Former Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent Carl Mark Force IV has to return more than $700,000 dollars in stolen bitcoins, according to court documents.
Judge Richard Seeborg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California signed a preliminary order against Force, who was part of a task force investigating Silk Road, the notorious online black marketplace. He plead guilty in July to extortion, money laundering, and obstruction of justice; Force will be sentenced in October.
The order mandates Force forfeit about 690 bitcoins and other assets including $13,045 in a bitcoin trading account, $109,741 in other private trading accounts, and $158,865 in lieu of his Baltimore home. Seeborg also issued a $500,000 money judgement against Force.
During his stint with the Silk Road investigation from 2012 to 2014, Force and U.S. Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges were accused of trading information for financial gain, Coin Desk reported. Force admitted selling information gathered during the investigation to Silk Road mastermind, Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison in May.
The former 15-year DEA agent also offered to sell Ulbricht fake drivers’ licenses and orchestrated a plan to defraud the Silk Road creator out of more money by selling him information under separate identities. Force also struck a $240,000 movie deal with 20th Century Fox — without DEA approval — to consult on a film about the Dark Web’s once premiere marketplace.
Fellow federal agent Bridges plead guilty in June to money laundering and justice obstruction charges for diverting over $820,000 of ill-gotten bitcoins during the Silk Road drug case. The theft was the reason Ulbricht hired a hit on a fellow Silk Road administrator whom he initially blamed for the missing money, Ars Technica reported. Bridges will be sentenced in September.
Force and Bridges aren’t the first cases of corruption exhibited in connection with the War on Drugs. Earlier this year, DEA agents raided the life savings of aspiring Detroit businessman and music executive Joseph Rivers. Rivers took the seed money — $16,000 in cash — to start a music company in Los Angeles and boarded a train.
DEA agents stopped and questioned Rivers and other passengers at the Amtrak station in Albuquerque. They searched his belongings, found no evidence of drug involvement, but seized the cash savings Rivers stashed in an envelope. Rivers was never charged with a crime.
The DEA seizes tens of millions of dollars in cash and goods each year. The Justice Department as a whole collected nearly $4 billion in civilian assets in 2014 but seized only a fraction of that from criminal enterprises at $679 million, the Washington Post reported.
The DEA has also benefited from the National Security Agency’s controversial spying program, receiving tips and phone records originally collected for counterterrorism investigations. In those cases, Reuters reported, the DEA would create a legal cover story to disguise from where the information was derived.
In a July statement regarding Force and Bridges, Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell said the Justice Department wouldn’t tolerate such corruption by law enforcement officers online or otherwise.
Seduced by the perceived anonymity of virtual currency and the dark web, Force used invented online personas and encrypted messaging to fraudulently obtain bitcoin worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from the government and investigative targets alike. This guilty plea should send a strong message: neither the supposed anonymity of the dark web nor the use of virtual currency nor the misuse of a law enforcement badge will serve as a shield from the reach of the law.