Prosecutors in the German state of Bavaria completed the sale of confiscated cryptocurrencies worth $13.9 million, Der Tagesspiegel reported yesterday.
The currencies were seized from “Lesen und Lauschen”, an online platform which allegedly offered audiobooks and e-books illegally for unusually low prices, sometimes even as low as several cents.
Following the arrest of the site’s operators in June, the Bayern Central Cybercrime Office banned the site as well, deciding to liquidate the assets as soon as possible due to their price volatility.
The sell-off involved 1312 Bitcoins (Bitcoin: BITCOIN), 1399 Bitcoin Cash (EXANTE: BCH.EXANTE), 1312 Bitcoin Gold, and 220 Ethereum (BITFINEX: ETH/USD.BITFINEX), and was the highest of its kind in German legal history.
Selling seized items is common practice for all law enforcement agencies around the world.
In January, the U.S. Marshals Service raised over $40 million sale by selling confiscated BTC. Last year, the Bulgarian police seized 215,519 BTC (equivalent to $1.5 billion in current prices) during an organized crime bust involving corrupt customs officers. At the time of the seizure, the sum was worth around $3.3 bln - enough to pay off one-fifth of Bulgaria’s national debt.
By Nadya Astam