I wonder what, if anything, the government will ever do with all these seized bitcoins. They must have an absolutely massive stockpile by now. edit: Apparently the US Marshal service held about...
I wonder what, if anything, the government will ever do with all these seized bitcoins. They must have an absolutely massive stockpile by now.
Over the past five years, criminals behind widespread romance and investment scams—often inelegantly referred to as “pig butchering”—have stolen tens of billions from people around the world. Now law enforcement has carried out one of its biggest operations yet against that sprawling scam industry, targeting the operators of several modern slavery scam compounds in Southeast Asia—where, as a whole, hundreds of thousands of human trafficking victims have been forced to run the fraud operations on behalf of criminal gangs.
On Tuesday, officials in the United States and United Kingdom took coordinated action against one giant Cambodian organization and its boss who has allegedly run a series of notorious scam centers in the country. The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced it has issued financial sanctions against 146 “targets” linked to the newly designated Prince Group Transnational Criminal Organization. This action includes targeting individuals and shell companies linked to the alleged criminal enterprise. As part of the sweeping action also involving the FBI, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has also seized almost 130,000 bitcoin worth around $15 billion at the time of the announcement—the largest US cryptocurrency seizure to date.
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“The masterminds behind these horrific scam centers are ruining the lives of vulnerable people and buying up London homes to store their money,” Britain’s foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, said in a statement. The UK also placed financial sanctions on Chen, the Prince Group, and other linked entities. The UK’s sanctions also “freeze” businesses and properties allegedly linked to Chen in London, including a £12 million ($16 million) mansion in North London and a £100 million ($133 million) office building in the City of London.
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In another, still-unexplained twist, however, crypto-tracing firm Elliptic pointed out in a blog post Tuesday that the bitcoins seized by US law enforcement actually appear to be the same funds that were reportedly stolen in 2020 from a Chinese cryptocurrency mining firm called Lubian. Today's indictment describes Lubian as part of Chen Zhi's money laundering operation—perhaps an alleged scheme to funnel dirty scam funds into cryptocurrency mining hardware that would produce new, clean coins with no criminal history.
I wonder what, if anything, the government will ever do with all these seized bitcoins. They must have an absolutely massive stockpile by now.
edit: Apparently the US Marshal service held about 29,000 BTC, or $3.4B a few months ago but typically they sell off all their seized BTC.
I do not imagine any of it would go to reimburse the victims.
They'll probably lose the passwords.
Wasn't using seized crypto the plan of the crypto sovereign wealth fund?
From the article:
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Mirror: https://archive.is/XeMQL