Ross Ulbricht
American cybercriminal founder of Silk Road
Summary
Ross William Ulbricht is an American cybercriminal who created and operated Silk Road, the first modern darknet market, from 2011 until his arrest in 2013. Silk Road was an online marketplace that facilitated the trade in narcotics and other illegal products and services. Sales were anonymous, using bitcoin. It operated as a hidden service on the Tor network. Ulbricht ran the site under the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts" after the fictional character from The Princess Bride.
Originally created by Matty.007
12/20/2013, 8:58:39 PM
Modified
5/21/2026, 8:29:26 PM
Recent revisions
attempt to improve clarity
/* Personal life */ baby announcement
[[User:PrimeBOT/30|Task 30]]: infobox cleanup following [[Template_talk:Infobox_person#Deprecate_&_clean_up_conflicting_parameters|a discussion]]
Rescued 1 archive link; Move 1 url. [[User:GreenC/WaybackMedic_2.5|Wayback Medic 2.5]] per [[WP:URLREQ#money.cnn.com]]
/* Restitution paid */ removed duplicated billion
50,676 bitcoin is reasonably not 5.35$
/* Presidential pardon and release */ link
/* Conviction and sentence */ Finish up rewriting the inflation-adjusted restitution sentence. I found an example in the writeup for the Inflation template.
/* Conviction and sentence */ A fix for the inflation-adjusted megabucks sentence. Still not ideal, but I think an improvement.
Rescuing orphaned refs ("auto" from rev 1349842106)
rv. more edits by block-evading editor per [[WP:BLOCKEVADE]]
rv. more edits by block-evading editor per [[WP:BLOCKEVADE]]
rv. more edits by block-evading editor per [[WP:BLOCKEVADE]]
rv. edits by block-evading editor per [[WP:BLOCKEVADE]]
Removed vague and undue-weight attribution of sentencing criticism.
Currency
Reverted [[WP:AGF|good faith]] edits by [[Special:Contributions/~2026-22175-78|~2026-22175-78]] ([[User talk:~2026-22175-78|talk]]): See [[WP:COMMONNAME]]
/* top */ "Cybercriminal" seems more specific to his notability than "criminal".
