He also hired hitmen to kill 6 people....
Quote:
The defense’s arguments about Ulbricht’s character and his idealistic motives were also undercut by accusations that Ulbricht had paid for the murder of six people, including a potential informant and a blackmailer. Those accusations never became formal charges in Ulbricht’s case—five out of six of the murder-for-hires appear to have been part of a lucrative scam targeting Ulbricht, with no actual victims.
But those murder accusations nonetheless deeply colored Ulbricht’s trial, and strongly influenced his sentence. “I find there is ample and unambiguous evidence that [Ulbricht] commissioned five murders to protect his commercial enterprise,” Forrest said, leaving out one alleged attempted murder for which Ulbricht was charged in a different case.
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A life sentence seems pretty fair in this case and in line with similar convictions.