About two dozen loyal family members and friends of alleged Silk Road owner Ross Ulbricht have rallied around him to pledge more than $1 million to get him released on bail, according to an application submitted to the court by his attorney.

Ulbricht's parents have pledged $700,000 in equity from a vacation rental business in Costa Rica, his sister in Australia has pledged nearly $40,000 in savings, while his stepbrother has offered $100,000 from his investment account.

More than a dozen other family and friends have pledged additional amounts and offered testimony in support of an application to U.S. District Judge Kenneth Fox to release Ulbricht on bail to the care of an aunt who lives in New York until Ulbricht's parents can secure a residence in New York.

Ulbricht, who authorities say was Dread Pirate Roberts, the founder and operator of the online drug bazaar known as Silk Road who earned millions in commissions from the sale of drugs on the site, faces drug conspiracy and money laundering charges in the Southern District of New York. He also faces a more serious charge in Maryland of conspiring to have a former administrator of Silk Road murdered in exchange for $80,000. The deal was allegedly negotiated earlier this year between Dread Pirate Roberts and an undercover DEA agent.

Ulbricht's attorney has denied that his client is Dread Pirate Roberts and will ask the court to release Ulbricht on bail at a hearing scheduled for Thursday.

In the bail application (.pdf) to the judge, defense attorney Joshual Dratel argues that despite the serious charges against his client, Ulbricht is not a flight risk because, as testimony from family and friends shows, he has a history of facing his responsibilities and declined to flee the country in the past when he could have done so.

The letter also states that since Ulbricht's own personal savings has all been seized by the FBI, he wouldn't be able to support himself should he flee.

“Thus, even if Mr. Ulbricht were to sacrifice the life savings, other assets, and livelihoods of his relatives and close friends," the letter states, "Mr. Ulbricht is now entirely financially dependent on those who would lose tremendous amounts of money if he were to fail to comply with the conditions and requirements the Court would impose as conditions of release."

But prosecutors have asserted that Ulbricht may have access to millions of dollars worth of bitcoins, the digital currency that the site used to settle payments. So far, authorities have seized $34.5 million of what they say was Silk Road's bitcoin stash, but they claim that Ulbricht reaped $80 million worth in the time he allegedly ran the illicit market.

The letter goes on to quote testimony from a number of family members and friends – whose names are redacted in the document to protect their privacy – who attest to Ulbricht's honesty, generosity and integrity throughout his life, testimony that stands in stark contrast to the portrait authorities have painted of Ulbricht as a ruthless drug kingpin.

"Ross has an incredibly strong set of principles that he lives by, and honesty, personal responsibility, and the importance of friends and family are foremost among them," one supporter writes in testimony accompanying the application. Others note his "kind and positive" spirit and describe his "extremely tight-knit and stable family."

The letter also attests to his past charitable work, both in a non-profit effort to provide clean water to people in Africa and a used book business he launched in Texas called Good Wagon Books that provided unsold books to prison literacy programs and donated a percentage of profits to youth mentoring programs in Texas.

The letter notes that although there have been allegations that Ulbricht sought citizenship on the island of Dominica in late 2012, he never left San Francisco, where he was living at the time, even after he was visited by DHS investigators in July over fake IDs he had allegedly purchased.

The letter notes in a footnote that "If Mr. Ulbricht were indeed the Dread Pirate Roberts responsible for the Silk Road, and possessing a portable and untraceable trove of Bitcoins worth millions of dollars, that visit from DHS would have been the only signal a criminal mastermind would have needed to depart the U.S. immediately."

Update 11.20.13: To correct the source of the $700,000 equity that Ulbricht's parents have pledged.