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When the coins are eventually sold and that sum is added to the US treasury, it will easily cover Ulbricht's restitution, with billions of dollars to spare. That resulted in the bitcoins appreciating even more, to nearly $3 billion at current exchange rates.

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In the time since that seizure, however, court records show that the Justice Department has fought off a series of seemingly frivolous claims to the bitcoins, which prevented it from immediately selling off the coins as it does with other seized cryptocurrency. 'To not coordinate with the prosecuting authority that obtained the judgement is extremely unorthodox.' 'This resolution was not coordinated with SDNY,' one former Justice Department staffer told WIRED. In a bizarre twist, the agreement to erase Ulbricht's restitution payments appears to have been made without the involvement-or even the knowledge-of prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, the Justice Department attorneys who handled Ulbricht's case. (Ulbricht is pursuing a 'habeas petition' in federal court that would cancel his 2015 sentence based on an argument that he received ineffective representation from his attorneys.)

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And if his sentence is eventually commuted, as his supporters and a years-long Free Ross campaign have petitioned for since even before his sentencing, he would reenter the world as a free man without hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. But the repayment of his restitution could mean that he's able to earn money in prison to share with family or friends without it being seized or garnished to pay his debts-or even keep any previously unknown caches of bitcoins that he may possess, so long as they aren't tied to the Silk Road or other criminal sources. He has already served eight years of that sentence at jails in New York and penitentiaries in Colorado and Arizona.

Ulbricht, of course, still faces life in prison. The Department of Justice didn't respond to WIRED's request for comment.

The document, filed in February of 2021, is signed by both Ulbricht and David Countryman, a prosecutor in the asset forfeiture unit of the US Attorney's office for the Northern District of California. 'The parties agree that the net proceeds realized from the sale of the forfeited pursuant to this agreement shall be credited toward any unpaid balance of the Money Judgment,' reads a court filing from last year, using the phrase 'money judgment' to refer to Ulbricht's 2015 restitution order. Despite the fact that the more recently unearthed stash of bitcoins-now worth billions of dollars-was itself criminal proceeds, the Justice Department appears to have made a deal with Ulbricht to avoid any claim he might have made to the money: In exchange for Ulbricht's agreement to waive any ownership he might have of the bitcoins, a portion of them will be used to pay off his restitution in its entirety. Last year, prosecutors quietly signed an agreement with Ulbricht stipulating that a portion of a newfound trove of Silk Road bitcoins, seized from an unnamed hacker, will be used to cancel out the more than $183 million in restitution Ulbricht was ordered to pay as part of his 2015 sentence, a number calculated from the total illegal sales of the Silk Road based on exchange rates at the time of each transaction.

But a little over a year ago, it appears Ulbricht finally got a break of a different kind: The nine-figure debt he owed to the US government as part of his sentence will be erased-all thanks to the fortuitous hoarding of a hacker who'd stolen a massive trove of bitcoins from his market. His appeal was denied, as was the pardon he sought from President Trump. In 2015, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Ross Ulbricht, the convicted creator of the legendary Silk Road dark web market for drugs, has never gotten much mercy from the US legal system.