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| DATE | 2017-04-05 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout of NYLXS] For this we have time for Life in Prision
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/29/silk-road-ross-ulbricht-sentenced
Silk Road operator Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison
Thirty-one-year-old behind illegal online drug emporium handed five
sentences – including two for life – to be served concurrently with no
chance of parole
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Ross Ulbrict was arrested and charged in 2013 with being Silk Road’s
pseudonymous founder ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’.
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Sam Thielman in New York
Friday 29 May 2015 21.02 BST
Last modified on Tuesday 21 February 2017 18.01 GMT
Ross Ulbricht, the man behind illegal online drug emporium Silk Road,
was sentenced to life in prison on Friday by Judge Katherine Forrest of
Manhattan’s US district court for the southern district of New York.
Before the sentencing the parents of the victims of drug overdoses
addressed the court. Ulbricht broke down in tears. “I never wanted that
to happen,” he said. “I wish I could go back and convince myself to take
a different path.”
The 31-year-old physics graduate and former boy scout was handed five
sentences: one for 20 years, one for 15 years, one for five and two for
life. All are to be served concurrently with no chance of parole.
The judge handed out the most severe sentence available to the man US
authorities identified as “Dread Pirate Roberts”, pseudonymous founder
of an Amazon-like online market for illegal goods.
“The stated purpose [of Silk Road] was to be beyond the law. In the
world you created over time, democracy didn’t exist. You were captain of
the ship, the dread Pirate Roberts. You made your own laws,” Forrest
told Ulbricht as she read the sentence.
Ulbrict had begged the judge to “leave a light at the end of the tunnel”
ahead of his sentence. “I know you must take away my middle years, but
please leave me my old age,” he wrote to Forrest this week. Prosecutors
wrote Forrest a 16-page letter requesting the opposite: “[A] lengthy
sentence, one substantially above the mandatory minimum is appropriate
in this case.”
“I’ve changed. I’m not the man I was when I created Silk Road. I’m a
little wiser. A little more mature and much more humble,” Ulbricht pled
in court.
Forrest rejected arguments that Silk Road had reduced harm among drug
users by taking illegal activities off the street. “No drug dealer from
the Bronx has ever made this argument to the court. It’s a privileged
argument and it’s an argument made by one of the privileged,” she said.
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Silk Road was once the largest “dark web” marketplace for illegal drugs
and other services. In March 2013 the secret site listed 10,000 items
for sale, 7,000 of which were drugs including cannabis, MDMA and heroin.
Prosecutors said Silk Road had generated nearly $213.9m (£140m) in sales
and $13.2m in commissions before police shut it down.
Ulbricht was convicted in February after a four-week trial on all seven
counts, from selling narcotics and money laundering to maintaining an
“ongoing criminal enterprise”, a charge usually reserved for mob
kingpins. Prosecutors said that he had gone so far as to solicit six
murders for hire, although no charges were ever brought.
Throughout the trial, the defense suggested that Ulbricht was the victim
of a complex hacking attack that left him looking like the fall guy.
Given the evidence presented against Ulbricht, the pitch proved a hard
sell to the jury.
Ulbricht was arrested in the science fiction section of his public
library, “literally caught with his fingers at the keyboard, running
Silk Road”, said the prosecution in its opening statement. He was logged
in to the Silk Road master account, according to the agents who arrested
him, and investigators found chat logs and other evidence on the hard
drive that implicated him.
Forrest said she had taken special care to read the reams of documents
sent to her in Ulbricht’s support, and that while it was unusual to do
so, she wanted to address them at the sentencing, particularly those
who’d said that an online drug marketplace reduced the violence of the
drug trade.
After his conviction, Ulbricht’s defense argued that the Silk Road was
in fact a boon to the health of its clients, especially those who
habitually used drugs. Forrest found none of the arguments convincing.
“Silk Road created [users] who hadn’t tried drugs before,” Forrest said,
adding that Silk Road “expands the market” and places demand on
drug-producing (and violent) areas in Afghanistan and Mexico that grow
the poppies used for heroin.
“The idea that it is harm-reducing is so narrow, and aimed at such a
privileged group of people who are using drugs in the privacy of their
own homes using their personal internet connections”, she said.
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Two parents of children (identified only by their first names and last
initials) who had died while using drugs obtained on Silk Road spoke to
the court. Richard B., whose 25-year-old son died of a heroin overdose,
expressed his anger at the people who have defended Ulbricht publicly.
“Since Mr Ulbricht’s arrest, we have endured the persistent drumbeat of
his supporters and their insistence that Silk Road was victimless,” he
said. “I strongly believe that my son would be here today if Silk Road
had never existed.”
Vicky B, whose 16-year-old son died after taking a powerful synthetic at
a party and jumping from a second-story roof, said that the time since
her son’s death had been unbearable. “This is the photo of the last kiss
from my son,” she said, holding up a photo of herself with her son
Preston before the school ball where he died.
“We keep Preston’s ashes at home,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Sometimes I just hold them. Sometimes I get under a blanket with them
and try to get warm.”
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