The Sentenced Life of Ross Ulbrich
An interview with Lyn Ulbricht
By Núria Calzada
We spoke with Lyn Ulbricht (New York, 1949), a remarkably courageous mother who chose to change the course of her life to defend her son's reputation and fight for his freedom. Ross W. Ulbricht, now 38, is serving a double life sentence in a maximum-security prison in Tucson for founding Silk Road, the first substance-focused cryptomarket that operated on the deep web from 2011 to 2013.
Gone is that time of Pirate Roberts, the avatar by which he was known on the Deep Web. Ross Ulbricht now enters his tenth year in prison with exemplary behavior. He has spent doing various educational programs and studying psychology, but also teaching other prisoners science, mathematics and yoga, among many other things. Meanwhile, Lyn has not wasted any time either and, at her age, she has learned by leaps and bounds about sometimes completely new topics such as bitcoin, the Deep Web or encryption systems, and also about drug policies, laws and civil rights, or how to manage social networks and deal with the media.
Despite many obstacles and fewer and fewer options, Lyn does not give up and is relentless in her determination to help her son. Both are committed to helping others serving time in the United States: Lyn, through Mothers Against Cruel Sentences, an organization that has just been created to raise awareness of the cruelty of life imprisonment; Ross, through Art4Giving, a fund financed by auctioning his artwork as an NFT, which aims to help prisoners and their families.
How is Ross doing right now?
It's very hard being in prison for so long, but I'd say he's doing the best he can. He spends a lot of his time helping other prisoners. Over the years he has been a mentor, tutor and leader of several classes. He also helps his fellow inmates to get their high school diploma or to gain access to university courses. He is also currently working on a suicide prevention project. So, despite the circumstances, she's doing well. Also, now we don't have to have a plastic sheet between us when we visit him like we did in the COVID days. We still have to wear masks, but at least we can hug each other when he comes in and when he leaves. Little things like this mean a lot.
Do you get to visit him often?
During COVID we couldn't visit him and I barely saw him once in two years. When the pandemic passed, we could see him every two weeks and now every week, but I just moved to Florida, so I can't visit him weekly. Different people visit him, mostly family members.The fact that I now live in Florida doesn't help to be able to visit him more often but here, in a big city, I can do more for him than in Tucson, networking with people and getting the word out about him.
You are known for being Ross Ulbricht's mother, but I want to know who Lynn Ulbricht is and what your life was like up until the time of Pirate Roberts.
I was born and raised in a suburb of New York City. We also lived in Switzerland for a year. I studied journalism at the University of Missouri. I later lived in California for a while and worked as a public relations and copywriter. Then I moved to Austin, Texas, with my husband and we raised our children there. We were both entrepreneurs. I had a couple of businesses and also worked as a freelance writer. We own a vacation rental property in Costa Rica that my husband built. So we worked a lot, but we had a pretty easy life to get our kids ahead. Both Ross and his sister received a good education. Things were going pretty well until Ross was arrested. It was very shocking because Ross was not a problem child at all, he had been an excellent student and never gave us any trouble.
Media manipulation
And overnight you went from having an anonymous life to being the focus of media attention around the world. As a journalist, how do you live this experience?
We found out that Ross had been arrested through a phone call from a Reuters reporter. When he told us what he was accused of, we were shocked. But what are you talking about? Ross? It's not possible. This is crazy! I turned on the TV and there was George Stephanopoulos saying that the “guy” was arrested. But, in America, don't we have trials before we convict someone? Suddenly, we had a bunch of reporters outside the house taking pictures. Neighbors were coming out to ask what was going on. The phones were ringing off the hook and we were getting lots of e-mails. Friends were also coming over to the house to find out what was going on. It was like a tidal wave hit our family, a tsunami really, and we were paddling around trying not to drown. It was so shocking... My life has never been the same since. And so I decided the next day, when the lies about Ross continued, portraying him as someone terrible and very violent. I remember waking up and just thinking this: they are lying about my son and I have to do something. So I contacted a friend of Ross's who suggested I launch a website about who Ross was and who he wasn't. Just what we needed! I put together a list of who Ross is and who he isn't and that was the start of it all.
And then came the trial.
