Ross Ulbricht - Wikipedia

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2021-06-20 20:00:08

Ross William Ulbricht (born March 27, 1984) is an American who created and operated the darknet market website Silk Road from 2011 until his arrest in 2013.[4] The site used Tor for anonymity and bitcoin as a currency and facilitated the sale of narcotics and other illegal sales.[5][6] Ulbricht's online pseudonym was "Dread Pirate Roberts" after the fictional character in the novel The Princess Bride and its film adaptation.

In February 2015, Ulbricht was convicted of conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics by means of the internet.[7] In May 2015, he was sentenced to a double life sentence plus forty years without the possibility of parole. Ulbricht's appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2017 and the U.S Supreme Court in 2018 were unsuccessful.[8][9][10] He is currently incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson.[11]

Ulbricht grew up in Austin, Texas. He was a Boy Scout,[12] attaining the rank of Eagle Scout.[13] He attended West Ridge Middle School,[14] and Westlake High School, both near Austin. He graduated from high school in 2002.[15]