The mastermind behind the “Silk Road” online marketplace that facilitated millions of dollars of drug sales has been given a full and unconditional pardon by US President Donald Trump.

Libertarian activists, who generally oppose criminal drug policies, argued the government overreached in building its case against Ross Ulbricht and the dark web marketplace Silk Road.

Ross Ulbricht was serving a life sentence for creating a site in a shady corner of the internet to sell heroin, cocaine and other illicit substances.

President Donald Trump has pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, an underground website for selling drugs.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison for running an underground online marketplace where drug dealers and others conducted more than $200 million in illicit trade using bitcoin.

President Trump said he granted the full pardon in honor of Ross Ulbricht's mother "and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly."

President Donald Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the drug marketplace Silk Road who is revered by many cryptocurrency enthusiasts and Libertarians. “I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbright to let her know,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, misspelling Ulbricht’s name.

On his second day back in office, President Donald Trump issued a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the founder of dark-web marketplace Silk Road. Trump had pledged to free Ulbricht as part of a raft of promises made to the cryptocurrency community while on the campaign trail.

Until, of course, in 2013 the Silk Road was shut down by FBI agents and Mr Ulbricht, then 29 years old, was arrested in the science-fiction section of a San Francisco public library. In 2015, after a four-week trial,

The Silk Road founder could be one of the world's richest people if he gets his bitcoin back from the U.S government.

Donald Trump's administration has reassigned about 20 senior career Justice Department attorneys, two sources familiar with the moves told Reuters, as the new president moves swiftly to shake up an arm of government that has long drawn his ire.