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Ross
Ulbricht, 31, faces up to life in prison after a federal jury in
Manhattan found him guilty in February of charges including
conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, money laundering and
computer hacking.
Prosecutors are seeking a sentence "substantially above" the
20-year mandatory minimum that U.S. District Judge Katherine
Forrest must impose on Ulbricht, who admitted to creating Silk
Road but denied wrongdoing.
Ulbricht is expected to appeal his conviction. His lawyer
declined comment ahead of sentencing.
Silk Road operated for more than two years, allowing users to
anonymously buy drugs and other illicit goods and generating
over $214 million in sales in the process, prosecutors said.
The online black market was shutdown in October 2013, when
authorities seized the website and arrested Ulbricht at a San
Francisco website.
Prosecutors said Ulbricht operated the website under the alias
Dread Pirate Roberts, a reference to a character in the 1987
movie "The Princess Bride."
The website relied on the so-called Tor network, which lets
users communicate anonymously, and accepted bitcoin as payment,
which prosecutors said allowed users to conceal their identities
and locations.
Prosecutors said Ulbricht, who grew up in Austin, Texas, took
extreme steps to protect Silk Road, soliciting the murders of
several people who posed a threat. No evidence exists the
murders were carried out.
At trial, Joshua Dratel, his lawyer, said Ulbricht had indeed
created what he intended as a "freewheeling, free market site"
where all but a few harmful items could be sold.
Dratel said Ulbricht handed off the website to others after it
became too stressful, and was lured back toward its end to
become the "fall guy" for its true operators.
In a letter filed in court last week, Ulbricht urged Judge
Forrest in sentencing him to leave a "small light at the end of
the tunnel" and said he recognized Silk Road was a "very naive
and costly idea."
"In creating Silk Road, I ruined my life and destroyed my
future," he wrote.
The case is U.S. v. Ulbricht, U.S. District Court, Southern
District of New York, No. 13-06919.
(Editing by Andre Grenon)
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