I'd also argue he almost certainly saved a huge number of lives with Silk Road: the ability to view eBay style feedback and chemical test results makes buying illegal drugs far safer than buying them on the street. On Silk Road people could buy from a reputable seller with a long history of providing unadulterated products, and could view testimonials from other buyers who had sent the products for chemical analysis.
After Ulbricht ordered the hit on one of his forum moderators, the FBI visited him, took all of his computers, told him they were going to be "him" from now on online forever, had him "pose" in a bathtub where they hosed him off and doused him in ketchup to take fake trophy photos, had the "hitman" send the photos of Ulbricht, who famously commented "It had to be done."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/how-the-feds-sta...
>Force got Green to sign a waiver, thereby commencing his role in an impromptu staged torture sting against DPR. Soon Green was being dunked in the bathtub of a Marriott suite by phony thugs who were in fact a Secret Service agent and a Baltimore postal inspector. Force recorded the action on a camera. “Did you get it?” Green asked, wet and wheezing on the floor. He’d felt like their simulation was a little too accurate. They dunked him four more times to get a convincing shot.
There used to be an online archive of every little bit of public information known about the Silk Road's administrators and their court cases. I can't find it anymore. It was over 10 years ago. All I can remember is the site had a weird url.