Pubdate: Sat, 30 May 2015
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Nicole Hong

SILK ROAD FOUNDER ROSS ULBRICHT SENTENCED TO LIFE IN PRISON

Ulbricht Was Convicted of Running Underground Online Drug Bazaar

Ross Ulbricht, the convicted founder of Silk Road, has been sentenced 
to life in prison for running the underground online drug bazaar, 
signaling the government's seriousness in combating Internet crimes.

The punishment is a heavy price to pay for the 31-year-old, who had 
pleaded with the judge to spare him his old age and "leave a small 
light at the end of the tunnel."

The sentence by U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest followed an 
emotional three-hour hearing. Judge Forrest said she spent more than 
100 hours grappling with the sentence, calling the decision "very, 
very difficult."

But ultimately she gave Mr. Ulbricht the harshest punishment allowed 
under the law, saying Silk Road was "an assault on the public health 
of our communities"  by making it easy for people around the world to 
buy illegal drugs. In a passionate speech, she detailed the ways drug 
addiction can tear families apart.

"What you did with Silk Road was terribly destructive to our social 
fabric,"  said Judge Forrest, who also ordered Mr. Ulbricht to 
forfeit about $183 million.

Mr. Ulbricht took the stand at the sentencing, crying as he asked the 
judge to give him a second chance. He said he didn't create Silk Road 
out of greed and vanity, as the government contested, but because he 
wanted to "empower people to make choices"  in their own lives with 
privacy and anonymity.

"I'm not the man I was when I created Silk Road,"  he said. "I wish I 
could go back and convince myself to take a different path, but I 
can't do that."

Mr. Ulbricht faced a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison, but 
federal prosecutors asked the judge to give him substantially more 
than that, arguing a harsh sentence was needed to deter others from 
following in Mr. Ulbricht's footsteps.

Judge Forrest said Mr. Ulbricht was "no better a person than any 
other drug dealer"  and that his education and privileged upbringing 
didn't put him above the law. To justify her sentence, she read 
evidence presented during Mr. Ulbricht's trial, including online 
messages where he allegedly joked about a drug addict who was unable 
to contain his addiction because of Silk Road.

After a three-week trial in New York City, Mr. Ulbricht was found 
guilty in February of seven criminal charges, including conspiracies 
to sell drugs, launder money and hack computers. At trial, Mr. 
Ulbricht admitted to creating Silk Road but said he left the site 
after a few months and didn't engage in wrongdoing. Prosecutors have 
described Silk Road as a criminal marketplace of unprecedented scope 
and sophistication. The site, which operated for more than two years, 
facilitated millions of dollars in transactions between buyers and 
sellers, who hawked illegal goods ranging from cocaine to fake 
driver's licenses. At the heart of the conspiracy, prosecutors said, 
was Mr. Ulbricht, who allegedly ran the site using the pseudonym 
Dread Pirate Roberts.

One factor that appeared to push Judge Forrest to give a life 
sentence: she said Mr. Ulbricht carefully built Silk Road to flout 
the law. While Mr. Ulbricht has said his creation of Silk Road was a 
naive mistake, she said it was his "opus"  and that he was fully 
aware he was commanding a global criminal enterprise.

In many ways, the Silk Road case is the first of its kind. The site 
operated on a hidden part of the Internet called the Tor network, and 
its only accepted form of payment was bitcoin, a digital currency 
that is difficult to trace. The anonymity of the site's transactions 
posed new challenges for law enforcement and forced them to depart 
from investigative techniques that would have been used in a 
traditional street drug case.

"What you did was unprecedented,"  Judge Forrest told Mr. Ulbricht on 
Friday. "In breaking that ground as the first person, you sit 
here"|having to pay the consequences for that."

After sentencing, Mr. Ulbricht's lawyer, Joshua Dratel, called the 
judge's decision "unreasonable and unjust."  He said he would appeal 
the sentencing and the original guilty verdict.

Lyn Ulbricht, Mr. Ulbricht's mother, said outside the courthouse that 
her son does feel remorse for his mistakes. "He's looking at his life 
being destroyed,"  she said.

The government said they identified six individuals who overdosed and 
died of drugs they purchased on Silk Road. The parents of two of 
those individuals - 25-year-old Bryan B. from Boston and 16-year-old 
Preston B. from Perth, Australia - spoke at Friday's sentencing, 
pleading emotionally to the judge to give Mr. Ulbricht a harsh sentence.

"I strongly believe my son would be here today if Ross Ulbricht had 
never created Silk Road,"  said the father of Bryan B., who died 
overdosing on heroin that the government says was purchased on Silk 
Road. The father, who only identified himself as Richard, said his 
son was struggling with drug addiction, but that he succumbed to the 
"deadly combination of convenience and anonymity"  on Silk Road.

Mr. Ulbricht isn't the typical drug kingpin. He was an Eagle Scout 
and grew up in a close-knit family in Austin, Texas, according to his 
lawyer. He studied physics at the University of Texas in Dallas on a 
full scholarship and completed a master's degree in material sciences 
at Penn State University.

The government also accused Mr. Ulbricht of paying hundreds of 
thousands of dollars for the murders of at least five people who 
threatened his criminal enterprise. Although there is no evidence the 
murders were actually carried out, Judge Forrest said she took them 
into consideration for the sentencing.
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