Second, ULBRICHT designed Silk Road to include a Bitcoin-based payment system that served to facilitate the illegal commerce conducted on the site, including by concealing the identities and locations of the users transmitting and receiving funds through the site. First, ULBRICHT operated Silk Road on what is known as “The Onion Router,” or “Tor” network, a special network of computers on the Internet, distributed around the world, designed to conceal the true IP addresses of the computers on the network and thereby the identities of the networks’ users. ULBRICHT sought to anonymize transactions on Silk Road in two principal ways. ULBRICHT deliberately operated Silk Road as an online criminal marketplace intended to enable its users to buy and sell drugs and other illegal goods and services anonymously and outside the reach of law enforcement. 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. Silk Road emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet, serving as a sprawling black-market bazaar where unlawful goods and services, including illegal drugs of virtually all varieties, were bought and sold regularly by the site’s users. ULBRICHT created Silk Road in January 2011, and owned and operated the underground website until it was shut down by law enforcement authorities in October 2013. Ulbricht went from hiding his cybercrime identity to becoming the face of cybercrime and as today’s sentence proves, no one is above the law.”Īccording to the evidence presented at trial, statements made during other public proceedings including today’s sentencing, and other court documents: Attorney Preet Bharara said: “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. ULBRICHT was found guilty of each of the seven charges he faced on February 5, 2015, following a four-week jury trial. Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that ROSS ULBRICHT, a/k/a “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was sentenced today in Manhattan federal court to life in prison in connection with his operation and ownership of Silk Road, a hidden website designed to enable its users to buy and sell illegal drugs and other unlawful goods and services anonymously and beyond the reach of law enforcement between January 2011 and October 2013.

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