![]() ![]() Ulbricht, of course, still faces life in prison. The Department of Justice didn't respond to WIRED's request for comment. The document, filed in February of 2021, is signed by both Ulbricht and David Countryman, a prosecutor in the asset forfeiture unit of the US Attorney's office for the Northern District of California. "The parties agree that the net proceeds realized from the sale of the forfeited pursuant to this agreement shall be credited toward any unpaid balance of the Money Judgment," reads a court filing from last year, using the phrase "money judgment" to refer to Ulbricht's 2015 restitution order. Despite the fact that the more recently unearthed stash of bitcoins-now worth billions of dollars-was itself criminal proceeds, the Justice Department appears to have made a deal with Ulbricht to avoid any claim he might have made to the money: In exchange for Ulbricht's agreement to waive any ownership he might have of the bitcoins, a portion of them will be used to pay off his restitution in its entirety. ![]() Last year, prosecutors quietly signed an agreement with Ulbricht stipulating that a portion of a newfound trove of Silk Road bitcoins, seized from an unnamed hacker, will be used to cancel out the more than $183 million in restitution Ulbricht was ordered to pay as part of his 2015 sentence, a number calculated from the total illegal sales of the Silk Road based on exchange rates at the time of each transaction. ![]() But a little over a year ago, it appears Ulbricht finally got a break of a different kind: The nine-figure debt he owed to the US government as part of his sentence will be erased-all thanks to the fortuitous hoarding of a hacker who'd stolen a massive trove of bitcoins from his market. His appeal was denied, as was the pardon he sought from President Trump. In 2015, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. It was used to sell drugs, and now I’m in prison.Ross Ulbricht, the convicted creator of the legendary Silk Road dark web market for drugs, has never gotten much mercy from the US legal system. I had no idea Silk Road would work, but now we all know it caught on. “I rushed ahead with my first idea, which was Silk Road… That’s a 26-year-old who thinks he has to save the world before someone beats him to it. “I thought with Bitcoin, I could try and do something that actually makes a difference… Back then, I was impatient,” he said. In 2015 he was convicted of money laundering, computer hacking and conspiracy to traffic illicit items and received a double life sentence plus forty years in prison.ĭuring the call, he explained that he had launched Silk Road without an understanding of how popular it would be or how exactly it would be used, but with a desire to leverage the unique properties of Bitcoin. Ulbricht launched Silk Road in 2011, when he was 26, and it quickly became the most significant real-world use case for the pseudonymous, censorship-resistant attributes of the recently-launched Bitcoin project. I know we can transform criminal justice, too.” We have brought a taste of freedom and equality to far corners of the world. We didn’t know how things would turn out for Bitcoin back in the beginning, but over the years, I’ve been continually impressed with what you’ve accomplished… We are transforming the global economy. “I’ve spent the last eight years watching Bitcoin grow up from in here,” Ulbricht said in a phone interview with Bitcoin Magazine from a maximum security federal prison, which premiered at the Bitcoin 2021 conference. Speaking publicly for the first time since a 2013 arrest for his role in creating and managing bitcoin-based online marketplace Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht described his original intentions for the darknet site and appealed to the Bitcoin community to continue advocating for freedom. ![]()
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