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Bitcoin karma: Former DEA agent gets 78 months for stealing during Silk Road investigation
A now former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent has been sent to prison for 78 months after pleading guilty to stealing Bitcoins during the Federal investigation that brought down notorious drug marketplace Silk Road.
According to reports Carl Force, the former agent, admitted to charges including extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice.
Despite pleading guilty, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg didn’t look on the agent kindly, stating that “The extent and the scope of Mr. Force’s betrayal of public trust is quite simply breathtaking,” and that “it is compounded by the fact that it appears to have been motivated by greed and thrill seeking, including the pursuit of a book and movie deal.”
As we covered back in March, Force was alleged to have stolen and converted to his own personal use a sizable amount of Bitcoins, along with, remarkably given he was a lead agent in the Silk Road investigation, having acted as a paid informant to Ross Ulbricht (the Silk Road operator), and sold information about the investigation back to Ulbricht under two different pseudonyms, one of which was “Nob,” and received various payments from Ulbricht for inside information of the investigation to a total of $776,000.
Force’s attorneys argued before the court that he deserved less time because of mental health issues, with Force apologizing before the court, stating that “I’m sorry, I lost it and I don’t understand a lot of it.”
How one doesn’t understand selling inside information on a Federal investigation was not made clear.
Co-conspirator and Silk Road mastermind Ulbricht, known online as “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was found guilty in a trial back in February on charges including conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking, conspiring to commit computer hacking and conspiring to commit money laundering and was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment.
In addition to his crimes involving Silk Road and Ulbricht, Force was also found to have ripped off a customer of Bitcoin exchange CoinMKT; Force stole $370,000 from the customer only identified as “RP.”
As part of his sentence, Force was ordered today to pay $337,000 in restitution to the victim, and $3,000 to Curtis Green, a former Silk Road staffer who Force’s team arrested.
Image credit: dubwise_version/Flickr/CC by 2.0
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