It seems like the Silk Road investigation is far from being officially close, considering the fact that today, a former U.S. Secret Service agent was sentenced to around six years in prison.

According to recent reports, Shaun W. Bridges, who also pleaded guilty to a couple of felony charges relating to money laundering and obstruction of justice, was also sentenced in another court to three years of supervised release, following the completion of his prison term. Together with this, it seems like Bridges agreed to pay a total of $1.1 million for stealing a couple of thousand bitcoin during the Silk Road investigation.

During the last year, the U.S. Marshals Service, also known by the name of the USMS has managed to auction off a large part of the funds which had been seized following the completion of the Silk Road investigation.

If you are not yet aware of this, during the investigation, the USMS has managed to confiscate over 144,000 BTC from Ross Ulbricht, the mastermind behind the Silk Road marketplace, an online shop where people from all around the world traded drugs. When the funds were first seized, they were worth around 122 million. Other than these funds, the USMS also confiscated around 29,000 BTC from private Silk Road-related bitcoin addresses.

Silk Road is an online marketplace which launched in February 2011 and is designed to be completely anonymous. Just about every drug in existence is available on Silk Road, including Heroin, Cocaine, Methamphetamine, pharmaceuticals, and Cannabis. The only way to access Silk Road is through Tor, which is a browser that makes it nearly impossible to trace IP addresses. Bitcoin is the sole payment method used on Silk Road, since with Bitcoin you can send money worldwide near instantly and anonymously. Compare this to credit cards or almost any other payment method, where your personal information is needed to complete a transaction. Also Bitcoin payments can't be reversed, unlike credit cards.