertarian movement, which has so strongly supported me, I had the pleasure of signing a full and unconditional pardon for his son, Ross,” Trump said in on Social Truth.
Ulbricht has been serving a life sentence since 2015. Prosecutors that the dark web marketplace created by Ulbricht was “used by thousands of drug dealers and other illegal sellers to distribute hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs and other illegal goods and services to over one hundred thousand buyers, and to launder hundreds of millions of dollars from these illegal transactions. Ulbricht was also accused of attempting to of his alleged enemies, even though prosecutors said there was “no evidence that these murders were actually committed.”
Reprieve for Ulbricht comes after he tries, to appeal his conviction in 2017. Crypto enthusiasts, many of whom in the 2024 election, have long argued that his sentence was too harsh. Trump said that he would commute Ulbricht’s sentence “from day one” if he were re-elected.
