News

Secret Service Silk Road Investigator Sentenced for Bitcoin Theft

Shaun W. Bridges of Laurel, Maryland is a former US secret service special agent recently sentenced to 24 months in prison. This follows after a guilty plea to one count of money laundering. Of which the crime took place while he was within the Silk Road Task Force. The group is a multi-agency effort investigating illegal activity on the Silk Road. The covert online marketplace for illicit goods would typically use bitcoins as a safe, untraceable alternative for regular currency and banking.

Silk Road Task Force

In 2015, Bridges was taken into custody on charges of theft of 1,600 bitcoin. The approximate worth of which is 10.4 million USD. The digital wallet he stole it from just happens to belong to the U.S. government, so needless to say, he was not going to get away with it. Since he is part of the Silk Road Task Force, he has private access key to the digital wallet. He then subsequently transferred the bitcoin to several other digital wallets at other bitcoin exchanges he had exclusive access to.

While at the task force, it was part of Bridges responsibility to locate, identify and prosecute targets who make transactions at the Silk Road. This includes Ross Ulbricht, aka “Dread Pirate Roberts” himself, who ran the exchange from North California. The FBI has not disclosed whether Bridges had any accomplices within the task force or if he acted alone.

Ron Perillo

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

Electronic Arts Titles Played for Over 11 Billion Hours in 2024

Electronic Arts (EA) announced today that its games were played for over 11 billion hours…

2 days ago

Just 15% of Steam Gaming Time in 2024 Was Spent on New Releases

Steam's annual end-of-year recap, Steam Replay, provides fascinating insights into gamer habits by comparing individual…

2 days ago

STALKER 2 Gets Massive 110GB Patch With 1800+ Fixes

GSC GameWorld released a major title update for STALKER 2 this seeking, bringing the game…

2 days ago

Intel Unveils Core 200H Processors Based on the Previous Raptor Lake Refresh

Without any formal announcement, Intel appears to have revealed its new Core 200H series processors…

3 days ago

Ubisoft Reportedly Developing a New Quadruple A Game

Ubisoft is not having the best of times, but despite recent flops, the company still…

3 days ago

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl Update 1.1 Fixes 1,800 Issues and Revamps A-Life 2.0

If you haven’t started playing STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl yet, now might be the…

3 days ago