A former Secret Service agent who has once pleaded guilty to stealing from the now-defunct Silk Road website—in which he was part of the investigating team—has been arrested a day before he was scheduled to begin his prison sentence.
Shaun Bridges was arrested last week at his home in Maryland, The Guardian reported. According to the report, which quoted court documents, arresting officers discovered bags “containing Bridges’s passport and a notarized copy of his passport” and Secret Service-issued bulletproof vests that authorities believed had been stolen from the government.
Authorities also found corporate records for three offshore accounts in Nevis, Belize and Mauritius, the news outlet reported.
Bridges was due to start his prison sentence on the day after his arrest, according to reports. Last year, the former federal agent pleaded guilty to money laundering and obstruction of justice, diverting more than $820,000 worth of bitcoin to his personal account during the course of the investigation of online black market Silk Road.
In his plea, Bridges admitted that he funneled the 20,000 bitcoins through a series of “complex transactions” before converting them into U.S. dollars in May 2013.
Bridges was part of a task force investigating Silk Road along with former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Carl Force. Force, who pleaded guilty to similar charges and extortion in July last year, created an unauthorized alias to extort $250,000 from Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht and then offered to sell information about the investigation for $100,000.
Ulbricht ran the website under the name Dead Pirate Roberts between 2011 and 2013, when he was caught red-handed by a law enforcement sting in a San Francisco coffee shop. The Texan was sentenced to life in prison on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and a whole host of other cybercrimes.
Meanwhile, federal authorities also arrested Roger Thomas Clark in Thailand late last year. The Canadian, who also went by the name Variety Jones, is believed to be a close confidante of Ulbricht.
U.S. prosecutors said Clark advised the Silk Road owner on all aspects of the website’s operations and also “helped him grow the site into an extensive criminal enterprise.”
