Submitted by Wendals87 t3_ypkcsg in todayilearned
Whereas in America you can get your shit seized and never see it again despite not guilty status.
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You don't even need to be charged with a crime. It's called "civil asset forfeiture".
It’s so wild that an inanimate object can be charged with a crime.
I mean companies are people, and they're hardly even objects, so why not!
We used a thing to address abandoned property suspected of being used for crime to take property in people's possession for no reason whatsoever!
The fact that this isn’t unanimously considered a fourth amendment violation is a total betrayal by the entire judiciary.
In California there was a case of an armed truck transporting cash seized on the grounds "the truck might be related to the legal sell of Marijuana" because a similar truck used by a different company (not the same truck, driver, company, etc) was previously seen parked outside a legal dispensary. Even after they proved that vehicle did not have any illegal funds and did not even service any Marijuana facility, not to mention Marijuana is legal in California, they refused to return the millions stolen.
They literally robben an armored truck at gunpoint, assaulted and kidnapped the guards, falsified charges, stole the money, then only released their prisoners when they were forced to because their false charges didn't stick, then had to be taken to court to get the money back (because they refused).
'Merica
Defund the police
pretty sure then they just look for a way to fund themselves.
not to mention that makes no attempts to solve the actual root problems, just blaming the people meant to be helping(meant to doesn't even imply its what they do)
The actual answer is to have strict regulations on what police can do, but there's almost zero chance of that ever passing
it also tends to backfire.
But not to mention in no way at all addresses any actual issues. Blaming the police for homelessness, violence, etc.
Given that cops have literally shot homeless people and are the main perpetraters of violence, it's 100% logical to blame cops for homelessness and violence
Not at all iff you considered history, statistics, or logic. But sure, blame the economy on police so that you can empower the same politicians that actually caused the issues. Seems to be the "'Merican Way" of thinking.
I think you mean "despite not guilty status".
Thank you, that is what I meant but sometimes all of the words don't make it from my brain
You actually meant "despite not being charged". In America large amounts of cash can be seized and kept by the police without every charging you with a crime. It is then on the owner to price the cash was legally acquired.
You mean despite not guilty status
Yo that money was guilty AF. You see the way it looks at you all side-eyed, you know it's up to something.
I was hoping you would link to the Last Week Tonight episode about civil asset forfeiture
Guilty until proven guilty
Guilty until proven... it doesn't matter. You're beat for your shit.
Whereas in America, you can steal 50000 Bitcoin in 2012 (from a guy now in prison for life for subverting big pharma), and then the feds bust you with headlines claiming you stole billions ("we wanted to steal that money!").
Yeah, this couldn’t happen in the USA because of the theory of “unjust enrichment”. I’m honestly surprised the same isn’t true there.
The little-known original ancient Roman facepalm emoji... Was more difficult sending them to friends back then...
Seneca and Marcus Arelious often sent face palming statues to each other, after read each others first drafts! It’s true!
Crazy how ancient technology was so good they could send statues through time.
Hee! Had to look that one up.
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This makes no sense
Think of it this way: the police say you stole $100,000. When they raid your home, they seize a bar of gold. The court orders you to repay the $100,000. To make this happen, the police sell your seized gold bar, which fetches $1,000,000. Logically you get the remaining $900,000 back.
That's what happened in this case - the police said a certain cash value (not a particular number of bitcoin) were criminal gains. They sold the seized bitcoin to recover the ill-gotten funds, which resulted in far more cash value than they were ordered to repay. As such, the remaining balance legally had to be returned.
The part where I'm confused is why does it go to the criminals and not the people who were stolen from?
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).
Where are you reading they stole the money? The gained the money through online sale of drugs. As far as I can see in there was not victim of theft.
Because the police couldn't prove they stole the rest of the money or they didn't steal it, so why should they lose that?
There was no theft, it was drug money from online sales.
Because it was valued for 127k. It just happened to sell for more.
This law wasn't exactly made with things that fluctuates in value as rapidly as bitcoin is.
Now, the question I would have though is if they sold the gold bar for $50k, would you then still owe fifty more?
Yes. If the court ruled you owed $100k, you would be liable for the remaining 50k.
Steal 'your' stuff, sell it without permission to whomever they please without shopping around for the best price, then keep you on the hook for an additional costs due to their laziness.
Yep, sounds like government to me.
Yes, for example even they sell your $20,000 car for $1 to their cousin (like in Chicago), you still have to pay the parking fines and tow fees and your auto loan.
Yep. Had this seizure happened in 2020, and then the sale happened today, this case would be reversed with the criminals owing way more than the bitcoin was sold for.
