US Marshals Service has auctioned 2,700 BTC in a single lot mostly combining seized funds from a few Silk Road related cases.
A buyer whose name remains undisclosed paid about $1.6 mln for the whole lot at the USMS sale that took place on 22 August. The event turned out to be less popular than its predecessors in 2015: only five bidders applied for registration and four bids were made in total, US Marshals told CoinDesk. The registration for the auction was opened until 18 August.
About a half of the lot, 1,294 BTC, were confiscated from a Silk Road drug dealer Matthew Gillum who was sentenced to 9 years in prison in 2015. Another 65 bitcoins came from a former US Drug Enforcement Administration officer Carl Mark Force. He was found guilty of stealing bitcoins worth $700,000 dollars while taking part in the investigation of the Silk Road case and got 6.5 years in jail. Only 2.8 BTC on what is considered to be the last Silk Road bitcoin auction belonged to Ross Ulbricht, the former owner of the dark web market.
Some of the auctioned bitcoins came from other unrelated criminal cases. Thus, 664 BTC were seized from Sean Roberson who in 2015 was convicted of online counterfeit credit and debit card trade and sentenced to 6.5 years in prison.
The previous USMS auction of confiscated Silk Road bitcoins took place in November 2015. A set of lots was offered of the total amount of 44,000 BTC ($14.6 mln at that time), 11 bids received.
Elena Platonova
