Free Republic

"We're going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs," former President Donald Trump said in November 2022 as he launched his 2024 presidential campaign, "to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts." That promise was not an offhand remark; it has been core to Trump's platform. Which made one of his comments yesterday at the Libertarian National Convention all the more interesting. "I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht," he said, referring to the man serving two life sentences plus 40 years for a slew of convictions, including distributing narcotics. Ulbricht's legal troubles stem...

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump plans to announce at the Libertarian National Convention on Saturday that he intends to commute "Silk Road" website operator Ross Ulbricht's life in prison sentence, according to a source familiar with the matter. Ulbricht was sentenced to life in federal prison in 2015 for creating and operating a hidden website known as the "Silk Road" that people used to buy and sell drugs, among other illegal goods and services. Many libertarians have called for Ulbricht's release. At the convention on Saturday, the crowd was filled with "free Ross" signs and took up chants in...

@RealRossU Tomorrow I’ll begin my 10th year in prison. I don’t know what to say. I screwed up. I ruined my life and caused a lot of pain. When I look back and see my many mistakes, I feel immense regret.

In his final weeks in office before Joe Biden’s inauguration, President Donald Trump is weighing granting clemency to Ross Ulbricht, the founder and former administrator of the world’s most famous darknet drug market, Silk Road, The Daily Beast has learned. According to three people familiar with the matter, the White House counsel’s office has had documents related to Ulbricht’s case under review, and Trump was recently made aware of the situation and the pleas of the Silk Road founder’s allies. Two of these sources say the president has at times privately expressed some sympathy for Ulbricht’s situation and has been...

@RepThomasMassieCommendable! Please also consider granting @Snowden and #JulianAssange pardons and commuting @RealRossU’s egregious Double-Life+40years(no parole) sentence to time-served

Earlier this week, the bitcoin community was shocked when a digital wallet containing roughly $1 billion in bitcoin...was emptied by an unknown individual. The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it had seized the wallet’s contents as part of a civil forfeiture case targeting the Silk Road. The government said it retrieved the roughly 70,000 bitcoins with the help of an unnamed hacker, whose identity is known to the government but who is simply referred to as “Individual X” in court documents. “Individual X” allegedly hacked the Silk Road’s payments system some time in 2012 or 2013. The government...

The coronavirus infection spreading across the United States prison system is throwing Ross Ulbricht’s confinement into sharp relief. Found guilty of seven charges including money laundering, conspiracy to traffic narcotics and computer hacking, the controversial founder of the Silk Road is currently serving a double life sentence plus 40 years, without the possibility of parole. As the pandemic worsens conditions for the nation’s large prison population, Ross spends 22 hours a day behind bars in Tucson, Ariz., where he’s currently being held. Outside visits are stopped so Ross’s mother, Lyn, and other loved ones, who work tirelessly for his release,...

Two former federal agents accused of stealing bitcoins have been charged with wire fraud, money laundering and related offenses, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement. Carl Force, a former special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Shaun Bridges, a former Secret Service special agent, were both part of a Baltimore task force investigating Silk Road, the online marketplace often labeled the eBay of the drug trade. Force was given the task of establishing communications with Ross Ulbricht, aka "Dread Pirate Roberts," the San Francisco man who has been linked to Silk Road. Ulbricht was convicted last month...

More than $400 million had seemingly vanished into cyberspace... His work—what he calls “blockchain archaeology”—has become an industry... “You know those documentaries about the Kennedy assassinations, and you see them 20 years later?” Mr. Kelman, the lawyer, remembers telling his partners. “That’s going to be us in 20 years.” ... Soon after, he got an unexpected message. Gary Alford, an agent with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, was known in crypto circles as the investigator who identified the owner of Silk Road, ... Mr. Nilsson passed the name—with a typo—to the IRS agent, Mr. Alford. ... Mr. Vinnik’s future is...

For the past two weeks, Reason, a magazine dedicated to "Free Minds and Free Markets," has been barred by an order from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from speaking publicly about a grand jury subpoena that court sent to Reason.com. The subpoena demanded the records of six people who left hyperbolic comments at the website about the federal judge who oversaw the controversial conviction of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. Shortly after the subpoena was issued, the government issued a gag order prohibiting Reason not only from discussing the matter but even acknowledging the...

Ross Ulbricht was a quiet nerd -- an Eagle Scout who never cursed. Then he became a libertarian, and he decided, "I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion." By coercion, Ulbricht meant force. He viewed laws against drugs as coercion -- government force that stops people from living the way they want. So he created a website called Silk Road. Silk Road let people buy and sell contraband -- mostly drugs -- using bitcoin. The site became successful quickly. It soon carried a billion dollars in transactions. Because Silk Road didn't use...

A former US secret service agent has pleaded guilty to stealing over $800,000 worth of bitcoin during an investigation into online drug marketplace Silk Road. Shaun Bridges, 33, appeared in federal court in San Francisco and admitted to money laundering and obstruction of justice. Silk Road operated for more than two years until it was shut down in October 2013 having generated more than $214m in sales of drugs and other illicit goods using bitcoin, prosecutors said. Ross Ulbricht, Silk Road’s creator, who authorities say used the alias Dread Pirate Roberts, was sentenced to life in prison after a federal...