Recently, the Swedish state has been forced to return 33 BTC (worth about SEK 13 million) to three imprisoned drug traffickers whose cryptographic (profits from online sales of illegal drugs) had been confiscated after his arrest.
According to a Radio Sweden report, this is what happened. When drug traffickers were arrested in the spring of 2019, their profits from illegal sales remained at Bitcoin and hovered around 36 BTC, which at the time was worth about 1.3 million Swedish kronor (SEK) or about 138,000 dollars.
At the time of the male indictment, which began in April 2019, Tove Kullberg, the prosecutor responsible for the case, made the mistake of saying that men’s debt to the state was the value of these 36 bitcoins in local fiat currency (i.e. SEK), i.e. approximately SEK 1.3 million. Drug traffickers were sentenced in May 2019 and sentenced to 4-6 years in prison for their crimes.
However, fortunately for these drug traffickers and unfortunately for the Swedish authorities, when they came to sell the confiscated cryptography, the price of Bitcoin had risen by about 10 times and therefore only 3 had to be sold. BTC to pay off your debt. in the Swedish state, which means that the authorities have had to return the other 33 BTC to these men (who are apparently still in prison).
Kullberg said during an interview with Swedish radio that this unfortunate event could have been avoided if he had argued his case in another way:
“The lesson to be learned from this is to maintain the value in Bitcoin, that the benefit of the crime should be 36 Bitcoin, regardless of the value that Bitcoin has at that time.“
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