Defunct: Ross Ulbricht

Ross William Ulbricht (born March 27, 1984) is an American who created and operated the darknet market website 'Silk Road' from 2011 until his arrest in 2013. The site used Tor for anonymity and bitcoin as a currency and facilitated the sale of narcotics and other illegal sales. One of Ulbricht's online pseudonyms was "Dread Pirate Roberts" after the fictional character in the novel The Princess Bride and its film adaptation.

In February 2015, Ulbricht was convicted of conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics by means of the internet. In May 2015, he was sentenced to a double life sentence plus forty years without the possibility of parole. Ulbricht's appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2017 and the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 were unsuccessful. He is currently incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson.

Early life and education

Ulbricht' grew up in Austin, Texas. He was a Boy Scout, attaining the rank of Eagle Scout. He attended West Ridge Middle School and Westlake High School, both near Austin, graduating from high school in 2002.

Ulbricht attended the University of Texas at Dallas on a full academic scholarship, and graduated in 2006 with a bachelor's degree in physics. He then attended Pennsylvania State University, where he was in a master's degree program in materials science and engineering and studied crystallography. By the time Ulbricht graduated, he had become interested in libertarian economic theory; he adhered to the political philosophy of Ludwig von Mises, supported Ron Paul, promoted agorism, and participated in college debates to discuss his economic views. Ulbricht graduated from Penn State in 2009 and returned to Austin. He tried day trading and started a video game company; both ventures failed.[14] He eventually partnered with his friend Donny Palmertree to help build an online used book seller, Good Wagon Books.

Arrest

The Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public Library', where Ulbricht was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Ulbricht was first connected to "Dread Pirate Roberts" by Gary Alford, an Internal Revenue Service investigator working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on the Silk Road case, in mid-2013. The connection was made by linking the username "altoid", used during Silk Road's early days to announce the website, and a forum post in which Ulbricht, posting under the nickname "altoid", asked for programming help and gave his email address, which contained his full name. In October 2013 Ulbricht was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation while at the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public Library, and accused of being the "mastermind" behind the site. San Francisco Public Library

To prevent Ulbricht from encrypting or deleting files on the laptop he was using to run the site as he was arrested, two agents pretended to be quarreling lovers. When they had sufficiently distracted him, according to Joshuah Bearman of Wired, the two agents then quickly moved in to arrest him while a third agent grabbed the laptop and handed it to agent Thomas Kiernan. Kiernan then inserted a flash drive in one of the laptop's USB ports, with software that copied key files.

Trial

On August 21, 2014, Ulbricht was charged with money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics. He was ordered held without bail. On February 4, 2015, Ulbricht was convicted on all counts after a jury trial that had taken place in January 2015. On May 29, 2015, he was sentenced to double life imprisonment plus forty years, without the possibility of parole. Murder-for-hire allegations

Federal prosecutors alleged that Ulbricht had paid $730,000 in murder-for-hire deals targeting at least five people, allegedly because they threatened to reveal Ulbricht's Silk Road enterprise. Prosecutors believe no contracted killing actually occurred. Ulbricht was not charged in his trial in New York federal court with any murder for hire, but evidence was introduced at trial supporting the allegations.The evidence that Ulbricht had commissioned murders was considered by the judge in sentencing Ulbricht to life, and was a factor in the Second Circuit's decision to affirm the life sentence.

Ulbricht was separately indicted in federal court in Maryland on a single murder-for-hire charge, alleging that he contracted to kill one of his employees (a former Silk Road moderator). Prosecutors moved to drop this indictment after his New York conviction and sentence became final.

Attempts to reverse the trial outcome

Oral argument in United States v. Ulbricht at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Ulbricht appealed his conviction and sentence to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in January 2016, centered on claims that the prosecution illegally withheld evidence of DEA agents' malfeasance in the investigation of Silk Road, for which two agents were convicted. Ulbricht also argued his sentence was too harsh. Oral arguments were heard in October 2016, and the Second Circuit issued its decision in May 2017, upholding Ulbricht's conviction and life sentence in an opinion written by Judge Gerard E. Lynch. In a 139-page opinion, the court affirmed the district court's denial of Ulbricht's motion to suppress certain evidence, affirmed the district court's decisions on discovery and the admission of expert testimony, and rejected Ulbricht's argument that a life sentence was procedurally or substantively unreasonable.

In December 2017, Ulbricht filed a petition for a certiorari with the United States Supreme Court, asking the Court to hear his appeal on evidentiary and sentencing issues. Ulbricht's petition asked whether the warrantless seizure of an individual's internet traffic information, without probable cause, violated the Fourth Amendment, and whether the Sixth Amendment permits judges to find facts necessary to support an otherwise unreasonable sentence. Twenty-one amici filed five amicus curiae briefs in support of Ulbricht, including the National Lawyers Guild, American Black Cross, Reason Foundation, Drug Policy Alliance, and Downsize DC Foundation. The U.S. government filed a response in opposition to Ulbricht's petition. On June 28, 2018, the Supreme Court denied the petition, declining to consider Ulbricht's appeal.

Motion to vacate or reduce the sentence

In 2019, Ulbricht attempted to vacate his life sentence, based on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel by his defense lawyers. Though this attempt was initially rejected in August 2019 due to a procedural error, the motion was refiled and is still pending. In a 2020 Vanity Fair article Nick Bilton wrote that, according to investigators and attorneys involved in the case, Ulbricht had been offered a favorable plea deal which would have likely given him a decade-long sentence, but he turned it down. Bilton wrote, "(Ulbricht) believed that he was smarter than everyone in the room, and that he could beat them all." Assistant US Attorney Timothy Howard, who was co-responsible for prosecuting the case, testified that the plea offer was made before Ulbricht's indictment and carried a mandatory minimum of 10 years to a maximum of life imprisonment, and that the United States sentencing guideline was life imprisonment.

Presidential commutation

In 2020, President Trump reportedly considered commuting Ulbricht's sentence before leaving office, but did not do so. After the conviction

Incarceration

During his trial, Ulbricht was incarcerated at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York. Starting in July 2017, he was held at USP Florence High. His mother Lyn moved to Colorado so she could visit him regularly. Ulbricht has since been transferred to USP Tucson.