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Shaun Bridges, who already was given 71 months in prison, awaits a new sentence.
SAN FRANCISCO—Former Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges pleaded guilty on Tuesday to new counts of money laundering and related forfeiture.
In May 2015, Bridges was sentenced to 71 months after he stole money from Silk Road dealers while investigating Silk Road, a now-defunct Tor-hidden underground website.
Over a year ago, federal authorities strongly suggested in court filings that, in 2015, after Bridges had left the Secret Service and after he had already signed his first guilty plea, he had illegally transferred to himself over 1,600 bitcoins. Those bitcoins had previously been seized by federal authorities from Bitstamp, a European Bitcoin exchange, which later challenged the seizure.
However, Bridges was not formally charged with a crime until Monday evening, when prosecutors filed a new charging document in federal court.
That filing specifically says that Bridges “laundered the funds stolen from the United States government by moving the funds out of the BTC-e account and into other various online wallets and accounts.”
Last month, a Russian man, Alexander Vinnik, was arrested and indicted on allegations of money laundering. Vinnik is accused of creating BTC-e, a quasi-underground Bitcoin exchange that specialized in not asking too many questions of its users.
That indictment specifically mentioned Bridges and his fellow corrupt agent on the Baltimore Silk Road team, Carl Mark Force.
“Their experience with the criminal underworld taught them that using BTC-e, as opposed to a registered exchange with anti-money laundering policies, would maximize their chances of being able to conceal criminal proceeds,” prosecutors wrote.
Bridges will likely be sentenced in the coming months.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/ex-fed-in-silk-road-case-pleads-guilty-to-new-money-laundering-charges/
SAN FRANCISCO—Former Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges pleaded guilty on Tuesday to new counts of money laundering and related forfeiture.
In May 2015, Bridges was sentenced to 71 months after he stole money from Silk Road dealers while investigating Silk Road, a now-defunct Tor-hidden underground website.
Over a year ago, federal authorities strongly suggested in court filings that, in 2015, after Bridges had left the Secret Service and after he had already signed his first guilty plea, he had illegally transferred to himself over 1,600 bitcoins. Those bitcoins had previously been seized by federal authorities from Bitstamp, a European Bitcoin exchange, which later challenged the seizure.
However, Bridges was not formally charged with a crime until Monday evening, when prosecutors filed a new charging document in federal court.
That filing specifically says that Bridges “laundered the funds stolen from the United States government by moving the funds out of the BTC-e account and into other various online wallets and accounts.”
Last month, a Russian man, Alexander Vinnik, was arrested and indicted on allegations of money laundering. Vinnik is accused of creating BTC-e, a quasi-underground Bitcoin exchange that specialized in not asking too many questions of its users.
That indictment specifically mentioned Bridges and his fellow corrupt agent on the Baltimore Silk Road team, Carl Mark Force.
“Their experience with the criminal underworld taught them that using BTC-e, as opposed to a registered exchange with anti-money laundering policies, would maximize their chances of being able to conceal criminal proceeds,” prosecutors wrote.
Bridges will likely be sentenced in the coming months.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/ex-fed-in-silk-road-case-pleads-guilty-to-new-money-laundering-charges/
Summary: a secret service agent allegedly stole 1,600 bitcoins that were seized from silk road and tried to launder the money through BTC-E.
I haven't heard of this case before today. If its true it could somewhat flip the script in terms of bitcoin being used by criminals considering a law enforcement agent tried to use it?
LOL
This is hilarious. A guy who works for the government which is supposed to protect the people, instead follows in the footsteps of the scammers themselves and then got caught.
He should have waited many years until the fiasco dies down and then launder them and he could get away with it.
we're talking about 1,600 bitcoins here at it's current price it's 6684624.59 $ i get kinda sick thinking about that much money
I would do the same thing any day if i had the opportunity
A better move would be to trade/exchange the bitcoins for monero. It's really as simple as that, after the trade to monero it's already untracable beyond that. Then maybe he can convert the monero back to bitcoin then he/she can sell them without any trace at all. Or better yet, sell the monero instead.
Fookin government officials. There's no surprise here. I'm pretty sure this isn't gonna make it to the news.
