Criminals...federal agents...I repeat myself.
March 30, 2015 The Justice Department
announced Monday it is charging two federal agents with using bitcoin to
launder money while the pair investigated Silk Road, a now-defunct
website where criminals relied on the digital currency to conduct
illicit business.
The
investigators being charged are Carl Mark Force IV, who worked with the
Drug Enforcement Administration, and Shaun Bridges, a former Secret
Service agent. Force is being charged with wire fraud, stealing
government property, and money-laundering; Bridges is accused of of wire
fraud and money-laundering.
Force and Bridges are described in a criminal complaint
as abusing their positions as federal agents to "engage in a scheme to
defraud a variety of third parties, the public, and the government, all
for their own financial enrichment."
Force,
according to the Justice Department's investigation, was an undercover
agent who communicated online with Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk
Road and a target of a separate investigation. But while on the job,
Force developed a number of separate online identities in order to
engage in "complex bitcoin transactions to steal from the government and
the targets of the investigation," the complaint alleges.
Bridges
is charged with diverting more than $800,000 in digital currency to a
personal account—funds he acquired as a result of the Silk Road
investigation.
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