When criminals are convicted, the illegally earned money is usually wasted. A Swedish dealer has now got rich again in jail. Guilt is a mistake in gathering evidence.
Those who get rich with illegal business will only remain so in exceptional cases after the conviction. In Sweden, a condemned dealer is now handed back more than one million euros in Bitcoin. The problem: The value of his illegal business was given in monetary terms and not in Bitcoin. And the cryptocurrency has gone through the roof since then.
“This is all very unfortunate, in many ways,” said prosecutor Tove Kullberg, according to “The Telegraph” to a Swedish radio show. Her mistake: she had argued in court for confiscating the profits from the accused’s illegal business. The sum was put at 1.3 million Swedish kronor. “This now has consequences that I could not have foreseen at the time,” said the prosecutor.
Bitcoin boom as a precedent
Because although the court agreed with their arguments, the dealer will soon get most of his proceeds back. 36 Bitcoins were confiscated. When they were then auctioned off to convert them into fiat money, three were enough to reach the amount stated in the judgment. The rate had increased tenfold since the negotiation. With that the guilt of the convict is paid. And the remaining 33 Bitcoin with a current value of 1.37 million euros must be returned to him.
It does not matter that the money was demonstrably earned illegally. The amount mentioned in the judgment counts. “The lesson we must learn from this is that the profits from the crime should have been fixed as 36 bitcoin, regardless of how much the bitcoin was worth at the time,” said Kullberg.
In fact, one cannot blame it for the development. It was one of the first cases in Sweden involving loot in cryptocurrencies, she pointed out that she had no precedent to rely on when specifying the value. “We should really invest in appropriate internal training for the public prosecutor,” she is convinced. “Cryptocurrencies will play a role more and more often. The more we know about it as an organization, the fewer mistakes will happen to us.”
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