- The owner of the wallet that held ₿69,370 which was seized by the IRS in November may have been identified
- Fortune has linked the wallet to Shaun Bridges, a former Secret Service agent who was imprisoned in 2015
- Bridges worked on the Silk Road case but ended up stealing from the site himself
The identity of Individual X, the owner of some $3 billion worth of bitcoin that originated from a Silk Road wallet and was seized by the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) in November, may have been uncovered. Fortune claims that it has found strong links between Individual X and the activities of disgraced Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges. Bridges worked on the Silk Road case but were imprisoned for conducting his own criminal enterprise on the back of it, seemingly determined to keep hold of the ₿69,370 until he was out of prison.
Bridges Received Two Prison Sentences
Fortune reports that a Justice Department statement relating to the recent seizure reveals that “Individual X was able to hack into Silk Road and gain unauthorized and illegal access to Silk Road and thereby steal the illicit cryptocurrency.” Bridges was convicted of using the log-in credentials of a Silk Road informant to repeatedly steal bitcoin from the site, resulting in two separate prison sentences being handed down to him, one in 2015 and one in 2017.
Fortune also noted that the last transaction into the wallet took place in 2015, shortly before Bridges was imprisoned and that the case involving the $3 billion bitcoin seizure was assigned to a different judge shortly after it was filed, with the initial appointee being U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg, who sentenced Bridges and Force in 2015.
Silk Road Bitcoin Untouched for Over Five Years
The ₿69,370 had lain untouched since 2015 until its contents were finally moved in early November, prompting excitement and a bevy of explanations from the crypto community until it was revealed that the U.S. Treasury had been the lucky recipients of the haul, which will likely be auctioned off. There have however been calls to hold off from any such auction, with Pierre Rochard saying the government should keep it as an alternative form of investment.