Earlier they moved Ross to New York, which I questioned because he was arrested in California and it was a change of venue. It seems that the Southern District of New York wanted the case. When I visited him in the New York jail I began to realize a lot of things. For example, the bail hearing was in New York City and the prosecutor ambushed our lawyer by saying Ross had committed contract killings. We wondered where those accusations were coming from. In fact, they were accusations that two months later were not presented at trial. So it's something they told the press, but without any proof. And there, I also began to see how the media operated: they were already portraying him as guilty. I listened to them, but they completely distorted my words. They would take a piece of a sentence, put it together with another and the sentence would take on a totally different meaning. I have become skeptical. I wouldn't say it with all the media, but I would say with most of them, because they don't seem to care about the actual facts. It's as if they echo each other. Just another example, Silk Road was said to be a billion dollar website, but official government data estimated that, including even legal assets, the value amounted to $183 million. There's a big difference between $183 million and a billion! But it's much more exciting to say more than a billion and sometimes I've even heard two billion. It's absurd. It's clickbait, like floor murder. So I'm very skeptical and somewhat fearful of a lot of media because I feel that sometimes they use me for their interest and then distort and misrepresent the whole thing. I've pretty much walked away and turned away from a lot of major media outlets because I don't trust them. Something I have learned through trial and error.
So, as a journalist, you recognize the bad practices or strategies of your profession.
I certainly do. For example, they approach it with assurances that it will help Ross, but it ends up hurting him. In fact, that's what happened in the book American Kingpin. Its author, Nick Bilton, interviewed Ross's ex-girlfriend Julia. I was with her a few days ago and she commented that she agreed to do it because he told her it would help Ross, but he lied and misrepresented much of what she said. On another occasion, a journalist from Rolling Stone magazine convinced me on the grounds that he was going to do it anyway, and if I didn't participate, our version wouldn't appear. So I agreed, but he also completely distorted my words. It was horrible. Over the years, I have agreed to interviews and provided photos and information to complete the story. But it's over. I don't want to be used to hurt my son—never again. It's a lesson I've had to learn the hard way.
Corrupt DEA agents
You have always claimed that the multi-week trial in Manhattan for the Southern District of New York was not fair.
I would say the key is that there were two corrupt agents who had free access to the Silk Road. They stole a lot of money from vendors and were sentenced to prison. However, the jury was not allowed to know about them. Maybe the jury, if they had known, might have thought that these two corrupt guys maybe tampered with evidence because they could act under different aliases. These agents could have tainted any evidence, but the jury didn't have that crucial information and they charged Ross with everything. The charges for the murders, including that of Curtis Greene, who was the only alleged victim, were based on the evidence presented by Carl Force, one of the corrupt DEA agents. So we are supposed to take the word of a demonstrably corrupt agent who committed a murder for hire. Even the alleged victim, Curtis Green, didn't believe it was Ross. Curtis is in favor of Ross getting out of prison and also commented to me that Nick Bilton misrepresented his role in American Kingpin.
There were other irregularities in the trial, weren't there?
In addition to the jury not being allowed to know the role of these agents in the case, it was also discovered that, while Ross was in prison, someone logged on to Silk Road under the identity of Dread Pirate Roberts. So there was more than one person behind this identity. Otherwise, I don't see how a person who is not even a programmer could do it alone. In any case, even though the evidence pointed to more than one person being involved, it was taken for granted that Ross was the culprit behind it all.
One of the most critical and controversial aspects of the case is how they got to the Silk Road server located in Iceland. Is there any hypothesis, do you think the truth will ever be known?
Good question. I don't know. I know that many experts at the time said that their explanation didn't make sense. The point is that the case is closed, so I doubt that many of the irregularities will ever come to light. I'm sure there's a lot more to it than we know.
In the end, the Ross’ case goes far beyond drugs and has implications for the rest of society.
Undoubtedly, because it violates principles enshrined in several amendments to our Constitution that set dangerous precedents for the future. For example, there was a violation of the Sixth Amendment, which ensures that an accused person must be tried by a jury. The issue is that the judge determined what she thought was right, but the jury never endorsed this harsh sentence. The judge relied on the argument that Ross planned a murder for hire, something that was never proven, never brought to court, and never ruled on by a jury, which is a violation of the Sixth Amendment.
We already brought the case before the Supreme Court as a Fourth Amendment violation, which deals with how the search and seizure of Silk Road was conducted. The Supreme Court receives ten thousand petitions a year and the case passed the first phase, which gave us a lot of hope. We had one of the best lawyers in the country on the subject and he didn't do it for a large amount of money, but because he really thought it was an important case. It looked like we had a great opportunity in front of us, but ultimately they turned it down. It was devastating because I was hoping they would at least reduce the sentence. At that point we were out of the courts, but there was still another judicial possibility in the Civil Court, the habeas corpus petition, which they also denied us recently.
A harsher sentence than Chapo's
And then there is the harshness of the sentence.
