Submitted by Wendals87 t3_ypkcsg in todayilearned
Reply to comment by xsvfan in TIL: That in 2019, some criminals were caught and 36 BTC was confiscated. The authorities valued the worth at €127,000 at the time and was sold 2 years later for €1.5 million. The criminals were returned €1.3 million due to the fact that the amount was expressed in Swedish Krona, not BTC by Wendals87
Because the people lost the 127k. They got that back. The criminals got refunded the remaining 1.3 million.
The original BTC owners would now have to litigate the criminals to argue that the criminals profited from illegally holding onto BTC that wasn't theirs, but that would likely be a civil case.
Interesting to see how that would work out.
Edit: I see it was proceeds of drug trafficking that was being held in BTC, so there are no "prior owners" in that sense of the word. Still - lesson learned for the Swedish po-po.
The problem is it's highly unlikely they actually stole bitcoin directly. It's much more likely they stole money through wire transfers/credit cards/etc. and routed it through a bitcoin exchange so the transaction couldn't be reversed.
Could well be.
Like I said - it'd be an interesting legal case to follow.
But isn't one of the basic ideas of forfeiture that you lose the thing seized in its entirety, lose any and all interest, including any future profits? I imagine that in most other places, once the authorities take it from you, it's gone.
To what point though? Say a criminal steals $50,000 and creates a successful business with it worth millions or maybe even billions. Does the criminal lose all rights and profits to the business? It is not just money that requires a business to be successful.
The victims involuntarily had their money invested in bitcoin, they could argue that in this sense they should have the equivalent share of the ROI.
No. Nothing was stolen. There were no original bitcoin owners. The bitcoin was drug proceeds.
Crime really does pay
But they didn’t lose 127k; they lost 36 BTC.
Did they? So if BTC had dropped to $10 instead of going up, would you say those people had only lost $360, even though it was 127k when it was stolen?
How about the fact that it's highly unlikely the money was stolen as bitcoin, but was far more likely to have been stolen directly out of normal accounts and converted into bitcoin? So if I steal $10,000 from your bank and use it to buy a car, did I steal your money, or did I steal your car?
The whole point seems to be that the prosecutors specified the amount stolen in the equivalent in fiat (Krona) at the time, rather than saying 36 BTC, leading to this situation.
So, the criminals had to give back the amount specified in fiat, even though BTC had increased in value in the meantime.
Not necessarily.
The criminals stole 127k in fiat from the victims. The cops did not seize 127k in currency, but they did find 36 BTC and took that when arresting the criminals.
They then sold the 36 BTC to collect the 127k in fiat. They returned the 127k to the victims. They returned the remaining 1.3 million in fiat to the criminals because they could not prove the rest if the money was criminally obtained.
It would be like if you had to foreclose on your 30 year mortgage after paying into it for 10 years. The bank would sell your house and (assuming the house was sold for around what you bought it for) the bank would take about 2/3rds of the sale price and you would get the other 1/3rd back (without complicated contractual agreements).
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