Carl Force, a DEA agent who helped bring down online black market The Silk Road whilst also plundering hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin will be spending the next 78 months in prison, a judge decided today.
Force was an undercover DEA agent working on the investigation into Ross Ulbricht and online black market The Silk Road, but things took a turn for the weird when he started operating off-book. Force created a number of unsanctioned online identities, which he used to try and extort Ulbricht into paying him, by threatening to reveal information to the DEA unless Ulbricht paid him off.
While all this was going on, Force conspired with a Secret Service agent on the Silk Road Task Force, Shaun Bridges. Together, they managed to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars more from The Silk Road and another Bitcoin service, CoinMKT.
Force was sentenced to 76 months — more than six years — in prison today, with the judge describing his “betrayal of public trust” as “breathtaking”. Bridges is due to be sentenced later this year, while the subject of their joint investigation, Ross Ulbricht, is in prison for life.
[Reuters]