Yes, because in addition to the Fourth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution, the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from imposing unusual and cruel punishments, also comes into question. Many people are perplexed when they hear about the Ross case. It is an extremely harsh sentence, which sets a terrible precedent for others. We are currently investigating it, but Ross may be the only or one of the few cases to receive a life sentence for a non-violent first offense. Generally, if you are a first time offender and it is non-violent, you don't get a life sentence without parole or, as Ross calls it, a death sentence as opposed to a life sentence. In any case, we don't want to keep fighting the government and prefer to focus on Ross and all that he is doing from prison.
And what are the chances that his fate will change?
At the moment, the only way for Ross's sentence to at least be corrected is for the president of the United States to sign a commutation of the sentence, which does not mean a pardon, but can reduce the sentence. That's why we have the petition on Change and a website that collects all the shows of support. We also talk to legislators, because we want to convince whoever the president is. The president has the power to sign a piece of paper and release him. Ross has been in prison for many years with people whose lives have been destroyed by drugs and he regrets what he did. While he didn't force anyone to do anything they didn't want to do, by creating the platform he was part of the system that facilitated the buying and selling of drugs, something he regrets.
However, you can also buy drugs via WhatsApp, Signal, Snapchat or other platforms. What makes them different from the Silk Road?
Not only that. Facebook appeared before Congress and it turned out that more drugs were sold through Facebook in six months than all of Silk Road. Cyanide was available for purchase on Amazon until 2013 when a teenage girl bought it to commit suicide. Neither Zuckerberg nor Bezos were held accountable for it. It is a great injustice.
On the other hand, Ross's sentence is disproportionate in relation to other Silk Road cases, but also in relation to other sentences for crimes, in these violent cases, such as that of police officer Derek Chauvin, sentenced to twenty-two years for the murder of George Floyd. Why was it such a harsh sentence?
It's even harsher than Chapo's sentence! Of course, a life sentence is still a life sentence, but Chapo got one and Ross got two. One of the reasons is that the judge who handled the case, Katherine Forrest, was known for her particularly harsh sentences and, personally, I'm not so sure she was chosen at random. It is striking that they separated it from the rest of the Silk Road cases and put this judge on it. Ross was her fifth life sentence that year - and it was only May! In fact, prosecutors were not recommending life imprisonment. So she certainly played a crucial role. Years later she was admonished by the Court of Appeals for another sentence, and today she is no longer a judge.
Is it true that he was initially offered a ten-year plea deal?
This is another of the lies that Nick Bilton spread in Vanity Fair. If it was true, then Ross didn't know about it and his lawyer didn't tell him. So we wanted to believe it was true because there was the possibility of having this plea bargain that we didn't know about. But our lawyer went to court and the prosecutor denied it. We told Nick Bilton about it, but he insisted it was true and that he wouldn't reveal his sources. He didn't care if a prosecutor disproved it, he wasn't going to retract his statement. If Ross had been offered a ten year sentence he would have taken it.
You mentioned earlier the $183 million as the estimated value of the total sales at Silk Road, a draconian figure they imposed as part of the sentence. How do you deal with a payment of this caliber?
In November 2021 they confiscated the wallet of a hacker who moved thousands of bitcoins from Silk Road to a private wallet in April 2013 and whose value was over three billion dollars. So we made the deal that if Ross didn't claim the stolen money, they could keep it to pay off the debt. That's good news because when Ross gets out he won't owe them any money.
More constructive solutions
Although I have heard you say on several occasions that you are not here to advocate regulation, you do acknowledge the failure of the U.S. war on drugs. Is this something you were already thinking about or did it come up with the Ross case?
The truth is that I didn't think about it. I had a friend arrested years ago who received a mandatory minimum sentence and it didn't seem right to me. Otherwise, I didn't really think about prisons or the war on drugs or anything like that. But it's obvious to me that the war on drugs doesn't work. It fails to curb consumption, it is very costly to taxpayers, and at the same time it has destructive consequences. If drugs were legal, the cartels and all the violence that goes with them would be out of business. Maybe we should try something different. It's something I've thought about from what happened with Ross, but also from knowing so many people who are in jail because of it. Prohibition didn't work with alcohol and they repealed it. And it doesn't work with all other drugs either. Other strategies need to be tried.
In fact, Ross is another paradigmatic example of the failure of the war on drugs. The judge gave him a harsh sentence to discourage others from opening new cryptomarkets and they got the opposite result.
