On October 1, 2013, Ross, 29, founder and owner of the Silk Road website, was at the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public Library when the FBI stormed in to arrest him.
Later, on May 29, 2015, Ulbricht was sentenced to two life sentences plus 40 years to be served concurrently without the possibility of parole.
But why such a level of judicial outrage towards the founder of a website where anything legal or illegal, including drugs, was exchanged using Bitcoin as a form of payment?
Read on and I'll tell you...
The real reason
The answer they don't want you to know, the real one, is: Bitcoin.
Before I go on to give you the details of who our character of the day is today and how the events happened so you can make up your own mind, I should give you a bit of context:
In 2013, Bitcoin was barely four years old, and, unlike today, which they are already finding it more difficult to eliminate it, or at least control it, the US government was interested in having a kind of scapegoat with which to inspire fear in anyone who dares to attempt against the status quo.
It also needed to give Bitcoin a negative connotation, to stigmatize it, in order to prevent its growing adoption.
The status quo is understood as the current monetary-financial system that dominates the world: the fiat standard, and whose power they do not want to lose.
It is there when unfortunately, our character of today won "the lottery" and it is when he is accused of several crimes that I will tell you about below.
Also, let's examine a little bit what happened, what hopes our friend has to get free and continue with his life, as well as his plans.
Who is Ross Ulbricht?
Ross Ulbrich, born in 1984, is a former creator and operator of the Silk Road darknet marketplace. He was arrested in 2013 and, two years later, a Manhattan federal jury found him guilty on seven counts, including:
- Conspiracy to launder money,
- Conspiracy to commit computer hacking,
- Conspiracy to traffic narcotics over the Internet, and
- Continuing a criminal enterprise (the so-called kingpin charge).
Ulbricht was a first-time offender, but he was not convicted of selling illegal drugs and other items, but of creating and running a site where others were doing so.
Now, he has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in federal prison, which is known as a life sentence.
Initial stages
Ulbricht grew up near Austin, Texas, studied physics at the University of Texas at Dallas and pursued a master's degree in materials science at Pennsylvania State University.
During this time, our protagonist developed a keen interest in libertarian views of economic theory. He became a follower of the political philosopher Ludwig von Mises and aligned his views with those of prominent libertarian politicians.
In an interview for the media outlet BeInCrypto, his mother, Lyn Ulbricht, defines him thus:
"I've known him all my life and, honestly, Ross is an exceptional person. He's the least critical person I've ever met...he's very compassionate. He's also always trying to think of solutions and ways to make things better."
Career
In 2009, after graduating from Penn State, Ulbricht returned to Austin to become an entrepreneur.
His first attempts were unsuccessful, and he bounced from job to job. He tried his hand at day trading and video game development, as well as founding an online bookselling company.
It was during this time that Ulbricht first developed the idea of creating an online marketplace using encryption, Tor and Bitcoin, which at the time was still in its early stages.
Tor passes user information through an extensive network of encryption procedures, effectively hiding the identity and location of network participants.
By adopting both encryption and Bitcoin, Ulbricht believed that his marketplace could provide anonymity and security to its participants, allowing them to avoid government scrutiny, in addition to offering a decentralized and anonymous transactional platform.
This initial idea would eventually become the Silk Road marketplace.
On this, his mother opined, "Ross wants to solve problems and help make the world a better place, which is a big part of why he likes Bitcoin, because it opens up prosperity to people who can't have a bank account and to people. That's his idealism."
The Project
Ulbricht founded Silk Road ("Silk Road") in 2011, calling himself "Dread Pirate Roberts" on the Internet, in a nod to the 1987 hit movie The Princess Bride.
He intended Silk Road to be a "means to abolish the use of coercion and aggression among humanity", according to his LinkedIn page.
He also said he was "creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force."
Silk Road became popular in a very short time. When numerous media outlets picked up stories about the market in mid-2011, the site garnered a great deal of interest and traffic increased exponentially.
