Former Secret Service Agent Admits to Stealing over $820,000 in Bitcoin from Silk Road Drug Site

By AllNews Center on Sep 8, 2015

Bitcoin is a form of digital currency created and held electronically which can be used to buy merchandise anonymously. So naturally it became the currency of choice for people engaged in illegal conduct, including buying drugs online.

The most infamous illicit drug marketplace on the Internet was Silk Road, which facilitated more than $180 million dollars worth of drug deals by giving dealers access to customers they couldn’t reach on the street. Last May, California native Ross William Ulbricht, who went by the online handle “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted of running the Silk Road site. He’s filed an appeal, claiming that he was framed by unknown criminals operating on the ‘dark web’, that sordid region on the Internet where the location of sites and identity of their owners and users can be hidden from search engines like Google.

Former Secret Service agent Shaun W. Bridges, 32, of Laurel, Md., began investigating Silk Road as part of a Baltimore-based federal task force. After arresting Silk Road administrator Curtis Green, Bridges got access to passwords and PINs of various Silk Road drug dealer accounts. According to a plea agreement filed Monday, the temptation posed by anonymous electronic money proved too much.

After he took control of Green’s administrative account, Bridges locked the drug dealers out of their own accounts and moved their bitcoins into an account at Mt. Gox, an online digital currency exchange based in Japan. Using the Mt. Gox exchange, Bridges converted the bitcoin ‘crypto-currency’ he had stolen from the drug dealers into $820,000 in ‘real-world’ dollars. According to prosecutors, he eventually transferred the money to a personal investment account in the U.S.

Bridges has pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering and obstruction of justice, which each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced in December.

Bridges is the second U.S. law enforcement agent to plead guilty to money laundering committed during the investigation of Silk Road. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Carl Force has already pleaded guilty to laundering over $300,000 of Silk Road bitcoins. In a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction twist, Force has reportedly sold the film rights to his story for $240,000 to 20th Century Fox Film Studios. No word yet on the status of the proposed film, or a release date.

—Copyright 2015 All News Center