It did not work at all. Actually, after the sentencing there was a huge increase of markets on the darknet. And I want to emphasize the fact that the Silk Road was different from other marketplaces because it was based on the principle of non-violence. That is, voluntary, consensual exchange between two people was allowed as long as it didn't hurt a third person. Things like child pornography or anything to do with children were not allowed. This despite the fact that the media was saying outrageous things, such as that there was human trafficking, including minors. I'm sure on other platforms they don't have these kinds of restrictions, but on Silk Road, they do. And I have it on good authority because Curtis Greene, the same guy who was allegedly a murder-for-hire victim, was an administrator and he told me how he spent hours and hours every day looking for these kinds of things that violated the principles. It wasn't your typical dark net market, but none of this was allowed to be mentioned in court.
As a journalist, what are your thoughts on the media's approach to drugs?
The media is very sensationalist and I rarely see anything that questions the war on drugs, that makes visible different experiences from other countries or proposed solutions. I insist that I am not in favor of drugs, I think they are very destructive and Ross has learned that in prison, but I think the media could talk about more constructive solutions.
In 2020, President Trump considered commuting Ross's sentence before he left office. Why do you think he ultimately didn't?
It was a chaotic time in the U.S. and there were these rumors in the media. We believed them and had high hopes. It was devastating when we found out he didn't.
In early October, President Biden said that no one should be in jail for smoking marijuana and announced that he was going to pardon federal convictions for marijuana possession. Do his statements offer hope?
Yes. Of course no one should go to jail for smoking marijuana. Although a friend of mine at Students for Sensible Drug Policy was telling me that there's actually no one in prison for marijuana possession at the federal level. So it's a step in the right direction, but clearly not enough.
“Based on real events.”
There have been reports, documentaries, books and, in 2021, the Silk Road movie arrived. What did you think of it?
The movie already starts off by saying that it is based on a true story, except when we lie or make things up. It's not really a factual representation. It was clear to me that Ross was going to appear committing the murder for hire because it's the most striking part of the story. And the part about the corrupt agent is not real at all, neither the guy's name nor the motive; it's all made up. But the movie does give a sympathetic portrayal of who Ross is and doesn't caricature him as a monster. I think you end up sympathizing with him as a young man who was very idealistic, who sought to do good and walked away from it. So, even though it's not the real story, it could have been a lot worse.
Last October 1st Ross began his tenth year in prison. During this time there have been many technological developments and innovations; for example, bitcoin was the only cryptocurrency at the time and non-fungible tokens (NFT) did not exist. Actually, at the end of 2021, Ross launched a collection of NFT art that raised six point three million dollars, part of which is going to Art4Giving, a project to help other prisoners. How does he keep up with these developments?
No prisoner has access to the internet, so he keeps informed through articles, newspapers and television, which even publishes the price of bitcoin. Most prisoners do have access to email through an internal prison mail system, not through the internet. But Ross doesn't have that privilege because they must believe he can hack it.
If Ross were tried today, do you think the sentence would be different?
Without a doubt. When Ross was arrested it was a different world, it was nine years ago and very few states had legal marijuana use. And while it's still illegal at the federal level, today we have many more states with legal access. Also, back then bitcoin was thought of as something obscure and scary that no one used. The jury had never even heard of bitcoin and had no idea what it was all about. They would try Ross differently today, especially if it were in California, where he should have been tried.
If a country offered Ross political asylum, could that be a way out?
It is an interesting idea. But it's hard to imagine because he would have to be released first.
In this journey, what has been the most disappointing thing?
I was a patriotic person who trusted our justice system and the values of our Constitution. So I was convinced and confident that we would have a fair trial and that the media would report the matter properly. But it didn't. In the United States as in other countries, there are always things to improve, but I was surprised to discover that the principles of our Constitution have been lost in many areas, and certainly our criminal justice system is one of them. I did not expect that. I have learned some very hard lessons over the years.
Can you recommend a book about drugs?
Well, I actually can’t recommend one. I used to read a lot of books, but now I don’t have time. I do read a lot about the prison system, drug policy, and other topics, but it’s all online.
What’s next?
We’re about to launch the organization Mothers Against Cruel Sentences, with which we aim to give a voice to other mothers and families and raise awareness in society about the cruelty of these sentences. Our founding fathers said that no one should be imprisoned for life if it’s their first non-violent offense. We want to bring attention to this issue, not just for me and for Ross, but for many other prisoners and their families. It’s easy to think they deserve their sentences, but when you hear the stories and understand how it impacts their families—especially the children growing up without their parents—you realize we need to change these laws. I believe society needs to know these terrible life stories to understand what’s happening in our criminal justice system.
And, of course, we’ll continue fighting to get Ross out of prison. We have a clemency petition for the president, which already has over five hundred forty thousand signatures of support. You don’t have to be from the United States to sign it, so I encourage everyone to do so.
https://rossulbricht.medium.com
This content was originally published in Cáñamo Magazine #301 in Spain and is available online in Spanish.
