NEW YORK — A San Francisco man who created the online drug-selling site Silk Road was sentenced Friday to life in prison by a judge who cited six deaths that resulted from drugs bought on his website and five people he tried to have killed.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest told Ross Ulbricht, 31, that he was a criminal even though he doesn’t fit the typical profile — he has two collegiate degrees — and she brushed aside his attempt to characterize the business as a big mistake.
“It was a carefully planned life’s work. It was your opus,” she said. “You are no better a person than any other drug dealer.”
Forrest said the sentence was necessary to show others who might follow his path that there are “very serious consequences.” She also ordered a $183 million forfeiture. Prosecutors had not asked for a life sentence, saying only they wanted a prison term longer than the 20-year mandatory minimum.
Ulbricht was convicted in February of operating the site for nearly three years from 2011 until his 2013 arrest.
Prosecutors say he collected $18 million in bitcoins through commissions on drug sales on a website containing thousands of listings under categories like “Cannabis,” “Psychedelics” and “Stimulants.” They said he brokered more than 1 million drug deals worth more than $183 million while he operated on the site under the alias Dread Pirate Roberts — a reference to the swashbuckling character in “The Princess Bride.”
The judge said Ulbricht’s efforts to arrange the murders of five people he deemed as threats to his business was proof that Silk Road had not become the “world without restrictions, of ultimate freedom” that he claimed he sought.
