Guilty verdict rendered in Silk Road drug case

NEW YORK – A Manhattan federal court jury Wednesday convicted a San Francisco man of running the encrypted drug website Silk Road in a closely watched test of the government’s ability to prosecute cases involving new digital tools designed to make law-breaking untraceable.

Ross Ulbricht, 30, was accused of hosting the multimillion-dollar black market under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts” and using digital bitcoin currency and a hidden part of the Internet – the so-called dark Web – to assure anonymity.

Jurors deliberated just 3 1/2 hours before finding him guilty of drug trafficking, running a criminal enterprise and conspiracy. Ulbricht, jailed since his 2013 arrest, could get up to life in prison at his May 15 sentencing, and faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said the verdict should send a “clear message” to those who operate online criminal enterprises. “The supposed anonymity of the dark Web is not a protective shield from arrest and prosecution,” he said.

Although Ulbricht was arrested with a laptop signed on as Dread Pirate Roberts, his defense team argued he was the victim of an elaborate online frame-up who started the site as a libertarian experiment in open markets, sold it to others and then was convicted based on actions of a pseudonym that others had controlled.

“One of the problems is the possibility that any one of us will be judged by things for which there is no attribution in real life,” defense lawyer Josh Dratel said. He said an appeal was likely.

Prosecutors contend, from 2011-13, Silk Road hosted as much as $1 billion in sales of items ranging from marijuana, cocaine and opioids to false IDs and hacking services.