NEW YORK, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- Ross Ulbricht, founder of the online drug site Silk Road, was convicted Wednesday of drug trafficking, money laundering and other crimes.
Ulbricht, 30, faces life in federal prison when he is sentenced. Jurors in U.S. District Court in Manhattan deliberated for less than four hours before reaching their verdict.
"Of course there will be an appeal," his lawyer, Josh Dratel, said.
Silk Road brought together buyers and sellers of drugs, with anonymous transactions paid in bitcoin, prosecutors said. Ulbricht, they said, began planning for the site in 2009, launched it in 2011 and ran it under the name Dread Pirate Roberts until it was shut down on Oct. 1, 2013. It had 12 employees, all of them anonymous.
Related
Ulbricht, who showed little emotion, got some support after the verdict.
"Ross is a hero," a man called from the back of the courtroom.
During the trial, prosecutors showed jurors how Silk Road operated and how it was taken down. Investigators, starting with clues provided by a Google search, eventually linked Ulbricht's personal email with Dread Pirate Roberts.
Ulbricht was arrested in a public library in San Francisco where he was working on a laptop. He was engaged, as Dread Pirate, in an online chat with an employee he did not realize was a government agent.
"Criminals make mistakes all the time," Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Howard told the jury Tuesday. "And there are plenty of opportunities to make mistakes when you're running a massive online criminal enterprise...which is processing hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal transactions."
