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Silk Road Investigators Charged With Stealing Bitcoin
itwbennett writes Two former U.S. government agents face charges related to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin while assisting with an investigation of the Silk Road underground online marketplace, with one accused of using a fake online persona to extort money from operators of the site. Facing charges of wire fraud and money laundering are Carl Force, 46, of Baltimore, a former special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, and Shaun Bridges, 32, of Laurel, Maryland, a former special agent with the U.S. Secret Service. Both served on the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force, which investigated illegal activity on the Silk Road website, the Department of Justice said Monday in a press release.
Hope they fry this bacon
...of course they were.
Pretty darn hard to trace, and very usable as alternative currency.
How convenient that misconduct of the investigators which would have a bearing on admissibility of evidence in Ulbrich criminal trial was not revealed until after his trial was over. He probably does have a few days until his 60 day deadline to appeal lapses though.
They tried to buy donuts with bitcoins.
It's not very reassuring when the investigators in such a case are themselves blatantly breaking the law to serve themselves. It makes you wonder about the other government agencies and employees looking at things such as all the mass collected survelance materials and wondering how they can use their position to their own personal benefit. Contrary of course to what the government says will never happen. I don't feel like there is much integrity. Having said that at least they got caught even though after the fact.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
Your brave protectors who can do no wrong and should be trusted to stoically carry out their duties to flag and country. Now give us our backdoors you little shits.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
This is the most interesting question.
Either some investigator who caught them is _really_ good, or the perps are _really_ stupid. They were practically handed the opportunity for a perfect untraceable crime, yet screwed it up.
This keeps getting better and better. The saga of bitcoin is a laugh a minute and keeps getting better.
What is it about bitcoin that attracts fraudsters and crooks by the truckload? Whats this magic formula they've discovered for getting fools to part with their money?
I can only hope this comes up during Ulbrich's appeal. Somebody pass the popcorn.
they just know too much about this, and perhaps other Bitcoin-related cases, and need to be discredited and put away.
Any crime perpetrated by someone held responsible for the victim or subject by reasonable judgement shall be tried and sentenced as escalated one step more severe than the normal context of the crime, according to the following list:
infraction -> misdemeanor -> gross misdemeanor -> felony -> capital crime.
Therefore, while "beating someone up" might be a gross misdemeanor assault in the eyes of the law, when performed by a custodial parent on their child, or a nursing attendant on one of their wards, it would be considered a felony.
Petty theft of $100 might be a misdemeanor, but when it's done by someone in custody of the cash drawer, it's a gross misdemeanor.
By this standard, however, sitting members of Congress and the President could be considered to be "responsible" for the entire country, and thus automatically always escalated.
-Styopa
I'm just curious if these are the same people who penetrated the SR site via phpMyAdmin, over the Internet, on 192.168.1.24?
I mean, what motivation could there have been at play?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Have gnu, will travel.
n/t
Noobs
Seriously, I cannot see the charges sticking in court when the judge will decide to not prosecute them because it would be deemed not to be in the public interest (for obvious reasons)
I mean these guys evidence/affidavids would have been shquashed and unidminssible if this came out during/before the trial. Now this is corruption at its best. Les see if we can find out if the prosecutors knew about this dring the trial.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
These two were tied up in the chain of evidence that led to his conviction, so depending on what gets tossed he has a chance here. Now he did admit that at one time he was DPR and that he had resumed work under the alias so he's probably not going to get everything overturned. But his defense was that someone else associated possibly with MTGOX was the mastermind framing him more recently.
So what's intriguing here is that one of the investigators was doing some shenanigams with MTGOX accounts and was involved in seizing MTGOX assets. Since MT GOX started having liquidity problems right during this investigation of Silk road, it really makes you wonder if this is where some of those missing assets went.
Furthermore the agents appear to have done things as their shenanigans came to light to obfuscate the trail back to them. This is not too far afield from ulricht's claim that someone was framing him, asking him to step in as DPR, and putting keys on his computer.
It actually seems it's not far fetched to imagine Ulricht was telling the truth about having relinquished DPR that someone suddenly invited him back into the game as the FBI closed in. Perhaps there's some grains of truth in there somewhere. e.g. maybe one of the agents did add his bitcoin keys to Urichts computers.
Given those sorts of conjectures it seems very reasonable he should get a new trial. He's guilty by his own admission, but maybe not guilty of everything he's charged with.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Plus on above - wish I had mod point today.
