Crypto crime lord Ross Ulbricht gets a pardon—but his fortune is gone after the U.S. auctioned off his Bitcoins in 2014 for just $334 each

Ross Ulbricht has his freedom. After serving nearly 12 years in federal prison for running a notorious online drugs bazaar, Ulbricht—who went by the name Dread Pirate Roberts when he was a crime lord—received a Bitcoin held by corrupt federal agents who stole it during the course of the original investigation, and obtaining a court order this month to sell the thousands the agency seized from an unnamed hacker who also robbed Ulbricht.

A once and future tycoon?

President Trump’s decision to issue a pardon to Ulbricht came after ongoing pressure from his mother, and from Bitcoin-loving libertarians who regarded his sentence as unjust and heavy-handed. The sentence came after prosecutors showed how Ulbricht not only ran a drug empire but attempted to hire a hit man (who turned out to be a government agent) to kill one of his employees, and after parents testified about how their children had overdosed on drugs purchased on the Silk Road.

Ulbricht received a full pardon, not just a commutation, which means he is not only free but his conviction goes away. This raises the interesting question of whether he can claim the U.S. government wrongly seized and sold his property, and seek to get it back.

Under the current state of the law that appears unlikely. While U.S. courts historically adopted the common-law notion that a pardon “blots out the offense,” modern rulings have limited the scope of that. In 1993, the Supreme Court wrote that “although a pardon may obviate the punishment for a federal crime, it does not erase the facts associated with the crime or preclude all collateral effects arising from those facts.”

According to Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor who now works in white-collar defense at Paul Hastings, a pardon undoes the forfeiture of property—unless, as is the case with Ulbricht’s Bitcoin, it has already been sold and the proceeds spent. The upshot is Ulbricht’s onetime fortune appears long gone.

This does not mean, of course, that the 40-year-old Ulbricht will find himself penniless. With the help of his mother, he maintained a social media presence during his incarceration and sold art and NFTs that brought in millions of dollars, though the family at the time planned to use the funds for legal expenses.

There is also the possibility, though there is no evidence to support this, that Ulbricht has other Bitcoin wallets that the FBI did not discover at the time of his arrest.

Fortune sent an email to an address posted on the Ulbricht family’s Free Ross page, asking whether Ulbricht has additional Bitcoin or if he plans to file a legal claim to reverse the forfeiture, but did not receive a reply.

In any event, Ulbricht appears well positioned to build a new fortune. He is a legendary figure in crypto and libertarian circles, and is sure to be in demand on the speaking circuit. Ulbricht has already been the subject of a popular book titled American Kingpin, and is likely poised to sell his story to movie studios.

Meanwhile, the FBI wallet that once held Ulbricht’s over 144,000 Bitcoins currently holds a little over 1 Bitcoin and has a balance of around $129,000. It is unclear what will become of those funds.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com