Stealing bitcoins with badges: How Silk Road’s dirty cops got caught

DEA Special Agent Carl Force wanted his money—real cash, not just numbers on a screen—and he wanted it fast.

It was October 2013, and Force had spent the past couple of years working on a Baltimore-based task force investigating the darknet’s biggest drug site, Silk Road. During that time, he had also carefully cultivated several lucrative side projects all connected to Bitcoin, the digital currency Force was convinced would make him rich.