8 ms·

This isn't newsworthy, the incident happened in 2013 and he was already caught, sentenced, and sent to jail in 2015. He received 71 months in prison. His partne

This isn't newsworthy, the incident happened in 2013 and he was already caught, sentenced, and sent to jail in 2015. He received 71 months in prison. His partner in crime (Carl Force) received six years in prison (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10417551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10417551). The whole incident was well publicized in the media (thousands of articles). The only new thing this one adds is that the DoJ announced he is receiving additional sentencing. The submission title is clickbait, and does not reflect the article's contents. A better title would be "Secret Service Agent receives additional 24 month sentence for theft of 1,600 Silk Road Bitcoins". If you're interested in the background for the case, WIRED has a good article from March 2015 [1], as well as a link to the pair's criminal charges [2] . [0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-secret-service-agent-sentenced-71-months-scheme-related-silk-road-investigation https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-secret-service-agent-s... [1] https://www.wired.com/2015/03/dea-agent-charged-acting-paid-mole-silk-road/ https://www.wired.com/2015/03/dea-agent-charged-acting-paid-... [2] https://www.scribd.com/document/260409270/Force-Bridges-Criminal-Complaint#fullscreen&from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/260409270/Force-Bridges-Crim...

tryingagainbro 9y ago
It will be newsworthy even 5000 years from now just as some things from 5000 years ago are news worthy today. Power. Corruption and all.
- tawayway 9y ago
  Personally, I would be surprised to read about well-documented theft committed by ancient Pharaohs in tomorrow's newspapers.
  - zdkl 9y ago
    I'd like to!
  - viraptor 9y ago
    Can Pharaoh steal anything? Wouldn't that be more of a personalised tax at the time? Compared to killing servants so they can help the Pharaoh in the afterlife, theft is kind of meh...
  - pjc50 9y ago
    I'm reminded of the 3750 year old customer complaint letter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir
    - quickben 9y ago
      Thanks for that interesting bit. Any links about what happened after? I guess it's lost in the history now, sadly.
      - rangibaby 9y ago
        Everyone died
    - aidos 9y ago
      That's so good. That offers such an insight into lives from long ago. It's weird how I suddenly felt so attached to the business frustrations of the ancient babylonians! Apologies, I've stolen it myself https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669759
      - Fuxy 9y ago
        The sad thing is none of the customer complaints of today will ever last as long as that did due to the lack of long term storage devices. We really need a long term storage solution for our data as a society or risk having another period of dark ages in the future.
  - tryingagainbro 9y ago
    Let me explain: people who have a chance to steal (or another word) will do so. Of course will I get caught, chances of that, possible stealing...will be calculated. Some steal little, some steal as much as the can. Some will get caught, others will get medals
- dump121 9y ago
  Isn't it simply theft and punishment. Not sure how newsworthy are 5000 year old thefts.
  - tryingagainbro 9y ago
    Hmmm...someone in ancient Egypt--via state connections--had the chance to steal xx kg ok gold simply by using his position and did it...
    - notahacker 9y ago
      The empty tombs and records of people supposed to be guarding them would suggest it happened quite a lot...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
arachnophobe 9y ago
Agreed about the clickbait title - he didn't steal from the Silk Road wallet: "Bridges was arrested and taken into custody on charges related to the theft of approximately 1,600 bitcoin from a digital wallet belonging to the U.S. government"
- tristanj 9y ago
  >he didn't steal from the Silk Road wallet The authors are simplifying, at the time he stole the coins they belonged to the Silk Road. Later the U.S. seized all bitcoins belonging to the Silk Road. Bridges lied about the coins and never gave the coins back to the govt, hence the theft.
nikcub 9y ago
This is a new crime. The original crimes he plead guilty to in 2015 and was sentenced (money laundering, obstruction of justice). This new crime he plead guilty to a few months ago and was sentenced this week (money laundering). The new crime is that after he had plead guilty in the 2015 case he was out on bond awaiting sentencing. During that time he took a backup of the Bitcoin private key for the 1,600 Bitcoin the USG had seized from him and moved them to an offshore account. The USG went to sell or move the Bitcoin they had seized from Bridges and found all of the addresses empty He was caught (again) and plead guilty (again) - and this time handed over all of his keys and hardware wallet and returned the 1,000 (on a hardware wallet) + 600 (in a market account) coins As an aside - the obstruction of justice charge is insane. In his first theft, he transferred some coins to a personal MtGox account. He later learned that the USG was investigating MtGox and knew that eventually they would discover his MtGox account if it was seized. So he transferred his MtGox coin out and then sent them a seizure notice so that they would be tipped off to the investigation. It had its intended affect - the DOJ called off its investigation into MtGox (this was mentioned in sentencing memo) Ars do a good summary of the new charges and some of the other aspects of the case: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/corrupt-agent-who-investigated-silk-road-is-suspected-of-another-700k-heist/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/corrupt-agent-wh... edit: To add, we don't get many technical details of this case because of the plea - but i'm curious to know for certain how they traced the second theft back to Bridges and how they found his new Bitfinex account. It isn't hard to believe they always suspected he had taken them, and then worked backwards looking at his movement etc. - but for now we can mostly only speculate Here is what we do know. A day before he was supposed to hand himself in, he was raided and they found id documents, offshore corporate records, a new passport, citizenship applications for his wife for a third country, a macbook with serial number filed off, etc. Its likely they subpoenaed bitcoin markets for those offshore entity names. It also looked like he was going to run: http://ia601308.us.archive.org/17/items/gov.uscourts.cand.288494/gov.uscourts.cand.288494.116.0.pdf http://ia601308.us.archive.org/17/items/gov.uscourts.cand.28...
- davidsong 9y ago
  > a macbook with serial number filed off This really tickled me for some reason. Does he know something that we don't?
MadcapJake 9y ago
What's most fascinating to me is that the sentencing for bitcoin theft lends credence to its legitimacy as a currency.
- masukomi 9y ago
  yeah, honestly i don't get it. I thought the feds had already explicitly declared that bitcoin wasn't valid currency. How can you do "money laundering" by taking something that isn't a currency and moving its location, and at no point converting it into something that is recognized as currency?
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > I thought the feds had already explicitly declared that bitcoin wasn't valid currency. No, they didn't. You are probably confusing a determination of what category it falls into in tax law as having a broader meaning that it does. > How can you do "money laundering" by taking something that isn't a currency and moving its location, and at no point converting it into something that is recognized as currency? The US “money laundering” statute concerns primarily “monetary instruments”, whose definition includes (among other things) “investment securities”. Nothing has to be or be converted to currency. See 18 U.S.C. § 1956.
- NeonVice 9y ago
  Bitcoin is taxed the same as personal property, so when you sell it for a profit you have to pay capital gains taxes. That leads me to believe that there is already legal recognition of a virtual currency as property, but not necessarily currency.

