He went by the pseudonym dread Pirate Roberts, after the character in the movie of the Princess Bride. He ran a multimillion dollar online black market where people bought drugs, hacking tools, and false identification. Now Ross William Albrich, the thirty three year old founder of the Silk Road Internet bazaar, is looking at a lifetime in prison after a federal appeals court upheld his conviction for drug trafficking and other
other crimes. It was a three nothing decision, but it took a hundred and thirty nine pages, and along the way the court question the wisdom of such harsh sentences. With us to talk about it is Bloomberg News as reporter reporter in the very busy New York Federal court House, Bob van Voris, Bob, thank you for joining us. Um So, drug dealers with no criminal history don't normally get such
long sentences. What was it about this case that was different? Well, there were a lot of factors that the sentencing judge, Katherine Forrest in Manhattan pointed to in sentencing him to life. Among other things, Ross William albrickt uh tried to arrange for the murders of five people. Uh. Now these were online people, people using aliases and uh in a sort of house of mirrors kind of effect. The police weren't
able to figure out whether anybody actually was killed. They think that probably none of these murders were carried out. But in any case, Albrick paid sifty thousand dollars to put out contracts on people who were trying who were threatening to expose him and to expose other people on the On the site, Bob You wrote that the Circuit of Judges the panel showed empathy for his claim that the sentence is too harsh, but said it had to
follow rules. And Gerald Lynch said, it's very possible that at some future point will come to regard these sees as tragic mistakes, which is the sentencing laws. But the judge had leeway. Don't trial judges have leeway with the sentencing rules. Some judges, like Judge Jed Raikoff, don't believe in maxing out all defendants under the federal sentencing guidelines. That's exactly right, and Judge Lynch on the Courts of Appeals has written about this in the past. He has
been skeptical. He was the author of the hundred and thirty nine paid opinion, and he in the past has been skeptical of using the criminal law to address drug use and drug trafficking and suggested that maybe this is not the best approach, and certainly the extreme sentences handed down to people who use and sell drugs maybe is
not wise, but that's the law right now. And the judge, the sentencing judge said Forrest under the law, had a great deal of discretion and uh imposed the maximum of life against against Albert, who's thirty three years old and faced a very very long time in prison. Bob prosecutors offered evidence of six overdose deaths linked to people linked to people who are using silk road and all objected to that at at trial. How if at all, did that factor into the appeals court decision that Judge Force
took into account. But the appeals court found that even without that evidence, the the judge's sentence was based primarily on the traffic, the drug trafficking, and the conspiracy allegations and the fact that, as I said, he tried to have five people murdered. Uh, you know, even though those people uh ended up not being killed. Uh. He certainly
tried to try to have that accomplished. Bob Albrick could not tell jurors at his trial that two former federal agents stole money from his online accounts while investigating Silk Road. Why is in government misconduct and corruption during an investigation, whether it affects it or not, something a jury should be allowed to consider. Well, this is another aspect of that, this sort of online house of mirrors. There were two
agents who were involved in the investigation. They were down in Baltimore, a d e A agent and a secret service agent. They were online trying to uh fool Albrecht h Pirate Roberts uh into thinking that they were other people, using aliases of people who were already cooperating with the investigation UM as part of this, as part of the online anonymity of investigating this anonymous dread pirate Roberts, these two crooked agents use that as covered to steal hundreds
of thousands of dollars in bitcoin UM. They were eventually caught and played guilty. The Court of Appeals ruled that this really had nothing to do with Albrick's guilt or innocence, and this was kind of a side even though they were very clearly, uh, you know, illegal acts by the by the investigators. Bob, We're gonna have to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us on Bloomberg Law. Talking about Ross William Albrick, otherwise known as dread Pirate Roberts.
He is the thirty three year old founder of the Silk Road Internet bazaar, which was used to buy drugs, and he is now looking at a life sentence in prison, which was upheld by federal appeals court