President Donald Trump today signed a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, the man who operated the notorious dark web drug marketplace, Silk Road.

Ulbricht ran the Silk Road from 2011 until 2013 under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts.” That year he was arrested and in 2015 was sentenced to life without parole. The authorities have since played Whac-A-Mole with a preponderance of other nefarious dark web marketplaces where illicit goods are sold by vendors and sent through the mail to people all over the world.

It seems Trump had a soft spot for Ulbricht, reportedly calling his mother to tell her the news. “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,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”

Texas-born, highly educated Ulbricht, who was something of a libertarian, was said to have had close to a million registered users when his site was taken down. However, it’s not certain how many of them were active on the site.

At his trial, prosecutors said his marketplace had sold more than $200 million worth of drugs, leading to charges of conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking. “Make no mistake: Ulbricht was a drug dealer and criminal profiteer who exploited people’s addictions and contributed to the deaths of at least six young people,” said Attorney Preet Bharara.

District Judge Katherine Forrest told the court Ulbricht was “no better a person than any other drug dealer,” although his sentence has been viewed as extremely punitive by a certain crowd, especially crypto fans with a libertarian bent. “I wanted to empower people to make choices in their lives and have privacy and anonymity,” Ulbricht said at his sentencing, which gained him sympathy from segments of Western society prone to express concern about government overreach.

In 2021, while incarcerated, he said Silk Road had turned into something he hadn’t planned. “I was trying to help us move toward a freer and more equitable world,” he said, adding, “Hell is paved with good intentions, and now here I am. I’m in hell.”

Following the pardon, he expressed his gratitude, writing on X, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. After 11 years in prison, it is hard to express how I feel at this moment.”

Photo: Greg Chiasson/Flickr