Ross Ulbricht  (31) was sentenced to a life in prison for for his role in creating and operating  Silk Road, an underground marketplace. The sentencing comes without a possibility of a parole for  Ulbricht.

US District Judge Katherine Forrest  “gave Ulbricht the most severe sentence possible, beyond what even the prosecution had explicitly requested. The minimum Ulbricht could have served was 20 years,” writes Andy Greenberg of Wired, who has been following the case since the early days.  Greenberg has written extensively on the case and also appears in Alex Winter’s film on Ulbricht and the Silk Road called “Deep Web: The Untold Story of Bitcoin And The Silk Road.”

Winter was in the courtroom when the verdict was announced this afternoon in Manhattan. Winter said, “Everyone gasped,” when the verdict was announced to The Wall Street Journal in a phone interview.

“Ulbricht’s defense team has already said it will seek an appeal in his case.,” writes Greenberg in his article.

You can read more about Ulbricht’s sentence here , here and here. You can read what Ulbricht’s lawyer Jason Dratel had to say after the verdict was announced.

You can read the full report of Ulbricht’s sentence on Ars Technica.