SAN FRANCISCO—Former United States Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges was sentenced to an additional two years of prison on Tuesday.

US District Judge Richard Seeborg said that Bridges' totality of crimes and continued dishonesty to the government was a "betrayal of trust" and was "among the worst of crimes."

In August 2017, Bridges pleaded guilty to new counts of money laundering and related forfeiture. In May 2015, Bridges was separately sentenced to 71 months in prison after he stole money from online dealers while investigating Silk Road, a now-defunct Tor-hidden underground website.

"Particularly troubling is the fact that Mr. Bridges did engage in further efforts to conceal a need to steal after he had entered the plea agreement," Judge Seeborg said.

However, Seeborg later noted, "It does appear that, from all that I’ve read... Mr. Bridges has a new perspective on what he's done and, hopefully, the decision to try to lead his life going forward in a different way."

Bridges, who spoke briefly during the hearing, teared up and addressed the judge for a few minutes. "I put myself here, I understand why I'm here," he said. "It's my actions that put me before this court."

The ex-federal agent also said that at the former prison location where he was incarcerated in Terre Haute, Indiana, he has "no educational opportunities, no recreational opportunities; I'm pretty much alone, 99 percent of the time. They talk about one hour per day; it's more like one hour per three days. The six years I face in the case psychologically breaks you; you're just alone all the time."

A helping hand

Over a year ago, federal authorities strongly suggested in court filings that, in 2015, after Bridges had left the Secret Service and after he had already signed his first guilty plea, he had illegally transferred to himself more than 1,600 bitcoins. Those bitcoins had previously been seized by federal authorities from Bitstamp, a European Bitcoin exchange, which later challenged the seizure.

The August 2017 court filing specifically says that Bridges "laundered the funds stolen from the United States government by moving the funds out of the BTC-e account and into other various online wallets and accounts."

By January 2016, when federal investigators confronted him, Bridges told them how they could locate the approximately 600 bitcoins held at Bitfinex and the remaining 1,000 bitcoins held in a physical hardware wallet. (He did not know that the Secret Service had already recovered the Bitfinex bitcoins.)

During the hearing, Assistant United States Attorney William Frentzen explained that, while Bridges deserved to be punished, Bridges did eventually help out.

"What Mr. Bridges provided was something that, had he not provided, we would be out that quantity of digital currency, so far as I can tell, maybe forever," Frentzen said during the Tuesday hearing as part of his earlier court filing as to why Bridges deserved an additional three years.

In a sentencing memorandum filed prior to the Tuesday hearing, Bridges' attorney, Laurel Headley, asked the judge to impose a sentence of two years, one to be served concurrently with the sentence he was already serving. She explained in court that, because in the end, Bridges did assist the government and was finally willing to come clean, it should account for something.

"One last point, Mr. Bridges did submit himself to unfettered questioning—we didn't go in there with parameters," Headley said. "It does appear to be a quantum difference from what I understand was their last experience, and just a different person, here."

Kathryn Haun was part of the prosecutorial team that investigated Bridges and helped bring the first round of charges but left the Department of Justice in May 2017. Haun—who teaches law at Stanford University and now serves as a board member for Coinbase, a Bitcoin startup—declined to comment on Judge Seeborg's sentence.

However, she lamented that Bridges was temporarily free between the time that he was previously convicted in late 2015 and then re-arrested in early 2016. "This is why the government asked that Bridges be remanded to custody at the last sentencing after it was discovered, that morning, he'd tried to change names and social security numbers, because it seemed that new criminal activity was possibly afoot," she said when contacted by Ars. "Although the judge ordered him not to use the computer, this new case demonstrates that it's very difficult, if not impossible, to police that type of condition of release shy of custody."

Prior to the hearing, both of Bridges' parents submitted letters to the judge—noting that Bridges' wife recently divorced him—they asked that their son be allowed to get his life "back on track" with a "fair decision."

Bridges likely will be sent to a federal facility closer to his home in Maryland.

During most of the hearing, this reporter was the sole member of the public in court. An older woman briefly appeared, but she left before the conclusion of the hearing.