Silk Road Dread Pirate Roberts, aka Ross Ulbricht, jailed for internet drugs

THE mastermind behind the underground ‘Silk Road’ website which enabled drug-dealers around the world to reach new customers — Ross Ulbricht — has been jailed.

THE mastermind behind the underground ‘Silk Road’ website which enabled drug-dealers around the world to reach new customers has been jailed.

“Dread Pirate Roberts” — otherwise known as Ross William Ulbricht — was convicted last night on seven drug and conspiracy counts.

The jury’s verdict in a Manhattan US federal court came after little more than three hours of deliberations.

Prosecutors had urged jurors to follow Ulbricht’s “digital fingerprints.”

The government said drug dealing made up nearly all of Silk Road’s sales during its nearly three years in business, which ended with Ulbricht’s October 2013 arrest.

Prosecutors also discounted defence claims that Ulbricht was framed by others in a murky internet world where nothing is what it seems.

Jailed .... Ross Ulbricht in a Manhattan federal court illustration. Source: AFP

Prosecutors said Ulbricht enabled more than 1 million drug deals on Silk Road and earned about $US18 million in the controversial digital bitcoin currency.

Sales of illegal drugs of every type were delivered through the website, representing at least $US180 million in sales, they said.

Ulbricht had several supporters among the spectators.

When the verdict was announced, his father dropped his head in his hands.

Lyn Ulbricht, his mother, exited the courtroom complaining that the defence had been barred from putting on evidence that would help her son.

The government said the fallacy of Ulbricht’s promise of anonymity in the dark corners of the internet as a reason for customers to peddle their illegal merchandise was exposed by numerous trial witnesses, including the first: Homeland Security Agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan.

Super store ... Screen grabs from the “dark web” Silk Road dug-sale website. Source: Mark Cranitch.

He testified that shipments originating on the website first came to his attention in June 2011 when X-rays and canine detection dogs at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport turned up envelopes from the Netherlands containing ecstasy pills wrapped in vacuum seal and foil.

Soon, the drugs were being detected in many countries.

By late September, Der-Yeghiayan said he learned about Silk Road and began infiltrating it, taking over staff member accounts each time one was arrested or agreed to cooperate.

The agent testified that the website’s online boss went by the alias Dread Pirate Roberts, a reference to the swashbuckling character in “The Princess Bride,”.

Convicted ... Ross Ulbricht, pictured here with his sister Cally in Sydney in 2011, has been jailed for his role in establishing the Silk Road website. Source: Facebook.

Prosecutors presented numerous instant message conversations involving a person using that persona.

During closing arguments earlier this week, defence attorney Joshua Dratel said his client quit Silk Road soon after creating it to sell anything on the internet and before the website was overrun by drug dealers.

But Assistant US Attorney Serrin Turner said Ulbricht operated the site from beginning to end and was willing to do anything to protect it.

He cited emails that he said showed Ulbricht was willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to kill as many as five people he thought were threats to his operation.

Ulbricht faced no murder charges in New York, but still awaits trial in Baltimore in a murder-to-hire plot.

His sentencing in New York is scheduled for May 15, and some of the charges carry a maximum of life in prison.