Shaun W. Bridges, 35, of Laurel, Md., was convicted to 24 months in penitentiary by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco following his beginning guilty plea to one count of money laundering. Judge Seeborg requested that the sentence is served consecutively to a previous sentence that Bridges is currently serving. Bridges were also requested to forfeit approximately 1,500 bitcoin and other fiat money which has a current value of around $10.4 million.
Bridges had been a Special Agent with the U.S. Secret Service for nearly six years in the Baltimore Field Office. Between 2012 and 2014, he was attributed to the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force, a multi-agency group studying illegal activity on the Silk Road, a covert online marketplace for illicit goods, including drugs. Bridges’ duties included, among other things, conducting forensic computer examinations in an effort to locate, identify and execute targets of the Baltimore Task Force, including Ross Ulbricht, aka “Dread Pirate Roberts,” who ran the Silk Road from the Northern District of California. In 2015, Bridges was checked and taken into custody on sales related to the theft of about 1,600 bitcoin from a digital wallet belonging to the U.S. government. According to admissions made in contact with his guilty plea, Bridges admitted to using a secret key to access a digital wallet belonging to the U.S. government and finally transferring the bitcoin to other digital wallets at other bitcoin exchanges to which only he had access. As part of his plea, Bridges allowed to turn over the stolen bitcoin to U.S. agents.
The case is being examined by the FBI’s San Francisco Division, IRS-CI’s Washington, D.C. Field Office Cyber Crimes Unit, and the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General in Washington D.C. The case is being executed by Assistant U.S. Attorney William Frentzen and Trial Attorney Richard B. Evans of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Division.
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