tryingagainbro 9y ago

It will be newsworthy even 5000 years from now just as some things from 5000 years ago are news worthy today. Power. Corruption and all.

tawayway 9y ago
Personally, I would be surprised to read about well-documented theft committed by ancient Pharaohs in tomorrow's newspapers.
- zdkl 9y ago
  I'd like to!
- viraptor 9y ago
  Can Pharaoh steal anything? Wouldn't that be more of a personalised tax at the time? Compared to killing servants so they can help the Pharaoh in the afterlife, theft is kind of meh...
- pjc50 9y ago
  I'm reminded of the 3750 year old customer complaint letter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir
  - quickben 9y ago
    Thanks for that interesting bit. Any links about what happened after? I guess it's lost in the history now, sadly.
    - rangibaby 9y ago
      Everyone died
  - aidos 9y ago
    That's so good. That offers such an insight into lives from long ago. It's weird how I suddenly felt so attached to the business frustrations of the ancient babylonians! Apologies, I've stolen it myself https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669759
    - Fuxy 9y ago
      The sad thing is none of the customer complaints of today will ever last as long as that did due to the lack of long term storage devices. We really need a long term storage solution for our data as a society or risk having another period of dark ages in the future.
- tryingagainbro 9y ago
  Let me explain: people who have a chance to steal (or another word) will do so. Of course will I get caught, chances of that, possible stealing...will be calculated. Some steal little, some steal as much as the can. Some will get caught, others will get medals
dump121 9y ago
Isn't it simply theft and punishment. Not sure how newsworthy are 5000 year old thefts.
- tryingagainbro 9y ago
  Hmmm...someone in ancient Egypt--via state connections--had the chance to steal xx kg ok gold simply by using his position and did it...
  - notahacker 9y ago
    The empty tombs and records of people supposed to be guarding them would suggest it happened quite a lot...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