Your 2nd paragraph is correct, but the 1st paragraph doesn't explain it properly. The gold in your example didn't increase in value, and the authorities simply confiscated too much. In reality, the correct amount was confiscated, but the increase in value wasn't taken into consideration, because of how the value was expressed.
Except the gold could have increased in value that much - it's unlikely, but a combination of factors could have lead to a massive increase in value.
And while the BTC did go up, it could have just as easily went down. So if the value had gone to, say, 1/10 the people who lost 127k should have only been allowed to recover 12.7k instead?
Plus you're making the assumption that they even stole BTC from people directly. It's much more likely these were cash transfers from bank accounts or credit cards that the criminals routed through bitcoin exchanges.
This is all true, just wasn't expressed in the previous 1st paragraph.
More like "you sell drugs for gold, which then gets confiscated by the police".
If they stole the BTC, the coins would (should) have been returned to the victims.
I thought in America they just take your money and weather or not you’re proven innocent they keep it all for themselves.
No, I would say most people don't say you logically get the overhead back after stealing something lol. That's why it's a TIL, because it's frankly mildly absurd.
But you can't seize BTC unless the criminals freely gave over their keys.
Or had their keys on something else that was seized. If you've got your keys stored on your computer, and they seize the computer, then they've got your bitcoin.
So? Its possible the police or court ordered them to hand over the keys and they complied as part of the legal proceedings.
Yea... But I'm not sure the word seize applies in that case.
If you are compelled to surrender something to authorities as part of a legal proceeding, that’s a seizure. They don’t necessarily have to literally take it by force or against your will.
Ok but what happens when they confiscate wallets, PCs, or hard drives?
Your fake internet currency has physical evidence. If the feds want it, they'll get it lol.
I mean.. typically it's encrypted on any hardware. If someone has plaintext keys on their hard drive something has gone seriously wrong
Yup, means the feds came knocking 🤞. You've been lied to if you truly believe they can't get ahold of it if they want.
That's simply false. If you don't give up your keys they can't be forcibly taken from you.
So when the subpoena comes, you're telling the feds to fuck off? Straight to prison? Okay.
As I said. If the feds want it, they'll get it. If its not the money, it's your freedom.
Yes exactly. I can choose prison. That is not true with dollars. The feds want your dollars they can reach into your bank without your permission. With BTC the feds can't force it, even if they are willing to go as far as killing you.
Exactly. So you're going to prison or getting killed by the federal government before giving up your fake internet money? OK, Chad.
You guys are ridiculous lol. Don't you have an NFT scam you could be falling for right now?
Why do you hate so much? Why does it bother you?
I don't really care that you don't seem to like BTC.
They can't. Even the feds are subject to the rules of mathematics, and that's how pgp keys work. There are cases out there where proper opsec has kept people out of jail.
If the feds decrypted his shit, they got his keys somehow. Either he turned them over or, and this is shockingly common, had them written down or on the device unencrypted.
Oh hey, congrats on overexplaining my comment for no reason 👍
> If the feds decrypted his shit, they got his keys somehow. Either he turned them over
When the feds bring the subpoena, you have two choices. Comply or face the music. If they want it, they'll get it. Your money or your freedom. Hence why I said "when the feds come knocking".
No, I was replying to the "if they want it, they'll get it" part of your comment. Up those reading comprehension skills👍🏽.
They will NOT get it, no matter how badly they want it, without the key. And you can hide your key. That's the third choice when the feds show up: don't have the key where they can find it.
Get "it", means what they want. You going to prison to protect your subpoenad fake internet currency?
I'm sure there's some shitcoin you could go lose money "investing" in. Surely. Go do that instead of bothering me with missing the point. You crypto dorks are ridiculous lol. There's an NFT of a lizard with your name all over it.
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No wonder ancaps love BTC so much
It doesn't have to be freely. A court order is usually backed by you sitting in jail until you cooperate.
Ok but then they still get a choice. If, for example, I was told to pay in dollars the gov can reach in my bank and take it. I wouldn't get an option up go to jail and not pay.
If you offically charge and prosecute someone with making $2000 worth of profit from drug trafficking and decide that profit must be seized they've already taken $20,000, then they return 18,000 and keep the rest.
This sort of happened here, but they simply undervalued the profits by using krona instead of BTC.
Edit: Euro to BTC
Not euros, bitcoins. Bitcoin’s exchange rate has changed within those 2 years.
Except it's not that they undervalued it - at the time of the seizure it was worth 127k. The issue came because the value went up by the time the court case concluded. The police had no way to know this would happen, and may even have used the current cash value to avoid ruining the case if the opposite happened and BTC tanked - if the value dropped far enough before the court case started it could theoretically be too low to qualify for the charges filed.
