FILE - This Feb 4, 2015, file courtroom sketch, shows defendant Ross William Ulbricht as the deputy recites the word “guilty” multiple times during Ubricht’s trial in New York. Ulbricht is set to be sentenced... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - This Feb 4, 2015, file courtroom sketch, shows defendant Ross William Ulbricht as the deputy recites the word “guilty” multiple times during Ubricht’s trial in New York. Ulbricht is set to be sentenced... (Associated Press) 
 
 NEW YORK (AP) — A San Francisco man who created the online drug-selling site Silk Road was sentenced Friday to life in prison by a judge who cited six deaths that resulted from drugs bought on his website and five people he tried to have killed. 
 
 U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest told 31-year-old Ross Ulbricht that he was a criminal even though he doesn't fit the typical profile — he has two collegiate degrees — and she brushed aside his attempt to characterize the business as a big mistake. 
 
 "It was a carefully planned life's work. It was your opus," she said. "You are no better a person than any other drug dealer." 
 
 Forrest said the sentence was necessary to show others who might follow his path that there are "very serious consequences." She also ordered $183 million forfeiture. Prosecutors had not asked for a life sentence, saying only they wanted a prison term substantially longer than the 20-year mandatory minimum. 
 
 Ulbricht was convicted in February of operating the site for nearly three years from 2011 until his 2013 arrest. 
 
 Prosecutors say he collected $18 million in bitcoins through commissions on drug sales on a website containing thousands of listings under categories like "Cannabis," ''Psychedelics" and "Stimulants." They said he brokered more than 1 million drug deals worth over $183 million while he operated on the site under the alias Dread Pirate Roberts — a reference to the swashbuckling character in "The Princess Bride." 
 
 The judge said Ulbricht's efforts to arrange the murders of five people he deemed as threats to his business was proof that Silk Road had not become the "world without restrictions, of ultimate freedom" that he claimed he sought. Ulbricht also is charged in Baltimore federal court in an attempted murder-for-hire scheme. 
 
 "You were captain of the ship, Dread Pirate Roberts," Forrest said. "It was a world with laws you created. ... It was a place with a lot of rules. If you broke the rules, you'd have all kinds of things done to you." 
 
 Forrest said she was "blown away in fury" at the "breathtakingly irresponsible" Internet postings of a doctor who advised customers on Silk Road about the effects of various drugs. 
 
 Prosecutors cited at least five deaths traced to overdoses from drugs bought on Silk Road, and two parents who each lost a child spoke in court. 
 
 Before the sentence was announced, a sniffling and apologetic Ulbricht told Forrest he's a changed man who is not greedy or vain by nature. 
 
 "I've essentially ruined my life and broken the hearts of every member of my family and my closest friends," he said. "I'm not a self-centered sociopathic person that was trying to express some inner badness. I do love freedom. It's been devastating to lose it." 
 
 His hands folded before him, Ulbricht was stoic as the sentence was announced. As he left the courtroom, he carried with him photographs of those who died as a result of drugs purchased on Silk Road. ||||| NEW YORK (AP) — Murder-for-hire allegations are central to a New York trial starting this week for a San Francisco man charged with running an online black market where drugs were sold as easily as books and electronics. 
 
 U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest overruled defense objections in recent weeks as she concluded prosecutors could introduce evidence about six murder plots into Ross William Ulbricht's trial. Prospective jurors have filled out questionnaires and formal jury selection starts Tuesday when potential jurors will be questioned orally. 
 
 Prosecutors say Ulbricht ran an underground website known as Silk Road, where hundreds of kilograms of cocaine, heroin and other drugs were sold to over 100,000 customers. Ulbricht has pleaded not guilty and is disputing that he operated online under a "Dread Pirate Roberts" alias, an apparent reference to a swashbuckling character in the 1987 comedy "The Princess Bride." 
 
 The government maintains that Ulbricht attempted to protect his operation by asking others to kill those who posed a threat to his business. 
 
 "To be sure, the evidence is prejudicial to Ulbricht, and it does inject an element of violence into the case," Forrest wrote in an opinion letting the evidence be shown to jurors. "However, the prejudicial effect is reduced by the government's stipulation that no actual murders were carried out." 
 
 She added: "The charges in this case are extremely serious: Ulbricht is charged not with participating in a run-of-the-mill drug distribution conspiracy, but with designing and operating an online criminal enterprise of enormous scope, worldwide reach, and capacity to generate tens of millions of dollars in commissions. Evidence that defendant sought to protect this sprawling enterprise by soliciting murders-for-hire is, in this overall context, not unduly prejudicial." 
 
 Ulbricht was arrested Oct. 1, 2013, at a San Francisco public library, where he was swarmed by FBI agents who seized his computer. 
 
 The government says he started Silk Road in early 2011, saying he wanted to "create a website where people could buy anything anonymously, with no trail whatsoever that could lead back to them." It said a spreadsheet found on his computer listed "sr inc" as an asset worth $104 million. 
 
 He was charged in Manhattan with conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking, conspiring to commit computer hacking and conspiring to commit money laundering for a scheme that the government said stretched from January 2011 through September 2013. He is also charged in federal court in Baltimore. 
 
 If convicted in both cases, he could face up to life in prison.
– Alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht was no ordinary drug boss—he paid $1,000 a month for a San Francisco apartment he shared with two roommates, used an alias from the Princess Bride, and was arrested in the sci-fi section of his public library. But the FBI says the 29-year-old not only raked in around $80 million from his online drug marketplace's $1.6 billion turnover over two years, he ordered at least two killings to protect his operation, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The FBI says Ulbricht, aka "Dread Pirate Roberts," was provided with a photo of the supposed victim in one killing he ordered but there's no indication the killing actually took place. The other hit man he tried to hire was an undercover agent. Ulbricht, a Texas native, appears to be a "normal, nerdy guy" in his social media postings, Gawker finds. He went to grad school at Pennsylvania State University, where he studied solar cells. On his LinkedIn profile, he complained about government control and said his goals had changed after graduation. "The most widespread and systemic use of force is amongst institutions and governments, so this is my current point of effort," he wrote. "I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force."