arachnophobe 9y ago

Agreed about the clickbait title - he didn't steal from the Silk Road wallet: "Bridges was arrested and taken into custody on charges related to the theft of approximately 1,600 bitcoin from a digital wallet belonging to the U.S. government"

tristanj 9y ago
>he didn't steal from the Silk Road wallet The authors are simplifying, at the time he stole the coins they belonged to the Silk Road. Later the U.S. seized all bitcoins belonging to the Silk Road. Bridges lied about the coins and never gave the coins back to the govt, hence the theft.

nikcub 9y ago

This is a new crime. The original crimes he plead guilty to in 2015 and was sentenced (money laundering, obstruction of justice). This new crime he plead guilty to a few months ago and was sentenced this week (money laundering). The new crime is that after he had plead guilty in the 2015 case he was out on bond awaiting sentencing. During that time he took a backup of the Bitcoin private key for the 1,600 Bitcoin the USG had seized from him and moved them to an offshore account. The USG went to sell or move the Bitcoin they had seized from Bridges and found all of the addresses empty He was caught (again) and plead guilty (again) - and this time handed over all of his keys and hardware wallet and returned the 1,000 (on a hardware wallet) + 600 (in a market account) coins As an aside - the obstruction of justice charge is insane. In his first theft, he transferred some coins to a personal MtGox account. He later learned that the USG was investigating MtGox and knew that eventually they would discover his MtGox account if it was seized. So he transferred his MtGox coin out and then sent them a seizure notice so that they would be tipped off to the investigation. It had its intended affect - the DOJ called off its investigation into MtGox (this was mentioned in sentencing memo) Ars do a good summary of the new charges and some of the other aspects of the case: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/corrupt-agent-who-investigated-silk-road-is-suspected-of-another-700k-heist/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/corrupt-agent-wh... edit: To add, we don't get many technical details of this case because of the plea - but i'm curious to know for certain how they traced the second theft back to Bridges and how they found his new Bitfinex account. It isn't hard to believe they always suspected he had taken them, and then worked backwards looking at his movement etc. - but for now we can mostly only speculate Here is what we do know. A day before he was supposed to hand himself in, he was raided and they found id documents, offshore corporate records, a new passport, citizenship applications for his wife for a third country, a macbook with serial number filed off, etc. Its likely they subpoenaed bitcoin markets for those offshore entity names. It also looked like he was going to run: http://ia601308.us.archive.org/17/items/gov.uscourts.cand.288494/gov.uscourts.cand.288494.116.0.pdf http://ia601308.us.archive.org/17/items/gov.uscourts.cand.28...

davidsong 9y ago
> a macbook with serial number filed off This really tickled me for some reason. Does he know something that we don't?

MadcapJake 9y ago

What's most fascinating to me is that the sentencing for bitcoin theft lends credence to its legitimacy as a currency.

masukomi 9y ago
yeah, honestly i don't get it. I thought the feds had already explicitly declared that bitcoin wasn't valid currency. How can you do "money laundering" by taking something that isn't a currency and moving its location, and at no point converting it into something that is recognized as currency?
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > I thought the feds had already explicitly declared that bitcoin wasn't valid currency. No, they didn't. You are probably confusing a determination of what category it falls into in tax law as having a broader meaning that it does. > How can you do "money laundering" by taking something that isn't a currency and moving its location, and at no point converting it into something that is recognized as currency? The US “money laundering” statute concerns primarily “monetary instruments”, whose definition includes (among other things) “investment securities”. Nothing has to be or be converted to currency. See 18 U.S.C. § 1956.
NeonVice 9y ago
Bitcoin is taxed the same as personal property, so when you sell it for a profit you have to pay capital gains taxes. That leads me to believe that there is already legal recognition of a virtual currency as property, but not necessarily currency.