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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.
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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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