Altcoin News: British Police Bailed out $294,000 from the Sale of Confiscated Cryptocurrency at Auction

October 1, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

The special operations department in the eastern region of the UK, in collaboration with the Irish auction house Wilsons, sold seized cryptocurrency assets in BTC, XRP and ETH worth over $294,000.

“Asset recovery in a digital world has evolved, so it’s really important that, working alongside commercial partners, we have a clear process for the storage and sale of cryptocurrency,” detective chief inspector Martin Peters said in a statement.

To verify the bidders, a third-party company was involved, which helped make sure that the assets did not return to the criminal sphere.

Cryptocurrencies were seized from 19-year-old Elliott Gunton in 2018 after a standard check of his computer in connection with the charge of breaking the TalkTalk telecommunications service in 2015.

During the audit, it turned out that Gunton stored the stolen personal data of EtherDelta users on his computer, which he sold on the network for $3,000 in cryptocurrency. At that time, Gunton’s illegal assets were valued at $337,000. However, the proceeds exceeded the market value of the confiscated cryptocurrency on the day of the auction.

According to the indictment, Gunton, along with an accomplice from the United States, hacked the accounts of several hundred EtherDelta users and deduced the cryptocurrency that was on them. The auction was held a few days after the verdict, according to which Gunton spent 20 months in prison, and also paid $509,000 fine.

Author: Marko Vidrih