Silk Road founder loses appeal and will serve life in prison • The Curious Technologist

The Silk Road network’s creator Ross Ulbricht vowed to fight his lifetime prison sentence when it was handed down two years ago. But today, the US Second Circuit officially denied his appeal, sending him away for a long, long time.

Under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts,” Ulbricht made continued to operate Silk Road, an underground drug marketplace operating on the dark web. A large-scale federal operation caught Ulbricht and several otherswho testified for reduced sentences. But the case didn’t go smoothly, including two government agents who tried to make away with seized assets: One, Shaun Bridges, tried to steal 20,000 bitcoins (worth $350,000 then and $46 million today) and got a six-year prison sentence. The other agent, Carl Mark Force, was sentenced to 6.5 years for trying to sell Ulbricht information about the Silk Road case itself.