Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht is free after spending over a decade behind bars on drug and cybercrime charges — and he’s taking his little prison plant with him.
After newly-minted president Donald Trump pardoned Ulbricht from the life sentence he’d been serving, the former darknet kingpin was seen in a photo posted by his advocates in which he was shown leaving prison wearing a grey sweatsuit and a smile.
In that same photo the 40-year-old who’d been known as “Dread Pirate Roberts” on the dark web marketplace he founded was also seen holding his effects in a netted bag and a small potted plant — a human touch to Ulbricht’s larger-than-life story that transcends left-right politics.
Speaking of that plant, it seems that Ulbricht made references to a green thumb a few times during the time he served on his double life sentences, with an additional 40 years tacked on to boot.
After starting a Twitter account in 2018 that involved him dictating tweets to outsiders via phone call, Ulbricht would periodically relay missives from his imprisoned life to his dedicated followers. In one such communique from 2022, he shared an animation he’d made that featured a small houseplant that resembles the one he was seen leaving prison with.
As he explained in the post, Ulbricht would not end up being able to see the animation — which he ended up selling for a whopping 11.6 Bitcoin, which was worth roughly $1.2 million at the time of its sale — himself.
On more than one occasion in 2018 and 2019, the Silk Road mastermind also made reference on his Twitter account to an apple plant he grew in wet tissue from leftover seeds. He named the plant “SHUbert” after the “Special Housing Unit” where he claimed to have served over 100 days in solitary confinement — though unfortunately, that plant didn’t make it out with him.
Because this is a crypto-infused story, it wouldn’t be complete without someone making a meme coin for the plant called, fittingly, $ROSSPLANT.
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