Corrupt Silk Road Investigator Re-arrested, Denies Self-Surrender

A former U.S. Secret Service special agent who pleaded guilty last August to money laundering and obstruction of justice in connection with his theft of bitcoin during the investigation of Silk Road, has been re-arrested, CoinDesk reported.

Shaun W. Bridges, 33, of Laurel, Maryland, was arrested Thursday morning (January 28th). He had been scheduled to turn himself in the following day to start serving a 71-month sentence in a minimum-security prison in New Hampshire, as reported by The Baltimore Sun.

According to court documents, the authorities found identity documents, a notarized copy of Bridges’ passport, a MacBook with the serial number scratched off, an ipad tucked between a bedroom mattress, bulletproof vests (at least one of which had Secret Service markings and thus is believed to have been stolen from the government) and a bag containing documents relating to Bridges’ wife that point to attempts to obtain citizenship in another country.

“It should be noted that this was not the sum of evidence agents recovered – rather, the government is only including facts here that it believes are relevant to the defendant’s risk of flight”, the document read.

On the day of the arrest, prosecutors submitted an “instant filing” in order to terminate Bridges’ pending motion to be allowed to surrender to a Bureau of Prisons facility in the state of New Hampshire. Judge Richard Seeborg approved that order on 29th January.

Bridges was sentenced in December after he admitted that he moved and stole nearly 20,000 bitcoin, which at that time was worth roughly $350,000. He later liquidated the bitcoin into $820,000 between March and May 2013, and had the funds transferred to personal investment accounts in the United States. His attorney, Steve Levin, said Bridges was detained at his home but declined comment further.