A former U.S. Secret Service agent who was sentenced to 71 months in prison in 2015 for stealing thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin during an investigation into darknet marketplace Silk Road, has been sentenced to an additional two years in prison for another cryptocurrency theft.
Shaun Bridges, 35, was sentenced by the U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco yesterday, according to a sentencing memorandum prior to the Tuesday hearing. In August, Bridges pleaded guilty to stealing an additional 1,600.6488 bitcoins from a separate investigation. A report suggests that at the time of his arrest the coins were worth about $470,000. Today that figure amounts to $11.9 million.
In 2015, Bridges was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to money laundering and obstruction of justice while investigating the Silk Road case. When arrested he admitted to stealing more than $800,000 worth in bitcoin while serving on a Baltimore task force investigating the dark web marketplace.
According to court documents, the former agent moved his bitcoins to BTC-e, the exchange that was shut down earlier in August. Bridges then proceeded to move his funds to other wallets that he used.
At the time, it was suggested that if Bridges was convicted he could see a further 10 years added to his prison sentence, as well as a $250,000 fine. This latest news, however, shows that he only faces an extra two years in prison. Judge Seeborg has ordered that Bridges serve this new sentence consecutively with his current jail time. The sentencing memorandum suggests that it is due to Bridges’ cooperation in the case that he has received a lesser sentence.
Drug Enforcement Administration agent Carl Force IV was sentenced to 78 months in October 2015, for money laundering, extortion, and obstruction of justice. The rogue agent had pleaded guilty for stealing $370,000 from a customer of CoinMKT, a bitcoin company he was moonlighting for, illegally.
The creator and operator of Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 after being convicted of seven counts against him, including narcotics trafficking conspiracy, continuing a criminal enterprise, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy.