Ross Ulbricht’s Mom

By Debbie Galant

A year and a half ago, Lyn Ulbricht had never heard of Tor, the Deep Web, Silk Road or its purported leader Dread Pirate Roberts. She certainly didn’t know how to encrypt email or trade in Bitcoin.

Then, on Oct. 2, 2013, a Reuters reporter called to ask her about the FBI’s arrest of her son Ross the day before. According to the government, Ross, then 29, was Dread Pirate Roberts, the kingpin of Silk Road — a hidden internet marketplace where people could buy and sell illegal drugs anonymously.

“Life can change on a dime,” Lyn says. “Suddenly it’s this whole other reality.”

This February, Ross Ulbricht was convicted on seven drug and conspiracy counts. His sentencing is scheduled for this coming Friday, May 29.

Over the past year and a half, Lyn Ulbricht has become a one-woman justice-seeking machine on Ross’s behalf — raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for his defense, traveling the country to address libertarians and cybergeeks, maintaining a website and a Twitter presence and playing a major role in a new documentary, Deep Web, which has been playing in film festivals and will premiere on Epix, Time-Warner’s on-demand cable network, May 31...

Her near-stardom in certain circles has stopped taking her by surprise, but she still finds it amusing. Last summer, she brought Ross’s cause to Porcupine Freedom Festival, an annual Libertarian-themed camping event in “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire. Tagging along was a new intern. “Watch what happens,” Lyn said as she walked up to a gathering of people, flyers in hand.

At first, the small crowd barely looked up. Because she’s a woman, because she’s older, Lyn says, “they expect you to be boring.”

“And then I say I’m Ross Ulbricht’s mother” — she laughs — “They’re genuflecting. They’re bowing.”

It’s a scene that repeats itself over and over. Lyn Ulbricht walks into a room, wearing what in our culture is the equivalent of an invisibility cloak: her identity as a woman in her 60's. Nobody expects anything. And then she blows them away.

Lyn declines to pinpoint her exact age for fear — she says self-mockingly— of alienating her base. Though she does own up to being at the leading edge of the Baby Boom generation.

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