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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.
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.
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.
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
n/t
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*
I always see that, sometimes even on systems I co-administer and its like....really? YOu don't even change the fucking alias so someone can't just go "gee I wonder if phpmyadmin is installed?" and go to the fucking default URL.
I know its convinent as fuck but this is bad practice in production even if you are not running a multimillion dollar black market operation. If you are dumb enough to expose that to the internet, at least expose it with a URL you chose ffs.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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.
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?