I think it's the reference to € for the values rather than SEK that makes the title so confusing.
Yea in the last two years SEK value has been decreasing massively
Instead of saying they confiscated 36 bitcoin, they said they confiscated 36 bitcoin worth 130000 Krona. Over the two years that the case took to go through, the value increased to 1.3 million Krona. Because they were ordered to recuperate the value of the 36 bitcoin at the time of confiscation, 3 bitcoin will be sold to cover the penalties and the rest will be given back.
The government is complaining that they should have noted the seizure value in bitcoin, not Krona. Had they done that, the 36 bitcoin would be kept by Sweden. However, because they did it the way they did, the culprits have to cough up the penalty and the state is obligated to give the rest back.
Yep, it’s a notation issue on the part of whoever filled out the paperwork. Though we could also argue that it could have been the other way around. Police seized 36 BTC, later the value of BTC crashed and that BTC is only now worth 3 000 Krona. Now they owe another 127 000 Krona in reparations.
The only thing really out of the ordinary here is that the asset that was seized changed so much in value over such a short time. Normally it would be something like real-estate or similar assets that would only change a few percent in value and the overage/shortage wouldn’t sound so out of balance.
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Weirdly as an american this makes sense to me, if your countries laws of civil asset forfeiture includes speculative assets, and i dont believe ours do, yet, if you sell said speculative assets for a profit you should turn the rest back even if they were guilty, cause if you don't it incentivesis bad actors in government and law enforcement to steal everything they can. It's a serious problem here down south, small town sherifs will pull you over and claim any large amount as drug money, take that money, and your car, because they don't charge you with a crime, your car is charged with a crime, and then your just fucked as the da will tell you he's not giving a trial to a car, and when you allow that to go on long enough you get shit like the cash for kids scandal, it flies in the face of everything I believe too, but it's the correct action, law must only be motivated by law, never for profit.
Charge them with stealing 100k of assets, and seize the bitcoin with them not seeing profits or losses from the change of value later.
You cant really have it both ways, you can't not recognize any crypto as a currency, force all action policing through the standard enforcement agiences by declaring it a security, and then have those same agencies use currency laws to skirt the law in their favor when a person holding said securities happens to be bad. Securities are securities, doesn't matter who sells em, the purchaser is owed the lions share, and I say this because in cases in crypto where someone stole your crypto, they use the bitcoin is a security challenge in order to get it back to you, you take that away and international law doesn't have to investigate shit, I admit this is one of the slipriest fucking slopes in history, but last I checked Europe actually gets to vote on individual issues like this, and until yall put forth a referendum on what crypto actually is truly classified as in europe, and vote on that shit, I believe this was the right call
Now that the value has fallen do they need to pay the government 300k euros? Once the payment is settled there should be no back and forth, the value changing two years later should not be relevant. I also wouldn't expect the government to say "Hey you owe us 80k more euros because we decided to hodl and it turned out the value fell."
It's value at sale, that's the point of a security
They don't because civil asset forfeiture is not designed to be deployed against the wealthy. If you have a lawyer on retainer the police are not going to bother trying to steal your stuff this way
They dont yet, but once it's mainstream watch how quick they try to get that shit added to a list of possible drug assets
If you get convicted of something the government can definitely sieze your crypto. It's not like they can pull you over and find a pile of bitcoins in your trunk though.
What's to stop someone from reporting the police stole their car? If they don't charge you with a crime then how is it not being stolen?
Civil forfeiture
I've definitely heard of cops Stealing people's money under that guise, but not their cars. Generally if they take your car they are charging you for something.
They will take cars, houses, xboxs, literally anything that they say is the product of an illicit activity. They can do this under suspicion. There are numerous cases of the DAs saying there's insufficient evidence, so the owner is never charged with anything, but it's then incumbent on them (the "owner") to proove the negative (that it wasn't purchased with illegally attained funds) to get things back.
Also because you arent charged, you arent legally entitled to a lawyer from the state, so you gotta pay for that one yourself if you want to sue THEM to get YOUR stuff back.
-Edit: Specifically the cars bit is where they'd pull over Black or Hispanic guys in fancy SUVs or sportscars coming up from Miami and if there's cash in the car, just take everything under suspicion of drug money.
They can use it on cars and houses
buy Sudafed from two different stores in the same week, and you can lose your house.
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The police will choose not to investigate, and the da will choose not to prosecute.
Stealing people's cash in civil forfeiture is a shell game for them, they hand the cash quickly off to the feds so you can't get it back easily. For your car they have it in the impound lot, if you don't get charged they have to give it back. You will still probably have to get a lawyer and pay impound fees.
