Secret Service agent sentenced in online currency theft

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg handed Shaun W. Bridges, of Maryland, a 71-month prison sentence Monday after he pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering and one count of obstructing justice, said Abraham Simmons, a spokesman for the Northern California district of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The Silk Road scandal is far from being over, considering the fact that today, a former U.S. Secret Service agent was sentenced to six years in prison, and a $1.1 million fine.

He admitted during the plea to stealing about $350,000 worth of bitcoin from Silk Road accounts in January 2013 and that the funds had become worth $820,000 at the time he transferred the money to an investment account in his name between March and May 2013.

Shaun Bridges, who worked for the Secret Service, hijacked the account of an administrator for the Silk Road black market website to syphon off bitcoins.

He admitted money laundering and obstruction charges in August. Bridges is the second drug agent to be sentenced in the case.

“This, to me, is an extremely serious crime consisting of the betrayal of public trust from a public official”. “And from every thing I see, it was motivated totally by greed”. In addition to serving time behind bars, the judge has also ordered Bridges to forfeit $651,000.

Bridges was part of Operation Onymous, the investigation that led to Silk Road’s downfall, along with Ulbricht’s arrest and subsequent conviction for running the site, with a term of life imprisonment.

For those who don’t know, Silk Road is a now shuttered website, where people from all around traded illegal items such as drugs and weapons, by using bitcoin to pay for the transactions. A Drug Enforcement Administration agent on the Silk Road task force, Carl Force, was charged separately with selling information about the investigation and pleaded guilty to extortion and other charges. The whole reason Dread Pirate Roberts allegedly wanted to kill one of the drug dealers in the first place was because Bridges had posed at that dealer and stolen from Silk Road. He was sentenced to 61/2 years in prison in October.