One of the Feds to Plead Guilty for Stealing Bitcoins from Silk Road

One of the federal agents implicated for the theft of bitcoins during Silk Road investigation has confessed of his wrongdoings and agreed to plead guilty.

Everybody who considers themselves to be part of the Bitcoin community knows about Silk Road and its downfall. They would have heard about the fate of Ross Ulbricht and most of them would have sympathised for him as well. It wasn’t just Ross who got into trouble, two of the federal law enforcement agents who were part of the investigation ended up in the soup after they allegedly stole bitcoins worth thousands of dollars.

Two United States federal agents – Shaun Bridges and Carl Force from Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and United States Secret Service respectively were charged with money laundering and wire fraud offences for misappropriating bitcoins during the course of investigation into Silk Road. After three long months, Shaun Bridges – the ex-special agent at Secret Service has reached an agreement with the prosecutors and pleaded guilty for stealing bitcoins confiscated during the course of Silk Road investigation.

Shaun managed to pull this off by transferring bitcoins from Silk Road, after getting passwords to the site from one of the customer support representatives. Shaun allegedly stole about 3565 bitcoins, totalling over 800,000 USD in today’s exchange value. The stolen bitcoins were presumably routed through the now defunct Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange where it was converted to US dollars and transferred to his bank account.

Shaun has agreed to plead guilty to the charges of theft (of bitcoins), money laundering and obstruction of justice. He will be required to submit a plea in the next couple of months around the same time as the hearing of Carl Force, the ex-DEA agent.

Meanwhile, the creator of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht received life sentence in prison without the possibility of parole last month for his role in creating and operating the billion dollar online black market for drugs and other contraband.