Kingpin Goes Down

Silk Road drug kingpin and UT Dallas alum faces life in prison after guilty verdict

Ross Ulbricht, founder of the online narcotics empire Silk Road and University of Texas at Dallas alum, was found guilty on seven charges, including drug and money-laundering conspiracies and a continuing criminal enterprise statute normally reserved for mob and drug cartel leaders. It took a Manhattan jury only a few hours to reach its verdict.

The Austin native is facing a minimum of 30 years in prison and could receive a life sentence after the jury convicted him of being the Dread Pirate Roberts, the mastermind of Silk Road, a now-defunct site that allowed users to buy and sell drugs ranging from weed to heroin and everything in between. Ulbricht was arrested in October 2013 at a San Francisco library.

The continuing criminal enterprise charge is often referred to as “The Kingpin Statute” and has been used again Chicago gangster Larry Hoover and Oakland-based ’80s drug lord Felix “The Cat” Mitchell. It carries a minimum 20-year sentence and a maximum of life imprisonment.

Ulbricht’s lead attorney, Joshua Dratel, argued that although Ulbricht was the creator of the Silk Road under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts, he had long passed the site on to others who were now attempting to frame him.

According to Wired, the state’s evidence against the 30-year-old was overwhelming. For one, he was arrested while on his laptop, logged in to the site’s “mastermind” account. In addition, his laptop contained a journal, logbook and private chat logs that all indicated he was running Silk Road, and a former FBI agent had traced $13.4 million in Bitcoins from the site’s Iceland- and Pennsylvania-based servers to the Bitcoin wallet on Ulbricht’s laptop.

Dratel told reporters outside the courthouse that he plans to appeal the verdict. “What you saw in terms of length of deliberations is demonstrative of [what happens] when the defense is precluded and limited and circumscribed in the way that it was,” he said.

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E-Cigarette News

Dallas City Council places restrictions on vaping in public

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Man vaping

Vaping will now be banned exactly like smoking, thanks to a new ordinance from the Dallas City Council.

At their December 11 meeting, the council passed an ordinance to ban vaping in all the same areas where smoking is not allowed. It'll go into effect on December 11, 2025 — giving everyone a year to get into compliance.

Proposed by City of Dallas Environmental Commission (EVC) and the Office of Environmental Quality and Sustainability (OEQS), the ordinance amends the definition of “smoking” in the Dallas City Code to include the use of vaping devices.

The ordinance does not ban vaping — it only bans where you can vape: no vaping in all indoor and enclosed spaces; within 15 feet of building entrances; and on park property. The ordinance also bans marijuana smoking in those same places.

In addition, the amendment requires restaurants, hotels, fitness centers and other businesses to update their signage to clearly state that both smoking and electronic smoking devices are prohibited.

The ordinance already earned widespread support from health organizations such as the Dallas County Health and Human Services, the American Lung Association, and the American Heart Association. These organizations, along with the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Surgeon General, have all raised concerns about the health risks of direct and second-hand exposure to vaping aerosols, particularly for vulnerable populations such as children and older adults.

Dallas is not the first city to impose such a ban: San Antonio enacted a similar ban in October. Theirs goes into effect on January 1, 2025.

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