Former Silk Road DEA Agent Pleads Guilty to Bitcoin Theft
Former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Carl Mark Force IV, has admitted to stealing over $700,000 worth of bitcoin while running the Baltimore Silk Road investigation. Force, the lead undercover agent in communication with Ross Ulbricht - the mastermind behind the online drug marketplace now sentenced to life in prison - admitted using fake online personas to steal bitcoin from both the US government and investigated parties. He pleaded guilty to charges of extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice. In connection to his plea, Force admitted he had offered to sell....
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Ross Ulbricht, founder of the infamous Silk Road drug market, will be remembered as one of bitcoin’s most relevant contributors, a man that grew bitcoin’s relevance to extraordinary levels, and became instantly popular following his arrest. Silk Road was a dark net market that ran on the TOR Network. At its peak, Silk Road accounted for 70% of all dark net drug sales. People wondered whether Ulbricht’s arrest was justified; consequently, his prison sentence became controversial as well. In the midst of the controversy it was later discovered that federal agents infiltrated the....
In March of 2015, two federal agents who helped conduct one of the major investigations in the Silk Road case allegedly stole thousands in bitcoin confiscated from the online dark marketplace. The two agents, Shaun Bridges and Carl Force from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U. S. Secret Service, were charged with several offenses including wire fraud and money laundering. This week, Bridges, a special agent for the U. S. Secret Service for the Silk Road case, has come to an agreement with the prosecutors and pleaded guilty for the theft of confiscated bitcoin from Silk Road.....
Shaun Bridges, the former Secret Service agent who pleaded guilty to stealing more than $800,000 in bitcoin while investigating Silk Road, is suspected in two other theft cases, according to a recently unsealed affidavit, Reuters reported. Bridges is believed to have stolen $700,000 of bitcoin from a Secret Service account three months after the agency was urged to remove his access to the account. The Secret Service did not move the funds, and later learned the funds were stolen. The theft was discovered after a court ordered the agency to pay claimants for their losses. The former Secret....
The Silk Road 2.0 saga continues, a 29-year old Briton has pleaded guilty to supplying and possessing drugs on the Silk Road 2.0 platform. Silk Road 2.0 was the successor of nefarious drug-dealing platform Silk Road, created by Ross Ulbricht in order to create a use case for popular digital currency Bitcoin. The history of Bitcoin has been plagued by both Silk Road and Silk Road 2.0 platforms. Not because these platforms created new use cases for the popular digital currency, but because they are both associated with illegal substances, drugs and other illicit dealings. Ever since both....
The US government believes that a former Secret Service agent convicted of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in bitcoin during the investigation of Silk Road may have been involved with additional thefts from the now-defunct online dark market. Ex-Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges was sentenced to nearly six years in federal prison after pleading guilty last year to money laundering and obstruction charges tied to the theft of more than $800,000 in bitcoin from the Silk Road during the US government’s investigation. Bridges was re-arrested in late January on suspicion that he was....