Two former federal special agents have been charged with a string of offences after allegedly stealing bitcoins during their investigation into notorious online drugs marketplace the Silk Road.
The federal criminal complaint, unsealed on Monday in the Northern District of California, names the two men as members of the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force.
Carl M Force, 46, was a special agent in the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), while Shaun W Bridges, 32, was a special agent in the US Secret Service.
Force was tasked with establishing a line of communications with alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht, according to the Department of Justice.
But instead he allegedly created multiple new online personas – using them to receive bitcoins from targets of the investigation but failing then to report his receipt of them. Instead he’s said to have transferred the funds to his personal account.
The DoJ note continues:
“The complaint also alleges that Force invested in and worked for a digital currency exchange company while still working for the DEA, and that he directed the company to freeze a customer’s account with no legal basis to do so, then transferred the customer’s funds to his personal account. Further, Force allegedly sent an unauthorized Justice Department subpoena to an online payment service directing that it unfreeze his personal account.”
Bridges, meanwhile, is alleged to have transferred $800,000 in digital currency to a Mt Gox account before wiring it to a personal investment account just days before he sought a warrant to seize the accounts of the now defunct currency exchange.
Ken Westin, senior security analyst at Tripwire, argued that there’s sometimes “a fine line between cop and criminal.”
“Both of the agents went through multiple steps to hide their transactions and activities and abused their authority throughout to work the system,” he added.
“Believing that the anonymity of bitcoin would cloak their activities, it was when they tried to convert those funds and move them into bank accounts, some offshore, that they were caught.”