An agent investigating the Silk Road case went to jail for stealing the bitcoins of The Terrible Pirate Roberts

Silk Road’s underground drug stock exchange was closed three years ago. The case was investigated by US intelligence officers Shaun Bridges and Carl Mark Force IV. They were able to find the creator of Silk Road Ross Ulbricht, who received a life sentence . But, as it turned out, the security services themselves are not very clean in solving their own financial issues.

The agents showed themselves to Silk Road only on the positive side. In particular, Fors worked in the Anti-Drug Administration for 15 years, resigning in May 2014. Bridges was a Secret Service agent for 6 years. But in the case of the exchange, something went wrong and both agents "pierced".

They transferred 1600 Bitcoins of the Terrible Pirate Roberts to their personal accounts. Perhaps, the agents believed that no one would pay any attention to this episode, since there were thousands of cryptomonetes (about 50 thousand) on the Silk Road accounts by the time the stock exchange was closed. At the time of 2015, the volume of funds accumulated by the exchange totaled about $ 200 million. Now this amount is even higher, since the cost of bitcoins has increased many times.
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After additional investigation of the case by other specialists, the authorities learned about the machinations of both Bridges and Force. “Mr. Force during the investigation of the Silk Road case stole and transferred a significant amount of bitcoins for his own needs,” said the documents filed with the San Francisco District Court. “Instead of transferring them to the state, Force has deposited funds into personal accounts.” As for Bridges, his lawyer made the following statement: “Mr. Bridges regrets his actions from the very beginning. His decision to admit guilt reflects his full recognition of responsibility and is a step towards rehabilitation. ”

The other day, Bridges went to prison. The term of imprisonment is 2 years. This is not so much, considering that he stole Bitcoins in the amount of $ 10.4 million (at the current rate of $ 7000 for one Bitcoin). The court decided to meet the accused, because he fully admitted his guilt and decided to return the stolen funds. For the transfer, Bridges decided to use a private digital key, which served to access the bitcoin wallets of the exchange. This key belonged to US government agencies.

Bridges had to return not only Bitcoins ($ 1500) but also fiat funds, for which he exchanged cryptocurrency. How and when the transfer process was performed is not reported, but if the ex-agent really spent 100 Bitcoins, then he had to return $ 700,000.


Due to greed, the former US intelligence officer will have to serve his sentence in federal prison for about two years. And this is not a long time yet, the creator of Silk Road was put for life

Silk Road has managed to accumulate tens of thousands of bitcoins in its accounts (totaling 50 thousand). In 2014, it was decided to sell them. The US Federal Marshals Service then launched the sale in two stages. During the first, about 30 thousand bitcoins were sold (which is 210 million US dollars at the current rate). In the course of the second - another 20 thousand (about 140 million US dollars). Such companies as SecondMarket, Coinbase Yelp, BNP Paribas, Bitcoin Shop, Matrix Capital, Wrangley Capital, DRW Trading Group, DigitalBTC, BitcoinS Reserve took part in the auction.

Despite the fact that Ross Ulbricht, the creator of Silk Road, tried to keep confidentiality, he did not succeed. The reason for this - the neglect of network security. For example, Ulbricht believed that transactions from a wallet to a bitcoin wallet are difficult to track, if at all. In fact, this can be done without any problems. In addition, for some reason, he turned on the logging feature in the Tor browser. In this case, the logs are saved in the test file without any encryption. Plus, the head of Silk Road showed imprudence, leading a personal Facebook account, where he talked about his movements. This account served as a tool for the police, which allowed them to prove (albeit indirectly) the coincidence of some of the places indicated in the message of the head of Silk Road and in Ross Ulbricht's messages on Facebook.