Second U.S. Agent Agrees to Plead Guilty to Bitcoin Theft

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-23/second-u-s-agent-agrees-to-plead-guilty-to-bitcoin-theft

by sidko • 11 years ago

174 88 11 years ago

trhway5• 11 years ago

In addition, prosecutors allege Force used his supervisor’s signature stamp on a subpoena to unfreeze one of his own accounts that had been blocked for suspicious activity.

...

Bridges allegedly filed an affidavit for a warrant to seize the Mt. Gox Co. exchange, where Silk Road bitcoins were stored, and its owner’s bank accounts two days after he had taken his own money out of it, according to the criminal complaint.

this couple of bad FBI apples obviously can't cast any doubt onto the integrity of the rest of the FBI Silk Road team (consisting mainly of pure-breed white knights in shiny Lexuses) nor onto the integrity of the whole investigation and conviction....... The trial was 3 ring circus beyond reasonable doubt. F&cking clowns. It isn't the issue whether DPR was this guy or not, or whether he really hired a killer. The issue is that my taxes are extorted from me in order to, supposedly, finance justice process, and what i've got for my money was a show so lame that it wasn't worth even a rotten tomato to throw at it.

In the light of the so far surfaced crimes by the FBI agents the epic heroic story http://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/ looks like a new story:

"DPR believed that Nob was a Puerto Rican cartel middleman named Eladio Guzman, but he was in fact DEA agent Carl Force. Force had spent more than a year developing his undercover identity on Silk Road in an effort to get close to DPR. They’d become confidants, spending nights chatting at such length that DPR trusted Nob when he needed enforcement muscle.

It was Nob whom DPR hired to kill his employee, Curtis Green. Force then coerced Green into faking his own death as a ruse. Force was surprised to see DPR’s moral collapse up close, but then again, he’d seen this kind of thing before, during his younger DEA years in undercover. He too had experienced the temptations that came with a double identity. In fact, his secret life as a hard-partying operator had nearly destroyed his regular life. He’d left all that behind and recommitted himself to Christ. The Silk Road case was his first undercover role since those days, and it was a big one. Because of his tenure online as Nob, Force was able to carry out the supposed “hit” on Green, setting DPR up for a murder conspiracy indictment while at the same time cementing their relationship. Nob and DPR had become comrades-in-arms."

I mean, obviously, this heroic Force whose court testimonies and affidavits sent the guy for life couldn't be the same Force who stole the money. I mean we're talking about commitment to Christ after all... Did i mention clowns?

And this one is the icing - http://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahjeong/2015/03/31/force-and-...:

"A state’s witness took the fall for an agent’s theft, thus becoming the target for a murder-for-hire—a murder that was then faked by the same agent. The Silk Road case was compromised again and again as Force and Bridges allegedly took every opportunity to embezzle and steal money. With so much bitcoin on their hands, the two had to coax various bitcoin and payments companies to help convert their ill-gotten gains to dollars. When companies resisted, investigations were launched, subpoenas were issued, and civil forfeitures were sought in retaliation."

deepnet• 11 years ago

Is this what the judge referred to in sentencing DPR ?

shit_parade2• 11 years ago

The American legal system lacks any semblance of justice or legitimacy. It is a system designed to empower and serve the State.

ikeboy4• 11 years ago

I mean, obviously, this heroic Force whose court testimonies and affidavits sent the guy for life couldn't be the same Force who stole the money.

There was no affidavit or testimony by Force or Bridges, as far as I know. Please source that if true.

trhway5• 11 years ago

http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/download.html?id=33909420&z...

this is Ulbricht's murder-for-hire case in Maryland (the undercover agent in the indictment is obviously Force). That murder-for-hire charge has strongly affected the New York case, in particular it was the basis for denying bail to Ulbricht, not disclosing prosecution witnesses until the trial, and was also used as a strong argument in support of suppressing Ulbricht's 4th Amendment rights (http://www.scribd.com/doc/238796613/Silk-Road-Prosecution-4t...). After all, the FBI stole the Ulbricht's laptop from the library. And obviously such murder charge "helped" the Judge to make up her mind, especially with respect to sentencing, and prepare her Grand Condemnation Speech (and to not let the Speech go waste the Judge didn't let the Ulbricht's defense to bring up the Force's and Bridge's crimes while that murder charge based on the Force's testimonies was heavily affecting the case).

mox1• 11 years ago

They were DEA Agents, not FBI.

trhway5• 11 years ago

That explains why the guys were ratted out by FBI :)

ipsin• 11 years ago

I'll be interested to see what a gross abuse of power gets you, in terms of sentencing.

serf• 11 years ago

it seems to be related to the amount of people involved.

