Who is Ross Ulbricht? A libertarian who championed internet privacy out of deep personal conviction, or a ruthless felon who appreciated that secrecy was integral to the successful operation of his multimillion-dollar criminal enterprise?
After the Silk Road supremo’s sentence to life imprisonment without parole was handed down on Friday, Manhattan US attorney Preet Bharara was under no illusions about the man who had been sniffling in the dock only hours before. “Make no mistake,” he declared, “Ulbricht was a drug dealer and criminal profiteer who exploited people’s addictions.”
It was a damning assessment of the rollercoaster life and times of the 31-year-old criminal genius who grew up in Austin, Texas, to become the mastermind behind the most notorious of online black markets.
Created in January 2011 and shut down by law enforcement in October 2013, Silk Road let its users buy and sell drugs and other illegal goods and services anonymously over the so-called dark net, outside the reach of the law.
Using the online moniker “Dread Pirate Roberts”, a reference to a character in the 1987 movie The Princess Bride, Ulbricht, according to prosecutors, “controlled and oversaw every aspect of Silk Road, and managed a staff of paid, online administrators and computer programmers who assisted with the day-to-day operation of the site”. He grew rich as a result, apparently reaping “commissions worth more than $13m generated from the illicit sales conducted through the site”.
But in the same way that the pirate music platform Napster was forced to close around the turn of the millennium after attracting the attention of the US authorities, Silk Road – and its founder – were transformed into a powerful brand and soon the FBI was focusing on them.
“He was the poster boy [of the dark net] with Silk Road, because he had the most romantic nickname, Dread Pirate Roberts, and so everyone focused on him, including the FBI,” said Dr Simon Moores, chair of the International ECrime Congress. “He was foolishly provocative, and that is a big mistake to make in a democracy like the US.”
Just how big is only now becoming clear as Ulbricht contemplates death behind bars. Judge Katherine B Forrest insisted a severe sentence was necessary to send a clear signal to others. “There must be no doubt that lawlessness will not be tolerated,” Forrest declared. “There must be no doubt that you cannot run a massive criminal enterprise and because it occurred over the internet minimise the crime committed on that basis.”
But in lawless cyberspace some disagree. A man condemned by the US legal system finds himself lionised by others on Twitter.
“Ross Ulbricht, you will one day be remembered as an American hero,” tweeted one sympathiser. “Sadly, you might never live to see that day.” Chris Rorie tweeted: “My heart’s with Ross Ulbricht right now. Alumni of my high school … I know he’s guilty, I also know he’s a pioneer, a hero.”
Some have invoked comparisons with Aaron Swartz, the computer hacker who was arrested in the US in 2011 and threatened with a draconian $1m fine and 35 years in prison. Swartz declined a plea bargain under which he would have served six months in prison. Two days after the prosecution rejected his counter-offer, he hanged himself.
Certainly Ulbricht attempted to paint himself in court as a digital crusader for civil rights. “I wanted to empower people to make choices in their lives and have privacy and anonymity,” he told the court.
Silk Road operated over the “Tor” network, designed to conceal the identities of users, and with a Bitcoin-based payment system that hid the identities and locations of those accessing the site in at least 10 countries, including the US, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, the UK and Spain.
On any given day vendors would be typically offering a gram of “100% pure Peruvian cocaine”, “1g of Indian shard ketamine” or “100 Pfizer Xanax bars”. But the Silk Road was not just about drugs. Among the most popular items for sale were Tesco vouchers and hacked Spotify premium accounts. And there was everything anyone needed to create a new identity. Silk Road sold fake driver’s licences, passports, social security cards, utility bills, credit card statements and car insurance records.
This was not some cottage industry. According to the FBI, “while in operation, Silk Road was used by thousands of drug dealers and other unlawful vendors to distribute hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs and other unlawful goods and services to more than 100,000 buyers, and to launder hundreds of millions of dollars deriving from these unlawful transactions”.
Neither was Ulbricht the disinterested party he claimed to be in court. According to prosecutors, he “demonstrated a willingness to use violence to protect his criminal enterprise and the anonymity of its users, soliciting six murders-for-hire in connection with operating the site, although there is no evidence that these murders were actually carried out”.
This latter claim is hugely contentious. Ulbricht’s defence team say there were no solicitations of murder, and fear the allegation may have helped determine their client’s life sentence. More difficult to rebut, however, was the emotional testimony against Ulbricht from the families who lost loved ones after they took drugs bought over Silk Road.
According to prosecutors, “the narcotics distributed on Silk Road have been linked to at least six overdose deaths across the world. These overdose deaths included Jordan M, a 27-year-old Microsoft employee who was found unresponsive in front of his computer, which was logged on to Silk Road at the time, and died as a result of heroin and other prescription drugs that he had ordered from Silk Road.”
Others included Preston B, from Perth, Australia, and Alejandro N, from Camino, California, both 16, who “died as a result of taking 25i-NBOMe, a powerful synthetic drug designed to mimic LSD (commonly referred to as ‘N-Bomb’)”, bought from Silk Road.
Explicitly linking Ulbricht to the deaths is, however, myopic according to many commentators. Max Daly, an expert on drug consumption and the author of Narcomania, tweeted: “Blaming Ross Ulbricht for people overdosing on drugs bought from Silk Road is like blaming peanut farmers for people dying of nut allergies.” Daly added: “Life in jail with no parole for selling drugs to people who wanted drugs (99% of whom probably had a great time on them). Insane.”
The concern that Ulbricht has been singled out for punitive treatment is likely to play a key role in his appeal.
Ulbricht’s lawyer, Joshua Dratel, described his client’s sentence as “u nreasonable, unjust, unfair”. Significantly, Ulbricht’s indictment refers to the fact that he operated with “others known and unknown”, suggesting that some of his accomplices will never face trial.
But even if they do, few believe their convictions will change anything. Within weeks of Silk Road being closed down, Moores said at least 17 similar sites had sprung up. Many operate far beyond the realms of US law enforcement in countries such as Russia, China, Vietnam and India, where fighting online crime is not a priority and diplomatic relations with the west are strained.
Who is Ross Ulbricht? Just one of many. “Every time the FBI takes someone like him down, two or three more will spring up to take his place,” Moores said. “It’s whack-a-mole in a virtual sense.”
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