In civil asset forfeiture the police don't charge you with a crime, they just suspect you. They charge your property with a crime and take it away. The property is considered guilty until proven innocent, so you have to hire a lawyer and prove your property wasn't being used for crime. Otherwise they just get to keep it.
Seconded
Yeah that's the conundrum, you can't really report the police to the police, you have to go to the local media, of you get lucky enough it gets picked up by a major outlet and you get a leg to stand on leverage wise, like this.
But not every story makes it national, so a lot of people are just forced to eat it, and even when you do make it national the tactic has been to bounce you from court to court refusing to make a ruling. Hell tyson timbs had to take his lawsuit to the Supreme Court and just got his truck back, a $45000 land rover that he bought with the inheritance he got when his dad died, But yeah a few months later he fell off the wagon, HARD! And at his lowest moment, for 225 dollars worth of drugs they threw him in jail gave him probabtion and house arrest, a 1200 dollar fine, but they also stole his brand new truck, the one he refused to sell at his worst because it was all he had left of his dad, and he like had a receipt, with banking transfers, ya know the kind you would get on a purchase like that because you don't want beef with the irs, and they just turned around and said nope, trucks guilty. That started in 2012
To address your second point, the police are effectively allowed to steal from people if they seem like "criminals". The police act like civil asset forfeiture is only ever used against cartel assassins and crack dealers so it's hard to limit their authority.
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literally no one actually reading the article...
they didnt forfeit the BTC due to theft, it was proceeds from drug sales but the courts cited the value of the forfeiture in krona which meant when they eventually got round to cashing them in for a much higher value, they had to pay back the difference as they were only allowed to confiscate the amount specified in the court documents.
Who says crime doesn't pay?
At the end of the criminal's day
If it's the cops you resents
Lawyers always know a way
When it makes no cents
They'll always make it pay
Regardless of your intents!
That's a lot of British Telecoms.
Unrelated question, but is it "was confiscated" or "were confiscated".
In case of dollars it would be "was" as the individual dollars are not seen as separate entities and thus doesn't count as plural. In case of cars it would be "were", as 36 individual cars are seen as multiple entities.
What about Bitcoins? Was or were? I always considered them separate entities as you generally express things in % of a bitcoin - so "were"
AFAIK it can change depending on the context. You use "was" if you view the amount as a collective noun. "$500 was collected from each participant" because the $500 is seen as a single thing - one payment. If you view dollars as a single literal thing as in 500 one dollar bills then you use were. Bitcoin is the same. You use "was" when talking about a collective amount of Bitcoin, or use "were" if talking about individual coins like "500 total Bitcoin were stolen from 20 people today."
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Hope they where just weed smugglers.
Bonus!
Police got 💎👊
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Great time for this story to come out while BTC has hit a new 52 week low. Do what you will, I am taking advantage of the low prices
…the proceeds of crime from bitcoin….
Meanwhile Cryptobros be like, “yo, it’s so legit!”.
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I thought unless you had the seed phrase you couldn't touch it?
You overlooked the ultimate encryption breaking device
I mean if all they were sentenced to was to pay a 100k fine and they also had other assets, then better to just comply with the court order and hand over the coin private key and go on with your life, rather than refuse, get thrown in jail or your house seized and sold for the debt?
Cryptocurrency is seized by obtaining the key.
Either they find the device that stored the key or obtain access to an account that controlled the keys. Often done by seizing USB drives or getting access to email/cloud storage accounts.
So hypothetically, if the device storing the key was never found and for whatever reason the private key remained unknown?
Yeah, in that case there is literally no way of taking control of the Bitcoin. BTC is based on cryptography that would take the fastest computers about 40,000 years to break into a single wallet.
How's that 401(k) bet working out for you?
~5% unrealized losses. I have a low time preference, ask me again in 4 years.
my guess is that they used a CEX, in which case the authorities were able to get access (with a warrant and all the legal requirements met)
Its like your password to your phone. They can't force you to give it up, but if they find it by other means or offer you a deal they can get access
If they had it in self custody and the seed phrase was never given up, they couldn't get access BUT it would be watched for any movement and they would catch them at any point they made a mistake
They wouldn't be able to spend it
Yup. Also this was Sweden, better to just cooperate and do your time if you're guilty.
And if they had been sold at a loss, would the criminals have had to pay extra? Nonsensical
Yes. If you steal $100,000 if items from someone and the items depreciate to be worth $50,000 you can be held liable to make up the rest of the restitution.
If it's your fault sure
Yes, obviously. It's not nonsensical at all, it happens all the time. Think of all the executive auctions where cars and houses are sold way below market value to cover a debt.
wow lmao
st6374 t1_ivje0ac wrote
Lol.. The thumbnail pretty much sums it up.