PANews reported on March 13 that according to Forbes, earlier this month, prosecutors in the Western District of Texas ordered the seizure of slightly more than 749 bitcoins, worth about $62.5 million. The order also involved hundreds of thousands of various currencies as well as gold coins and bars.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the assets were linked to illegal activities carried out by two men, one of whom was a drug dealer on Silk Road and the other assisted him in laundering cryptocurrencies. The two transferred the bitcoins obtained through Silk Road transactions through multiple different accounts and exchanged them for cash through LocalBitcoins. Some of the funds eventually flowed into the crypto exchange Gemini, which reported the deposits to law enforcement.
The seizure shows that although Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht is now a free man after being pardoned one day after President Trump took office, those who sold drugs on dark web sites are still under investigation and the US government is still pursuing their illegal gains.
