DEA Agent Charged With Acting as a Paid Mole for Silk Road

NEARLY 18 MONTHS after the Silk Road online drug market was busted by law enforcement, the criminal charges rippling out from the case have now come full circle: back to two of the law enforcement agents involved in the investigation, one of whom is accused of being the Silk Road's mole inside the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Secret Service special agent Shaun Bridges was arrested Monday and charged with wire fraud and money laundering for placing $800,000 of Silk Road bitcoins he obtained in a personal account on the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange. But his charge pales in comparison with that of DEA special agent Carl Force, who was also arrested Monday. Force is charged with wire fraud, money laundering, theft of government property and conflict of interest in his investigation of the Silk Road. He is accused of taking bitcoin payments from the Silk Road as part of his undercover investigation and placing them in a personal account rather than confiscating them as government property. He's also accused of secretly working for a bitcoin exchange firm and using his DEA powers to seize a customer's funds there. But perhaps the most surprising charge against Force is that he acted as a paid informant for Silk Road's recently convicted administrator Ross Ulbricht, allegedly selling information about the investigation back to Ulbricht.

Force, a 46-year-old member of Baltimore's Silk Road task force, worked as an undercover agent on the Silk Road, communicating directly with its creator Ross Ulbricht under Ulbricht's pseudonym the Dread Pirate Roberts. But allegedly, "Force then, without authority, developed additional online personas and engaged in a broad range of illegal activities calculated to bring him personal financial gain," according to a press statement from the Department of Justice.

It's not clear yet exactly what information Force is accused of selling to Ulbricht. But the revelation of a Silk road informant inside the DEA follows repeated hints in Ulbricht's trial of those leaks. Ulbricht's lawyer Joshua Dratel made multiple references to the Silk Road's boss paying for counter-intelligence information from law enforcement officials. (He argued, however, that Silk Road boss wasn't in fact Ulbricht, but was instead using that leaked information to plan his or her exit from the Silk Road and to frame Ulbricht.) The operators of the Silk Road "had been alerted the walls were closing in," Dratel said in the opening arguments of Ulbricht's trial.

Ulbricht's journal, taken from his seized laptop, also references two pseudonymous individuals named French Maid and Alpacino, whom Ulbricht seems to have used as sources of information about law enforcement activities. At one point Ulbricht writes that he paid French Maid $100,000 for the tip that Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles, who also ran a web hosting company used by the Silk Road at one point, gave Ulbricht's name to the Department of Homeland Security.

Stay tuned for more as further details emerge.

This story is related to [PSA/Article] 2 Federal Agents in Silk Road Case Face Fraud Charges


Comments


[39 Points] karuna19:

And the Silk Road movie continues to write itself


[28 Points] We_Are_Never_Safe:

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[10 Points] PatchWork-:

lolol the DEA are bigger criminals than the people they arrest. They love the drug game; keeps the money and whores flowing in.


[8 Points] SecondChanceUsername:

Wow, the fun never stops with SR. 30 years from now, were gonna be reading about another member they tracked down with they're (30 years in the future) super spy-technology. From some simple mistake. Is there a statute of limitations for DNM involvement? I digress... Im gonna stay tuned to see what happens to these guys.LOL. PIGS.


[6 Points] We_Are_Never_Safe:

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[4 Points] sharpshooter789:

Forgot link

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/dea-agent-charged-acting-paid-mole-silk-road/


[3 Points] KurosawasPaintSet:

I can't wait for this guy to get his just desserts. Being locked up in the prison system he thought was so legitimate to see how fucked up the drug war actually is. IF PEOPLE WANT TO USE DRUGS LET THEM! IT HURTS NO ONE BUT THE USER YOU POMPOUS MORONS! IF HEROIN WAS LEGAL TOMORROW WOULD YOU USE IT? NO! I WOULDN'T EITHER! THIS BULLSHIT WAR ON DRUGS CREATES MORE CRIME THAN IT STOPS! GIVE IT UP YOU FUCKTARDS!!!!


[2 Points] d0nniedarko:

At least these 2 can c how stupid the law is with this bullshit drug war.


[1 Points] sqoatz:

SR gone for two years and still generating the most interesting stories!


[1 Points] GunShotWound:

He could end up walking a free man at this rate xD


[0 Points] MaxSalt:

Grounds for mistrial pending disclosure of new evidence indicting the two Federal Agents and their conduct during the investigation would be the "poison fruit from the poison tree" rule, correct? Any graduates of the bar be willing to weigh in? (Disclaimer- I am not a lawyer)