The arrest of Aleksej Besciokov, a 46-year-old operator of the sanctioned Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex, occurred in Kerala, India. Besciokov, a Lithuanian national and Russian resident, was vacationing with his family when arrested. A week prior, international law enforcement from the U.S., Germany, and Finland seized Garantex’s domains and servers. They also froze nearly $28 million in cryptocurrency linked to the exchange, with assistance from Tether. The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctioned Garantex in 2022 for facilitating money laundering for ransomware groups like Conti and Black Basta, and darknet markets such as Hydra, the world’s largest before its 2022 closure. Garantex was also implicated in aiding North Korea’s Lazarus Group, responsible for a $1.5 billion Bybit heist. Additionally, the exchange was linked to upscale sanctions evasion services like the TGR Group, used by Russian oligarchs.
Cointelegraph
@Cointelegraph
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Jan 24 US: The Digital Asset Working Group will evaluate the potential creation of a national digital asset stockpile built from seized cryptocurrencies.Here’s a list of seized coins held by the US government worth over $1M.
MartyParty
@martypartymusic
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Feb 23 As expected the US Marshal are unclear if they have the keys to their seized digital assets accounting for 196k $Bitcoin alone. Total $19b in assets held from seizures.According to reports the private keys well held in spreadsheets.
PennybagsCX
@PennybagsCX
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Mar 6 MAJOR MISSED OPPORTUNITY ALERT!Over the last decade, the U.S. government sold around 195,000 $BTC seized from criminal investigations for just $366MIf they had held onto those coins, they’d be worth over $17 BILLION today!David Sacks, Trump’s ‘Crypto Czar’,
CrystalC_85
@theAwakened1_
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Mar 9 I have been asking them that for years. Sometimes I even wrote up how many we knew were confiscated LOL. On record it’s over 267k seized. There is more than that but not all of the cases have been made public. Just gotta start with the Silk Road do some research and there are
WARANDCOIN
@Warandcoin
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Mar 7 NEW: In honor of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve,
@SaniExp
launched a site tracking U.S. government-seized Bitcoin.They’ve confiscated 394,759 BTC, selling 195,586 BTC for $2.61B—missing out on $14.82B in gains. #Bitcoin #USGovernment #Crypto
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