Newly unsealed court documents in the case against disgraced former Secret Service agent and Silk Road bitcoin thief Shaun Bridges allege that further bitcoin was stolen after Bridge’s was initially arrested.

The documents were revealed as part of the ongoing investigation of Bridges following his second arrest in February after he was found with a bag containing a passport, corporate records for three offshore accounts and a bulletproof vest as part of an attempt flee the country prior to starting a prison term of 71 months in relation to the Silk Road thefts, charges of which Bridges pleaded guilty to.

According to the released documents, prosecutors state that the government is investigating whether Bridges stole “approximately $700,000” in additional bitcoin around July 28, 2015, followed by an additional theft of roughly $20,000 in bitcoin around 10th September.

As Coindesk notes the latter theft allegedly occurred less than two months before Bridges’ sentencing, and after he had already pled guilty.

To make matters worse the Government knew in advance that Bridges had access to the bitcoin; the documents note that the Justice Department learned in April 2015 that Bridges may have kept a private cryptographic key that gave him access to a bitcoin wallet that contained $700,000 in bitcoin that Silk Road task force had seized.

The Department urged the agency to move the funds elsewhere but the warning was ignored.

“Unfortunately, the U.S. Secret Service did not do so and the funds were thereafter stolen, something the U.S. Secret Service only discovered once it was ordered by a court to pay a portion of the seizure back to affected claimants,” the documents written by Federal prosecutors added.

The documents do not state definitively that Bridges took the money, but note that “at present the only individual that is conclusively known to have access was Bridges.”

Money trail

The documents state that the stolen money was moved into an account at BTC-e associated with the e-mail account “branstein.gustaf@outlook.com.”

BTC-e in not registered with a Government and does not comply with anti-money laundering statutes, but none the less did actually provide some records that showed that the bitcoin was accessed through Tor and run through a bitcoin tumbler, a service that mixes potentially identifiable or ‘tainted’ cryptocurrency funds with others, with the intention of confusing the trail back to the fund’s original source.

Prosecutors are asking the court to provide a warrant to obtain records from Microsoft related to the “branstein.gustaf@outlook.com” address, arguing that there is probable cause the account was related to the theft.

Bridges remains in detention with no chance of bail as the investigation continues.

Image credit: Pixabay/Public Domain.