THere it is not possible Many international crime bosses were inspired by “The Princess Bride,” a children’s fantasy film released in 1987. Ross Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road, the first drug trafficking network on the dark web, certainly was. When users registered on the site, which was launched in 2011, they received a message from the founder, Dread Pirate Roberts, the hero of the film, explaining how the site worked. Protected by Tor, which hides website servers and uses Bitcoin to make payments, users can order all kinds of goods and services without revealing personal information.
The combination of the two technologies, Tor and cryptocurrencies, allowed the creation of something like an Amazon marketplace, dedicated solely to illicit drugs. Users can order packages to their homes anonymously, without having to confront a creepy drug dealer in person. Dread Pirate Roberts was the flamboyant outlaw organizer. Until, of course, in 2013, the Silk Road closed FBI The agents and Mr. Ulbricht, then 29 years old, were arrested in the science fiction section of a San Francisco public library. In 2015, after a four-week trial, he was found guilty of various crimes and sentenced to life in federal prison. That’s where he sat until January 21, when he was pardoned by Donald Trump.
“The scum who worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who participated in arming the modern-day government against me,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. The president, who has considered executing drug dealers, said a life sentence was a “ridiculous” punishment. He was also honest about the reason for the pardon. He said this was a tribute to the American libertarian movement, “which strongly supported me.”
The pardon embodies Trump’s style of transactional politics. He originally promised to commute Mr. Ulbricht’s sentence at the Liberal Party’s national convention last May. In contrast, many party supporters tactically voted for Trump over their nominee in November. I made promises, I kept promises. However, the way liberal voters approached the Ulbricht case is also revealing. As the fearsome hacker Roberts, he represented the kind of internet anarchism whose influence has grown exponentially with the advent of cryptocurrency.
Mr. Ulbricht was arrested for a stupid mistake, where he published his email address using an account he was using to promote the Silk Road. However, in the case against him, prosecutors pointed out that he was also a violent criminal who paid a hitman to take out an informant. What they didn’t reveal was that the supposed killer was actually a DEA operative, Karl Mark Force IV, who was using his knowledge of the case to extort bitcoin from Mr. Ulbricht. The informant and his murder were fake. Force and another client, Sean Bridges, later pleaded guilty to corruption offences.
Mr Ulbricht’s supporters use this to argue that their man has been unfairly punished. According to a comment on the Free Ross website, which operates with the support of his family, Mr Ulbricht is a “peaceful first-time offender”. Or as Angela McArdle, president of the Libertarian National Committee, said after his release, Ulbricht was “a political prisoner” and “one of us.” She said the Silk Road was a emancipatory project, about “economic independence.”
This is a stretch. When Ulbricht was arrested, the government confiscated 144,000 bitcoins he had collected for kickbacks on drug trafficking, worth about $30 million then (and more now). He may not have killed anyone, but Mr. Ulbricht was arguably the first serious crypto criminal. Silk Road was to organized crime what Napster was to the music industry. If he had not been arrested, Mr. Ulbricht would likely be a billionaire by now.
Nowadays, not only are dark web markets still thriving, but Bitcoin is also being used as a means of laundering money for further offline drug trafficking. Ransomware, a type of extortion dominated by Russian crime groups, would be impossible without it. “Cryptocurrencies are the basis of modern cybercrime,” says Jamie McCall of the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank. In “The Princess Bride”, it is revealed that Dread Pirate Roberts is more than a man. The title is passed from one pirate to another. Mr. Ulbricht is free again. But he was no longer the fearsome pirate Roberts; Now they are everywhere. ■
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