President Donald Trump has pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, an underground website for selling drugs.

Ross Ulbricht was serving a life sentence for creating a site in a shady corner of the internet to sell heroin, cocaine and other illicit substances.

President Trump said he granted the full pardon in honor of Ross Ulbricht's mother "and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly."

Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 for drug trafficking, computer hacking, and money laundering.

The United States president pardoned the founder of the underground illicit drugs marketplace, as part of a raft of sweeping announcements during the first two days of his new administration.

President Donald Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the drug marketplace Silk Road who is revered by many cryptocurrency enthusiasts and libertarians. “I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbright to let her know,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, misspelling Ulbricht’s name.

Ulbricht, 40, was about 10 years into his life sentence for helming an online black market where drug dealers, money launderers, and traffickers used bitcoins to mask more than $214 million in illicit trades. (Ars thoroughly documented the Silk Road saga here .)

Social media slams Donald Trump for giving Silk Road operator and notorious drug dealer Ross Ulbricht an unconditional pardon.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison for running an underground online marketplace where drug dealers and others conducted more than $200 million in illicit trade using bitcoin.

Donald Trump has granted a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the founder of online drug marketplace Silk Road who became a hero for America’s libertarian movement.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening said he issued a full and unconditional pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the dark web Silk Road marketplace for illicit drugs.

In 2015, a 31-year-old yoga enthusiast from Austin named Ross Ulbricht was found guilty of being the online drug kingpin “Dread Pirate Roberts.” Convicted on 7 counts, the judge sentenced him to life in prison. Trump pardoned Ulbricht on Tuesday and now he’s a free man after more than 10 years in custody.