Silk Road founder gets life for website which allowed users to buy drugs and illicit goods
Sentencing judge tells 31-year-old mastermind he pays the price for his unprecedented act
The accused mastermind behind the Silk Road underground website was sentenced to life in prison for orchestrating a scheme that enabled more than US$200 million of anonymous online drug sales using the digital currency bitcoin.
Ross Ulbricht, 31, was sentenced by US District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan after a federal jury in February found him guilty of charges including distributing drugs through the internet and conspiring to commit computer hacking and money laundering.
"What you did was unprecedented," Forrest said. "And in breaking that ground, you sit here as the defendant having to pay the consequences for that."
Ulbricht stood silently as Forrest announced the sentence, which also included an order to forfeit US$183.9 million.
Outside of court, Joshua Dratel, his lawyer, promised an appeal, calling the sentence "unreasonable, unjust and unfair."
A sniffling Ulbricht, who had admitted to creating Silk Road but denied wrongdoing at trial, told the judge before being sentenced that, he did not build Silk Road out of greed.
"I wanted to empower people to make choices in their lives and have privacy and anonymity," he said.