Shaun Bridges, a former US Secret Service agent assigned to investigate Silk Road, has been sentenced to 71 months in prison after pleading guilty to money laundering and obstruction of justice charges earlier this year.
Bridges started out working the marketplace to gain intel, but ended up stealing from many of its customers. He used administrative credentials obtained from a confidential informant to pose as a Silk Road admin and amass as much as 20,000 BTC (bitcoin) in stolen funds.
As part of the sentence, Bridges will have to pay $500,000 of that back, which — depending on when it was converted to US dollars — could have been worth up to $22.5 million. The current value of 20,000 BTC is $7.8 million.
Bridge joins ex-DEA agent Carl Mark Force as the second government agent to be implicated in wrong-doing during the Silk Road investigation. Force was sentenced to six years in October.
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The news follows the arrest of Silk Road architect, Variety Jones, in Thailand just last week.
Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht received two life sentences in May.
➤ Secret Service agent gets 71 months in prison for stealing from Silk Road dealers [The Verge]
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