Former U.S. Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges who pleaded guilty in the theft of bitcoin during the investigation of underground drug bazaar Silk Road has now been suspected of additional cryptocurrency thefts.
According to court filings, Bridges is suspected of having a hand behind the theft of around $700,000 worth of bitcoin from a Secret Service account three months after the agency was asked to block Bridges’s access, Reuters reported.
The documents reveal that the Justice Department came to know last April that Bridges might have a private cryptographic key, providing access to a bitcoin wallet with the $700,000 worth bitcoins which was seized in 2014 by Silk Road task force.
“Unfortunately, the U.S. Secret Service did not do so and the funds were thereafter stolen, something the U.S, Secret Service only discovered once it was ordered by a court to pay a portion of the seizure back to affected claimants,” an accompanying statement by a team of prosecutors read.
Earlier this year, the U.S. government suspected Shaun Bridges of additional bitcoin theft in connection with the Silk Road case. Also, Ross Ulbricht, the creator and operator of the online dark market Silk Road sought fresh trial in January who was found guilty on a total of seven charges, which included narcotics trafficking on the internet, conspiracy to commit money laundering and computer hacking. He was sentenced to life in prison in May, 2015.
Bridges pleaded guilty last August to money laundering and obstruction of justice in connection with his theft of bitcoin during the investigation of Silk Road. He was sentenced in December after he admitted that he moved and stole nearly 20,000 bitcoin (around $350,000 at the time). He later liquidated the bitcoin into $820,000 between March and May 2013, and had the funds transferred to personal investment accounts in the U.S.
