Bitcoin Forum

Ex-Agent Gets 6 Years Prison for Betrayal in Silk Road Probe

A government agent who stole $820,000 in bitcoins while investigating an online drug emporium was sentenced to almost six years in prison after a prosecutor said his deceit amounts to a “breathtaking abuse of trust.”

Shaun Bridges, who worked for the Secret Service, hijacked the account of an administrator for the Silk Road black market website to syphon off the digital currency. The U.S. said Bridges deserved a harsh sentence because the administrator was working as a government informant and was put in danger when Silk Road’s founder assumed he was the thief and tried to have him killed.

The informant, Curtis Green, sobbed on the witness stand Monday as he told a San Francisco federal judge he received more than 30 death threats as word got out that he had stolen from the Internet bazaar for drugs, hacker tools and other contraband. He said he couldn’t bring himself to describe in court the graphic threats to his grandchildren.

“So you can imagine the mental stress and anguish that it put me through,” he said.

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg said when he imposed the 71-month sentence that Bridges committed an extremely serious crime. He called it “an extraordinary betrayal of public trust that could have gotten a person killed.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-07/federal-agent-should-get-six-years-for-bitcoin-theft-u-s-says