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U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

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Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#191

Post by gojomo »

Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote: post #15
prepend wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the unknown wallet was actually the DoJ taking control? I was wondering what they wanted the courts to do. I’m not sure after reading the article. Are they just planning on destroying the wallet key, kind of like if they just burned a billion in seized cash? It’s interesting to think about how to do this. It must be hard to keep an agent from recording the key, and using it 50 years later or something. Theoretical…

From the link I dug out in the above comment "According to an investigation conducted by the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, Individual X was the individual who moved the cryptocurrency from Silk Road. According to the investigation, Individual X was able to hack into Silk Road and gain unauthorized and illegal acc…

I wonder: could 'Individual X' be DEA agent Carl Force (previously sentenced to prison), Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges (previously sentenced to prison), or some other government agent or informant who had tried to enrich themselves via the investigation?

More about Force & Bridges: https://freeross.org/corruption/

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#192

Post by hammock »

Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote: post #15
prepend wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the unknown wallet was actually the DoJ taking control? I was wondering what they wanted the courts to do. I’m not sure after reading the article. Are they just planning on destroying the wallet key, kind of like if they just burned a billion in seized cash? It’s interesting to think about how to do this. It must be hard to keep an agent from recording the key, and using it 50 years later or something. Theoretical…

From the link I dug out in the above comment "According to an investigation conducted by the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, Individual X was the individual who moved the cryptocurrency from Silk Road. According to the investigation, Individual X was able to hack into Silk Road and gain unauthorized and illegal acc…

Any indication that Individual X was working for the government the whole time?

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#193

Post by fedreserved »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #159
LiquidSky wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We can charge you with these crimes or you can give up the wallet. Ah, you don't want to go jail? Thank you for your cooperation."

What I find most interesting is that anybody else in America that had $1B to their name - dirty or otherwise - would have almost zero probability of going to prison in the short-to-medium-term, and would therefore never actually hand over the cash. Very, very good lawyers are quite affordable at that point. It's hard to imagine someone with $1B in drug money, for example, just handing it over to the feds. A very quic…

Vincente Zambada was charged with trafficking more than a billion dollars' worth of cocaine and heroin. In a 2013 plea bargain deal which was made public by a U.S. District Court in 2014, Zambada admitted coordinating smuggling tons of cocaine and heroin with "El Chapo," Joaquín Guzmán Loera, and agreed to forfeit assets of $1.37 billion to the US government. The plea bargain resulted in a fine of $4 million and 15 years in prison. He is considered a top potential witness against "El Chapo

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#194

Post by LeifCarrotson »

klodolph wrote: post #181
alasdair_ wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Would you rather give us your Bitcoin now, or would you rather spend some time in jail first and give us the Bitcoin later?" A billion dollars is an enormous amount of money. The kind of money that could covertly pay an entire prison worth of guards to look the other way for an escape attempt. Of course, you end up on the run for the rest of your life, which doesn't sound especially fun.

You can fantasize about this James Bond stuff all you like, but one schmuck with a Bitcoin wallet probably is not going to pull it off. Bribing people isn’t so easy and reliable that you can wave a fat stack of cash in someone’s face and expect them to take it. People have lives and their careers tied up in their jobs and know that accepting a bribe isn’t a sure thing. It depends on where you live, sure. But in the U…

Covert bribery is definitely frowned upon. Overt bribery - hiring lobbyists, event sponsorships, regulatory capture, etc - is very popular, I'd even say it's more so than in other countries.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#195

Post by lawn »

jonas21 wrote: post #60
gruez wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of bitcoin is that you can drive across the country "carrying" $1B worth of assets, and if you get pulled over by the cops it won't be found. Try doing that with gold bars or stacks of cash.

I am glad we finally have a solution to this pressing issue.

A more relevant example is escaping a country in chaos with your wealth intact. Exactly like how people have done when they left Venezuela, using Bitcoin to bypass the border control.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#196

Post by oarsinsync »

gamblor956 wrote: post #109
curiousllama wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it sounds silly but it’s legit. Tons of stories of people driving out to buy a car, getting pulled over, having $10k seized without being charged with a crime, and then having to sue to get it back under a presumption of guilt. Bitcoin is harder to seize under civil asset forfeiture. ETA: in the US. Not sure about other countries.

Or they could have just used a bank account. More people have lost money to Bitcoin scams and exchange fraud (see e.g. Mt Gox) than have lost their money to civil forfeiture. Depending on the price of Bitcoin, but (based on the current price of Bitcoin) more $$$ has been lost to crypto fraud as well.

> More people have lost money to Bitcoin scams and exchange fraud (see e.g. Mt Gox) than have lost their money to civil forfeiture.

Can you please back this statement up with some citations for this? I'd be hugely surprised if the number of victims, or even the USD value, of BTC related fraud or foolishness outnumbered state sanctioned theft in the USA, considering how lucrative the theft is for the state, without any need for laundering the ill-gained funds either.

At the same time, it would be remarkable if more people lost money, or more money was lost, in BTC than through civil forfeiture, and possibly an ironic statement that exploiting foolishness is the quickest way to riches, rather than deploying state sanctioned violence.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#197

Post by aarong11 »

nullc wrote: post #116
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming there actually is an Individual X. It is possible he was fabricated in order to hide that the Feds indeed did gain the password for the wallet.

If they did, they lied to the court. "On November 3, 2020, Individual X signed a Consent and Agreement to Forfeiture with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California. In that agreement, Individual X, consented to the forfeiture of the Defendant Property to the United States government."

Nothing there about "Individual X" being Ross Ulbritcht

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#198

Post by colinmhayes »

lixtra wrote: post #172
gamblor956 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they could have just used a bank account. More people have lost money to Bitcoin scams and exchange fraud (see e.g. Mt Gox) than have lost their money to civil forfeiture. Depending on the price of Bitcoin, but (based on the current price of Bitcoin) more $$$ has been lost to crypto fraud as well.

Lehmann alone lost almost 300B USD of others peoples money. Banks are safe until they aren’t.

Lehman was an investment bank, not a commercial bank. Commercial banks aren't allowed to go into crazy leverage like Lehman did.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#199

Post by driverdan »

GhostVII wrote: post #46
TheHypnotist wrote: post #29

I'm not the most saavy BTC person, but isn't part of the allure of bitcoin the ability to evade this type of seizure?

It's pretty impossible to beat the $5 wrench attack (or in the case of the government, 5 years in prison) unless you have anonymity, which Bitcoin does a very bad job of.

There is no way they were only facing 5 years. Any sane person would do 5 years for a billion dollars.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#200

Post by gamblor956 »

lixtra wrote: post #172
gamblor956 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they could have just used a bank account. More people have lost money to Bitcoin scams and exchange fraud (see e.g. Mt Gox) than have lost their money to civil forfeiture. Depending on the price of Bitcoin, but (based on the current price of Bitcoin) more $$$ has been lost to crypto fraud as well.

Lehmann alone lost almost 300B USD of others peoples money. Banks are safe until they aren’t.

Not even remotely the same thing. Lehmann Bros was an investment bank, meaning that the value of accounts was tied to the value of the securities investments contained therein, and Lehmann engaged in trading activity on behalf of those account holders. (And note: by 2013, all of Lehman's account holders had been made whole for their losses https://www.ft.com/content/f06762de-cf94-11e2-a050-00144feab...)

Savings accounts (and checking accounts) are regulated very different from investment accounts.

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