BUT it is extremely relevant. If two of the main investigators (or more) were stealing during the investigation, creating false identities there, and they did not disclose it to the defense, it is enough to declare a mistrial. It could be used to impeach their testimony, discredit them, and destroy the "I" in "FBI" (integrity).
and IAAL
Nonsense. The "fruit of the poisonous tree" metaphore refers to illegally-obtained evidence. Stuff stolen from the evidence locker — after it was legally collected — has nothing to do with it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Derp derp "Let's all live in a libertarian utopia where the government operates on sunshine and lollipops, roads are built by wealthy magnates with chiseled features, and everyone is happy to beg and scrape for pennies to be permitted to work for them." Derp derp
It takes a thief to catch a thief.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Forget these two guys and their bitcoin score, how much CASH walks away during drug investigations? How much is outright stolen, how much is extorted? How much is taken in product in lieu of cash?
This is one of the most pernicious aspects to drug criminalization, the huge potential for corruption by law enforcement.
And it's just another problem completely eliminated by legalization.
Such a thing is completely unheard of!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Do you seriously believe that's what libertarians want or are you knowingly attacking a position that no person actually holds?
You'd think so called 'experts' would be savvy enough to use a mixer service, and to well connected enough to know which mixer services are legit and which are honeypots to catch money laundering criminals.
ok ok, forget the lollipops.
The affidavit states that Force had a $150k salary. Granted that isn't going to buy you any yachts any time soon, but he's accused of stealing less than a million dollars. If I had an opportunity to try to steal six or seven times my salary from the evidence locker of my local PD, and I lacked more scruples than a sociopath, I sure as fuck still wouldn't even dare. Actually I don't think I'd do it for any amount of money, since I don't really like the idea of giving the government an actually very good reason to throw me in a cage for 30 years, but if you're going to take that kind of risk on, why not just take your salary and go to Vegas? At least then you're only out your money and maybe some dignity from a miscellany of collections jackals. And to top it all off, he already had a front row seat to see just how utterly fucked the people who do precisely this kind of crime are. How stupid do you have to be to risk throwing away a steady, financially secure life like that? Also, the agent who wrote the complaint is Tigran Gambaryan. Why would you fuck with someone with a name like that?
Remember kids, when you pay your colleagues to look the other way, use real cash and not bitcoins. If they don't get their hands dirty, they'll still rat on you.
Do you seriously believe that's what libertarians want or are you knowingly attacking a position that no person actually holds?
He's attacking the position they effectively hold behind all the barely formed BS which doesn't explain how they'll actually keep society running. "Don't worry charity will take care of..." what exactly? Because they certainly don't donate 20-40% of their income to charity at the moment.
I'll go after this because it ties into a pet peeve of mine with too many tv scripts.
"...proving someone is the owner of a given bitcoin wallet is much harder to do than to prove a person is the owner of a bank account..."
Going down the "prove it" road with the police is just bad news. Too many times it screams "I'm guilty but haha". If you're innocent even though a conspiracy of 4 people framed you, do get that good lawyer but then claim your innocence and let the "episode" unfold.
If you get all "come and get me and try to prove it", then you make an error, you're hosed.
One of the cool things about some of the homicide shows is occasionally the interrogating detective will say "look, we've got you on x financial offense, but we need your help as a witness so we'll reduce that as much as we can, maybe to community service plus restitution." But if the suspect gets all smug, even when innocent, then the cops just get grumpy and go for the 5 years in prison max penalty.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
McNulty would be proud
Because it is much better to have people with guns forcibly take money from you and give it to people that they deem to need it more than you.
Just goes to show, humans are all the same. Some are just too stupid and get caught. While others are too timid and proud to act on their impulses.
Well if that's your attitude, then bitcoin is even more secure. Because you can do whatever you want with bitcoin, and there is a good chance the police will simply arrest someone else for your crimes and easily convict them.
Unfortunately this also means that you may also be easily be convicted for someone else's crimes, but not using bitcoin won't help you avoid a false conviction, so you should just use it anyway.
I don't know what anything I said has to do with TV scripts, but the day that the justice system no longer needs to prove guilt (to some standard, e.g. beyond a reasonable doubt), is the day that we no longer have a justice system.
Corrupt DEA agents? Inconceivable!!!
Secret Service agents involved in criminal activities? Inconceivable!!!!
DPR's claims of being setup? Inconceivable!!!
My misunderstanding of what inconceivable means? Only sarcastically.
These guys stole Bitcoins? As the saying goes, "and nothing of value was lost".
"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's", the fact you have even have wealth to tax is a product of the civilization framework provided by government. Taxes buy civilization quite literally. One can make arguments about waste and whatnot, but to say taxes should be done away with is short sighted.
Crooked vice cops. Way to contradict a stereotype, guys.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.