Former IS Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges is going to prison for 71 months, or nearly six years, for stealing over $US800,000 in Bitcoin from drug dealers while investigating the Silk Road.
Bridges conspired to break bad as part of the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force with an (excellently named) DEA agent, Carl Force. Together, Bridges and Force took an “Omar Little” approach to busting the Silk Road: They stole enormous sums of money from the drug dealers.
Bridges screwed up other federal investigations, according to Assistant US Attorney Kathryn Haun. In court today, Haun blamed Bridges for contaminating cases and investigations across the country. This included a criminal investigation into failed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, Ars Technica reports.
Remember how Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted of running the Silk Road as the Dread Pirate Roberts, supposedly ordered hits man to kill conniving dealers? Murder-for-hire was in his indictment, but the charges were dropped, even though law enforcement described how agents faked the death of a cooperator. Well, Bridges may have fucked that case up too. The sentencing memorandum accuses him of acting with “reckless disregard” for Maryland’s would-be murder-for-hire and drug conspiracy case. 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.
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