Third Corrupt U.S. Government Agent Discovered in Silk Road Case
Lawyers representing former Silk Road operator Ross Ulbricht announced via a press conference that they believe they have discovered another corrupt government agent involved in the case. New chat logs unearthed by Ulbricht’s defense reveal an ongoing conversation between the “Dread Pirate Roberts,” Ulbricht’s pseudonym, and “alpacino,” an agent connected with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. Previously believed to be one of two corrupt government agents already discovered to be involved in the case, these new chat logs, hidden away on a backup server for an obscure....
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Variety Jones, believed by some to be the Silk Road architect and a mentor to Ross Ulbricht, claims a corrupt FBI agent has threatened him for not agreeing to help him access a bitcoin wallet worth $70 million, according to a report by digital journalist Joseph Cox in Motherboard. Jones says the agent wants him to move to Singapore where he will set up a safe house and told him immigration police are hunting him in Thailand where he lives. The agent had previously leaked Jones secret grand jury information and also tipped him ahead of the investigations into Carl Mark Force and Shaun....
A corrupt FBI agent is planning to extort $71m from Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht, according to new allegations from a former Silk Road advisor. In a forum post issued this weekend and later publicized by Motherboard, Variety Jones, an account understood to belong to one of Silk Road's key advisors, released details of his alleged correspondence with an agent known as 'Diamond'. In it, he claims the FBI employee - a seasoned extortioner - has obtained a forgotten Silk Road wallet said to contain more than 300,000 BTC ($71.4m), and that he sought to use blackmail and torture as a means....
This piece has been updated with additional information about the case and a correction to a quote attributed to Judge Richard Seeborg. Corrupt federal agent Carl Force IV has been sentenced to 78 months, or six and a half years, in federal prison. The sentence is less than the 87-month sentence the US government had requested for the former Drug Enforcement Agency agent. Force was part of a Baltimore, Maryland-based federal task force investigating the online dark market Silk Road. As part of the task force he worked undercover on the Silk Road under the alias "Nob", developing a....
Carl Force IV, a 46-year-old member of Baltimore’s Silk Road task force and former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent, has been ordered to forfeit around US$500,000 in cash and bitcoin that he “confiscated” while investigating the Silk Road case. The criminal complaint filed against Force on March 25 read: Force stole hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of bitcoins confiscated during the Silk Road case and transferred them to his personal accounts. “FORCE stole and converted to his own personal use a sizeable amount of bitcoins that DPR sent to FORCE in FORCE's official....
The alleged involvement of another corrupt agent in the investigation of Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road raises questions about evidence suppression. The closure of Silk Road followed by Ross Ulbricht’s arrest and conviction has been one of the high-profile cases in the history of Bitcoin. The involvement of corrupt agents in the investigation created a backlash to the agencies involved in the Silk Road investigation namely, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the US Secret Service. After two agents, Carl Force (DEA) and Shawn Bridges (Secret Service) were found guilty of....