If you run away with a bag of cash, you'll get (metaphorically) beheaded.

If you and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Countrywide run away with a bag of cash, prepare for a fairly bad spanking.

ghayes• 11 years ago

As they say: if you owe your banker one million dollars, he has you by the balls. If you owe your banker one billion dollars, you have him by the balls.

Edit: phrasing

Lorento• 11 years ago

If you kill one man, you're a murderer. If you kill thousands, you're a conqueror.

facetube• 11 years ago

A generous plea bargain: http://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahjeong/2015/06/17/imminent-p....

swombat2• 11 years ago

Looking at the other side of the coin, perhaps also worth asking (even if the answer is a negative):

Given what we know about the coercive nature of the plea system in the US, which frequently forces people to plead guilty even when they're innocent, to avoid a very expensive, long, and likely "unhappy-ending" trial, is it possible that these FBI agents are actually innocent and simply being coerced into filing guilty pleas to turn 20 year sentences into 5 year sentences?

I mean, this is almost a banana republic we're talking about here after all. What was the percentage of people putting in guilty pleas who are innocent? I can't find the article but I recall it was quite high. If we apply this line of thinking to people we like, we should also apply it to people we don't like.

martin1975• 11 years ago

Would you be coerced to plea guilty knowing you were innocent?

swombat2• 11 years ago

Apparently that's very common in the US. Innocence is certainly no guarantee you'll win in the US criminal court system.

Sacho• 11 years ago

Absolutely. Litigation is ruinously expensive and prosecutors have an almost flawless conviction rate. When you're placed in such a shitty situation where you get the choice of ruining your life a little and ruining your life a lot(and possibly your family and friends' lives as they try to help you along), it's not as cut and dry as "would you plead guilty knowing you were innocent". People do this every day. It's why prosecutors pile charges on, and it works.

Riseed• 11 years ago

If you're innocent, by the time you get to pleading, the system has already proven to you that it doesn't work. Even assuming no misbehavior (e.g. planted evidence), the police found you guilty enough to investigate, a judge found you guilty enough to arrest, and a prosecutor found you guilty enough to charge. Why would you gamble and dare think the trial in such a system would work any better?

hueving• 11 years ago

Yes, that's the whole issue. Many times people are offered deals that look better than the ridiculous sentences they will get if they happen to lose. If you don't have a strong alibi, it's tempting to take the deal.

gambiting• 11 years ago

There was an article on HN recently about a young man who spent nearly a year in jail, waiting for trial. Basically the prosecutor came to him,said "look, you can plead guilty, they will give you a 1 year sentence, take into account that you've been here for a year, you will be released and home within a week. Or, you can go to trial, which can go for months, and then you might end up with a 3-5 year long sentence".

What would you do in this situation? Even if he was completely innocent, the temptation to go home right now, to end the nightmare, must be absolutely huge. I can only guess that there are thousands of people like this in US.

pessimizer• 11 years ago

I have been. The prosecutor knew I was innocent too, but didn't care. It was a choice between paying court costs and having a suspended sentence hanging above my head, or potentially getting 3 years in prison. As a black 19 year-old in a white court in Arkansas, the smart choice was obvious.

hluska• 11 years ago

It's definitely very possible, though I have two cautions.

1) Police do not take investigating their own lightly and thus most likely have very strong evidence.

2) I don't know the details of these fellows' careers, but presumably they know procedure, know good defense attorneys and would be far more capable of assisting in their own defense than the average citizen.

pmorici• 11 years ago

The evidence is pretty damming. There are emails that various Bitcoin companies have released publicly showing how these two agents tried to extort them. The way the investigation started to begin with is because they were reported to the authorities by an exchange for acting shady that links them to the transactions in the blockchain and the block chain doesn't lie.

juliangregorian• 11 years ago

Hey, if it gets crooked cops booked that's one of the best arguments for Bitcoin that I know of.

pvg• 11 years ago

Hang on, what is the evidence you have we're talking about a 'banana republic' or that the people who plead to stealing bitcoin did not, in fact, steal bitcoin but I don't know, did something else that involves not-stealing bitcoin? What is your plausible alternative theory of 'some bad actors stole bitcoin'?

happyscrappy• 11 years ago

Chinese purchase real estate in the US because of the strength of the rule of law. The US borrows money at low rates because investors know it will be paid back. Swombat thinks American is a banana republic because he can't see past his own hate.

rayiner7• 11 years ago

I assume the number you're referring to is from Judge Jed S. Rakoff's editorial: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/why-inn... ("How prevalent is the phenomenon of innocent people pleading guilty? The few criminologists who have thus far investigated the phenomenon estimate that the overall rate for convicted felons as a whole is between 2 percent and 8 percent...")