Of course, as the site became more well known, the authorities also took steps to identify Silk Road users and shut down the site.
Nevertheless, Silk Road remained a popular, but hidden, marketplace in which both legal and highly illegal activities took place until 2013.
According to prosecutors, at the time of its closure, the site had generated nearly $213.9 million in sales and $13.2 million in commissions for its owner.
The problem
In early 2013, the Daily Dot media outlet reported that an Australian drug dealer was the first individual convicted of crimes directly related to Silk Road. From that point on, the identification of Silk Road users continued to unfold.
Ultimately, the FBI determined that Ulbricht was the founder and owner of Silk Road. Ulbricht also faced murder-for-hire charges in a separate case in federal court in Baltimore. Those charges were ultimately dropped in 2018.
In the Silk Road shutdown process, the FBI seized 144,336 bitcoins from a shared digital wallet on Ulbricht's laptop. They were sold in a series of auctions that generated proceeds of $48.2 million.
Ulbricht's trial, an event as publicized as it was charged, began in January 2015 in Manhattan, when he was found guilty on all seven counts. Allegedly, the presiding judge received death threats from alleged Silk Road supporters, which was never proven.
Prior to his sentencing, Ulbricht stated through a letter to the judge that his actions were tied to his libertarian ideals and that "Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own decisions."
"A couple of years after Bitcoin started, I made the biggest mistake of my life: I created Silk Road (an anonymous online marketplace). Of course, at the time I didn't know it was a mistake. I thought it was a great idea. I thought I was putting Bitcoin to good use and offering privacy and freedom to people. When illegal drugs came up on the list, I also thought it was fine, because I thought drugs should be legalized. It didn't matter that they were outside the law and I was risking everything I held dear."
Appeals
Ulbricht appealed, and in May 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied his attempt.
Also in 2017, Ulbricht appealed to the Supreme Court, with lawyers arguing that his case involves unsettled constitutional questions regarding the Fourth Amendment and the digital age.
In June 2018, the court declined to hear Ross's case.
On October 10, 2019, Ulbricht filed a motion in the Southern District Court of New York to vacate or set aside his sentence. This motion was also denied.
In late 2020, national media reported that former President Donald Trump was considering commuting Mr. Ulbricht's sentence, but ultimately did not do so.
¿Hope?
In closing, we wonder if there is any hope for the future. For Ross and his mother, Lyn, that hope now lies in a presidential pardon.
"Ross says where there is life, there is hope. Don't give up, because the point is, we're talking about one man or woman's signature on a piece of paper,", Lyn says. "All they have to do is sign a piece of paper. And Ross is free. It's not like we want to literally move a mountain range."
From his Medium account, Ross continues to publish posts on a variety of topics, from legal reform to Bitcoin resilience.
In a guest post for Bitcoin Magazine, Ross had this to say:
"I've gone through many phases during my incarceration: hopelessness, fear, guilt, acceptance, boredom, feverish despair, and all while Bitcoin is still going strong. Today I am inspired by Bitcoin. I will keep going forward, day by day, taking the next step over and over again. I will keep adding the next block. I will regain my freedom or, at the end of my life, I will be able to look back and say, 'At least I tried.'"
Ross now hopes to finish a master's degree in psychology, so he can better help his fellow inmates in his capacity as a suicide watch escort. With all that Ross is doing from inside prison, there is a sense that he could be an even greater force for good if he were not behind bars.
Conclusion
Ross Ulbricht is infamous for creating and running Silk Road Market, and although he claims his intentions in starting the site were altruistic, a federal jury convicted him of seven felony charges, including conspiracy to traffic narcotics, and he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Ulbricht's many supporters consider his conviction unjust (myself included), and since his incarceration, more than 435,000 people have signed an online clemency petition created by Lyn Ulbricht, his mother, to get his double life sentence commuted.
His supporters have also created an online fact sheet to provide more details about Ross' case.
If you want to help Ross do more, you can sign on as well.
Sources: Investopedia, BeInCrypto.