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

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.

Law enforcement said Ulbricht created the “most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace” on the internet.

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 .)

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.

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.

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.

On his first full day in office Tuesday President Donald Trump continued sweeping actions, including ordering the shuttering of all executive branch diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and ordered all employees working in such offices to be placed on leave.

In continuing a stream of controversial pardons, President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued clemency to two former police officers who were sentenced to prison in connection to death of a Black man in 2020.

Console Wars’ duo Jonah Tulis and Blake J. Harris have conducted more than 60 hours of interviews with Ulbricht, who became a cause célèbre among libertarians and cryptocurrency enthusiasts after being handed two life sentences.