So between 92% and 98% of the time, plea bargaining gets things right. The "beyond a reasonable doubt" jury trial standard is unlikely to be more than 95% and is in practice probably 90% or lower: http://federaltaxcrimes.blogspot.com/2014/09/proof-beyond-re.... So if the 2-8% error rate is correct, it's not clear that plea bargaining leads to more innocent people being convicted than jury trials.

Moreover, it's unclear to me that you can do much better than 90-95% accuracy. Say you set the threshold at 99.9%, only convicting when the proof is overwhelming. What would be your rate of false negatives (i.e. where you let a guilty person go)? And how would society react to that? There's a false negative rate beyond which people will push back on the court system as being too lenient on the accused. You can already see this in areas of the law where proof is difficult. For example, I think the crazy administrative proceedings for rape cases in college campuses arose, in part, because of the difficulty of holding guilty people accountable in the court system.

jacquesm4• 11 years ago

How does that rate of between 2 and 8% innocents jailed compare to other countries?

It would seem to be terribly high, if you take the number of people in jail in the USA as an input and you work out the numbers that comes down to 2% of 2.3M which is 46,000 and 8% of 2.3M which is 184,000!

arca_vorago3• 11 years ago

"The few criminologists who have thus far investigated the phenomenon estimate that the overall rate for convicted felons as a whole is between 2 percent and 8 percent."

I'm sorry but you are quoting an article that doesn't give a proper citation for this at all, so please don't rely on these probably woefully underestimated numbers. I'd be happy to have it pointed out to me if I missed their source though, but for now;

What few criminologists? How do they know there are only a few? Did they do a survey or what papers are they basing this on?

This lack of sourcing undermines the rest of your comment, not to mention you imply that the jury trial standard is "90% or lower" when you don't even specify that what you link is related to tax crimes only...

"Moreover, it's unclear to me that you can do much better than 90-95% accuracy."

Again, you basically smushed these numbers in to fit your narrative, and they are not reliable at all, so your entire argument falls flat.

" What would be your rate of false negatives (i.e. where you let a guilty person go)? And how would society react to that?"

In a society that values the principles of law and the rule of law, it is better to let a guilty man go than an innocent one, given that they should be innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately our society seems less and less inclined to care about the rule of law, so I'm guessing "society" wouldn't give a fuck about a few more guilty people being let free, just like they don't really seem to give a fuck about innocent people being jailed.

Sorry if I'm being to negative, I just really don't understand where you were trying to go with your comment and it's bad statistics. Feel free to elaborate and correct me.

tptacek7• 11 years ago

It's not just the error rates. Criminal trials are enormously expensive. Every time an accused person goes to trial on incontestable facts, they are taking resources away from people have been accused without facts or law backing the prosecutors up. The results are an even more kafka-esque nightmare for the innocent accused, who must wait in holding cells for court dockets to open up to make time for their exoneration.

spinlock4• 11 years ago

The problem is that our system is incredibly racist and classist. Here's an example of a teenager who spent 3 years at Ryker's Island before his trial: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-law. If he had plead guilty, he would have spent _less_ time in prison. The poor don't get to sit at home and wait for their trial, they get to sit in prison and wait for their trial. The rich get to go home and live their lives while their lawyers push back.

rip747• 11 years ago

It kills me that our legal system is like this. You should never has to "give in" simply because you face a harsher sentence if you exercise your right to defend yourself. I don't see why our justice system simply lowers sentences or fine individuals rather than tacking on ridiculous sentences.

fredgrott• 11 years ago

their trial was delayed so that the Silk Road trial defendant could not have counterpoint to offer in defense..seems like that move points towards that the fed gov thought agent was guilty

cm2187• 11 years ago

It is useful to get these regular reminders that the authorities to which we give every day more power, are as human as they have ever been. Reading this, it is not exactly outside of the realm of realism that an FBI/NSA/GCHQ/etc agent would sell private personal data collected in the name of anti-terrorism!

spinlock4• 11 years ago

I'm just glad these heroes are keeping us safe.

Second U.S. Agent Agrees to Plead Guilty to Bitcoin Theft

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