InfoBytes Blog
DOJ Announces Sentencing of Former DEA Agent for Criminal Involvement in Silk Road Investigation
On October 19, the DOJ announced that a former DEA agent was sentenced to 78 months in prison for crimes he committed while working as an undercover agent in the Silk Road investigation. On July 1, the former DEA agent pleaded guilty to charges of extortion, money laundering, and obstruction of justice. Using his DEA-sanctioned persona, “Nob,” the former agent sold Ross Ulbricht – Silk Road’s convicted operator – fake drivers’ licenses and inside information about the investigation, directing Ulbricht to conceal his payments, which were made in bitcoin, using encrypted messaging. Understanding that the payments were government property and constituted evidence of a crime, the former agent admitted to falsifying reports and depositing the funds into his own personal bank accounts, receiving more than $100,000 in bitcoin payments from Ulbricht. In addition, the former agent created another, not government-sanctioned online persona, “French Maid,” which he used to solicit and receive approximately $100,000 in bitcoins from Ulbricht in exchange for information on the government’s Silk Road investigation. The former agent also admitted to serving as the chief compliance officer for a digital currency exchange company, even though he did not receive permission from the DEA to do so. In February 2014, the company alerted him to suspicious activity in a certain account, but, using his capacity as a DEA agent, the former agent directed the company to freeze $337,000 in cash and digital currency from the account, and then transferred $300,000 of the digital currency into an account he controlled. In addition to his prison sentence and post-sentence supervision, the former DEA agent will pay $340,000 in restitution.