The massive Silk Road drug bust some 18 months ago has finally seen two of America’s top cops arrested for their illicit roles in aiding and abetting the online criminal enterprise.
The Drug Enforcement Agency’s special agent, Carl Force, and the Secret Service’s special agent, Shaun Bridges, were both arrested and arraigned last week on a bevy of counts ranging from money laundering to wire fraud.
The various corruption charges leveled against each dirty cop stem from a months-long investigation quietly conducted by the FBI’s New York division, in cooperation with the Chicago Department of Homeland Security and the IRS.
Those federal agencies found that Baltimore DEA officer Carl Force, in particular, aggressively served his underworld bosses for considerable profit and gain, including by acting as a mole so to thwart the government’s attempt to apprehend the web-based druglords.
Secret Service officer Bridges, on the other hand, relied on a somewhat less duplicitous means of enriching himself: He used his badge and Bitcoin account to perpetrate “a series of sizable thefts” from certain Silk Road employees he’d either taken into custody or was questioning.
Extortion, blackmail, betrayal, fraud – history shows it only takes one bad cop to sully the reputation of an entire policing department, and in this case two crooked agents, assigned to the same task force, was definite overkill.
They now face years behind bars if or when convicted.
