Ross Ulbricht
American founder of Silk Road darknet market
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| January 21 2025 | U.S. President Donald Trump granted Ross Ulbricht a full and unconditional presidential pardon during a Truth Social post, referencing support from the Libertarian Movement and criticizing his original conviction. |
| January 21 2025 | Ulbricht was released from a federal prison in Arizona on the same evening as his pardon. Social media photos documented his reunion with his wife and family. |
| January 21 2025 | U.S. President Donald Trump granted Ross Ulbricht a full and unconditional presidential pardon, fulfilling a promise made at the Libertarian Party National Convention during the 2024 United States presidential election. |
| January 21 2025 | U.S. President Donald Trump grants Ross Ulbricht a full and unconditional pardon, ending his imprisonment. |
| 2024 | Clemency for Ross Ulbricht became a significant voting concern among many cryptocurrency supporters, as reported by Wired magazine. |
| November 2024 | The 2024 Libertarian candidate for president, Chase Oliver, expressed his support for commuting Ross Ulbricht's sentence and stated he would grant him a full pardon if elected. |
| June 2024 | Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a promise to pardon Ross Ulbricht if elected. |
| May 2024 | Presidential candidate Donald Trump announced that if re-elected President, he would commute Ulbricht's sentence on his first day in office. |
| May 2022 | Libertarian Republican Congressman Thomas Massie called for a commutation of Ross Ulbricht's conviction. |
| 2021 | In 2021, Ross Ulbricht's prosecutors and defense reached an agreement for Ulbricht to relinquish ownership of a newly discovered fund of 50,676 Bitcoin, which was seized from a hacker in November 2021. This Bitcoin, worth nearly $3.4 billion, had originally been stolen from Silk Road in 2013, and Ulbricht had been unable to recover it. |
| 2021 | The U.S. government traced and seized the stolen Bitcoin from Silk Road. Ulbricht and the government decided that this fund would be used to pay off Ulbricht's $183 million debt in his criminal case, with the Department of Justice taking custody of the Bitcoin. |
| December 2021 | Ulbricht's family auctioned a collection of his writings and artwork as an NFT, which was purchased by FreeRossDAO for 1,442 Ethereum, valued at approximately $6.27 million. |
| February 19 2021 | The film 'Silk Road' was released, directed by Tiller Russell, and it follows Ulbricht's creation of the Silk Road website and the subsequent investigations by the FBI and DEA. Ulbricht is portrayed by actor Nick Robinson. |
| June 28 2018 | The U.S. Supreme Court denied Ulbricht's petition for certiorari, choosing not to consider his appeal. |
| 2017 | Appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit are unsuccessful. |
| 2017 | Ulbricht's mother, Lyn, relocated to Colorado to facilitate regular prison visits to her son. |
| 2017 | The documentary 'Silk Road—Drugs, Death and the Dark Web' was shown on UK television as part of the BBC Storyville documentary series, covering the FBI operation to track down Ulbricht and close Silk Road. |
| December 2017 | Ulbricht filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking a review of his evidentiary and sentencing issues. |
| July 2017 | In July 2017, Ross Ulbricht was transferred to USP Florence High, where he continued to serve his sentence following his conviction. |
| May 2017 | The Second Circuit upheld Ulbricht's conviction and sentence, issuing a 139-page opinion affirming the previous district court's decisions. |
| October 2016 | Oral arguments in Ulbricht's appeal were heard at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. |
| January 2016 | Ross Ulbricht appealed his conviction and sentence to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, claiming that the prosecution illegally withheld evidence related to the investigation of Silk Road. |
| 2015 | The documentary 'Deep Web' was released, chronicling events surrounding Silk Road, bitcoin, and the politics of the dark web, including Ulbricht's trial. |
| May 29 2015 | Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to double life imprisonment plus 40 years, without the possibility of parole, and ordered to pay approximately $183 million in restitution. |
| February 4 2015 | Ulbricht was convicted on all counts after a jury trial. |
| January 2015 | The trial of Ross Ulbricht began. |
| December 17 2014 | A plea deal involving a mandatory minimum of 10 years was discussed at the final pretrial conference, although Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Howard asserted that no plea offer was ever conveyed to Ulbricht's counsel. |
| August 21 2014 | A superseding indictment added three additional charges against Ulbricht. |
| February 4 2014 | Ross Ulbricht was charged with engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, narcotics conspiracy, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to commit computer hacking. |
| 2013 | Bitcoin worth 50,676 were originally stolen from Silk Road, which Ulbricht had been unsuccessfully trying to reclaim. |
| 2013 | Ross Ulbricht's relationship with Julia Vie ends after five years together. |
| October 1 2013 | Ross Ulbricht was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public Library, where he was accused of being the 'mastermind' behind the Silk Road site. |
| June 2013 | In mid-2013, Gary Alford, an investigator with the Internal Revenue Service, connected Ulbricht to the username 'Dread Pirate Roberts' by linking the early username 'altoid' used by Ulbricht on Silk Road to his forum posts that included his email address and full name. |
| 2011 | Ross Ulbricht created and began operating the darknet market website Silk Road, facilitating the sale of narcotics and other illegal products and services. |
| March 2011 | Ulbricht continued as CEO of Good Wagon Books after Palmertree's departure, operating the business until March 2011. |
| 2010 | Ross Ulbricht partnered with friend Donny Palmertree to establish Good Wagon Books, an online used book selling business. |
This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Ross Ulbricht, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.