Meet Silk Road’s Ross Ulbricht, just pardoned by Donald Trump: the Texan physics major was serving life in prison for running the illegal drug marketplace, and known as Dread Pirate Roberts online

On the first day of Donald Trump’s second presidency, the Maga leader officially pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, as he had promised at the Libertarian National Convention in May last year. Silk Road was an online marketplace on the dark web that traded illegal drugs using bitcoin. However, Ulbricht – who went by the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts – as in the Princess Bride character, was also accused of conspiring to launder money, selling hacking equipment and stolen identity documents and soliciting contract killing, although no evidence was found to suggest any murder-for-hire was actually committed.

Speaking about the pardon, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, “The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponisation of government against me.” He went on to denounce his sentence, which would have seen him serve 40 years on top of two life sentences.

So, who is Ross Ulbricht?

What’s his background?

Ross Ulbricht grew up in Austin, Texas. Per Wired, he attended West Ridge Middle School and was a Boy Scout, progressing up to the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest rank attainable. He graduated from secondary school with a reputation for being “carefree but also caring”. When he wasn’t high on marijuana, he was getting high scores on his tests, which earned him a scholarship to the University of Texas.

He studied science

According to Wired, Ulbricht studied physics at the University of Texas and majored in the subject. His academic performance landed him another scholarship, this time at The Pennsylvania State University. At Penn State, he got his master’s in materials science and engineering.