Submitted by Wendals87 t3_ypkcsg in todayilearned
Reply to comment by Pope_Cerebus 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
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.
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