When the federal government took down the illicit drug laundering website Silk Road, it was the conclusion of a massive investigation and surveillance operation conducted over several years from multiple offices. The investigation culminated in the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, aka the Dread Pirate Roberts, who was convicted of all charges and faces 30 years to life in prison. It’s now emerged that two of the federal agents working on the case used it as an opportunity to siphon hundreds of thousands of dollars in black market profits into their own personal accounts.

The complaint names two agents, Carl Mark Force IV (DEA) and Shaun Bridges (USSS). The two men worked on a Baltimore-based task force that investigated Ulbricht, one of several such organizations across the United States. Initially the plan was to charge Ulbricht with conspiracy, but the criminal behavior of the two agents appears to have tainted that plan. What they’re accused of is fairly damning.

According to the sworn affidavit, Force created unofficial fictitious personas and contacted Ulbricht directly with an offer to not turn over information to the DEA in exchange for $250,000. In case any of you are keeping score at home, that right there is plenty fraudulent enough for the DEA to prosecute, since the Drug Enforcement Agency is known for taking a dim view of its agents making deals with drug kingpins.

Force, however, wasn’t finished. He created a false persona, French Maid, and sold information about the government’s case to Ulbricht for a further $100,000. Force then took money that was transferred to his official investigatory accounts as part of the federal case against the Silk Road and sent them to his personal accounts. The fact that he took some pains to hide this activity is beside the point — one of the characteristics of Bitcoin is that transactions can be traced.

Force also acted as the de facto Chief Compliance Officer for a BTC business, CoinMKT, even going so far as to be featured in CoinMKT’s pitch decks to venture capital investors. He also used his status as a DEA agent to freeze the accounts of other CoinMKT users.

In other words: A DEA agent extorted money from a drug lord, sold case information to that same individual, and abused his status as a DEA agent while moonlighting in the heady-world of shady cryptocurrency startups.

The other agent, Bridges, stole coins from Silk Road, sold them through Mt. Gox, and then used his own status as a US Secret Service agent to sign off on the raids that seized Mt. Gox’s accounts and its BTC. Once he learned that his own activities had caught the attention of others on the Baltimore Task Force, he attempted to move funds out of these accounts and into more secure holdings.

It’s not clear yet if the lawyers that handled Ulbricht’s case will try to use these clear cases of malfeasance to break his client out of prison, but we’d be surprised if he didn’t try. Ulbricht’s lawyer, Joshua Dratel, has already implied that he knew about the corruption scandal four months ago but was forbidden to disclose this information at trial.

None of the accusations against Force or Shields involve flatly manufacturing charges or evidence, so it’s possible that there’ll be no impact on the Dread Pirate Robert’s conviction. At the very least, it demonstrates that the line between the criminals and the agents investigating them was considerably thinner than the federal government will want to admit.