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Drug marketplace founder is latest pardon by Trump
The Independent
|January 23, 2025
Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he has pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, an underground website for selling illegal drugs and other contraband goods like hacking equipment and stolen passports.
Mr Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 after a high-profile prosecution that highlighted the role of the internet in black markets and ended with him being convicted on seven counts, including conspiracy and money laundering.
The president posted on his Truth Social platform that he had spoken to Mr Ulbricht’s mother on his first full day in office at the White House to deliver the news.
“It was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross,” he wrote.
“The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern-day weaponization of government against me.”
Mr Trump called Mr Ulbricht’s prison sentence “ridiculous”.
Mr Ulbricht created Silk Road in 2011 under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts”, a reference to Rob Reiner’s popular fantasy film
This story is from the January 23, 2025 edition of The Independent.
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