A former U.S. Secret Service agent admitted to stealing more than 1,600 bitcoins seized in the Silk Road case.

Recently, two former U.S. Secret Service agents, Shaun Bridges and Carl Mark Force, finally admitted that they stole 1,600 bitcoins seized in the Silk Road case. As early as 2015, the U.S. Attorney's Office filed charges against Bridges and Force. Due to lack of substantial evidence, Bridges and Force refused to plead guilty and filed an appeal.

According to a recent federal court electronic document, Bridges had removed 1,606.6488 bitcoins from the official account of the Federal Secret Service in the Bitstamp exchange. At the time, these bitcoins were worth about $1.5 million, but according to the current bitcoin price, the total value of the stolen bitcoins exceeded $6 million. The stolen bitcoins were transferred to two trading platforms, BTC-e and Bitfinex. It is worth noting that the BTC-e exchange was previously forced to take over due to its involvement in a bitcoin money laundering case and the regulator confiscated 45% of its bitcoins as a fine.

After admitting to stealing the bitcoins, Bridges gave an interview to Arstechnica and expressed his hope that his guilty plea would lead to a lighter sentence.

The prosecutor in the federal court said: "We will carefully investigate Bridges' confession and confirm whether there are other omissions as soon as possible before making a final judgment." Although the prosecution has not given a clear verdict at present, analysts pointed out that Bridges and Force may face a fine of up to $250,000 and ten years in prison.

In addition to the embezzlement, according to the family of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road website (currently in prison, serving a life sentence), Bridges and Force also participated in the operation and management of the website (Bridges and Force were undercover agents arranged by the FBI in the Silk Road website). Ulbricht said in his appeal that Bridges and Force both had accounts and passwords to control the website's backend management functions and had the same rights as the website administrator. He pointed out that due to their status as agents, some of Bridges and Force's illegal acts were deliberately concealed by the authorities. In fact, the crimes involved by these two former agents were definitely not as simple as stealing Bitcoin. In response to this accusation, the U.S. Secret Service and Bridges and Force themselves did not respond. However, the federal judge in charge of this case said that as the investigation deepens, the charges faced by Bridges and Force may increase.

About the Silk Road

Silk Road is the most famous trading market in the dark web. Almost everything you can think of can be found there. As long as both parties to the transaction are willing, all transactions can be carried out, including drugs, sex slaves, child pornography services and even private killers can be hired on this platform.

Due to its excellent concealment and strong awareness of prevention, police from various countries joined forces to conduct repeated thorough investigations and finally arrested the website's founder, Ross Ulbricht, in 2013. Bridges and Force, as undercover agents arranged by the FBI and the US Secret Service in the Silk Road website, played a decisive role in solving the case. Unfortunately, after seeing the huge profits from Bitcoin black market transactions, the two undercover agents had evil thoughts and finally committed embezzlement.

With the website founder Ross Ulbricht and two former agents pleading guilty, many people thought that the case might come to an end, but there is evidence that the Silk Road website seems to have changed its administrator and intends to continue operating. The FBI said it will continue to track the movements of Silk Road 3.0 and thoroughly crack down on all illegal activities in the dark web.