Saxony investigators seized almost 50,000 Bitcoins in mid-January. This corresponds to a value of two billion euros, as the spokesman for the State Criminal Police Office, Kay Anders, confirmed to MDR SACHSEN. This is the most extensive security of Bitcoins by German law enforcement authorities to date.
According to the information, one of the accused voluntarily transferred the virtual currency to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). It was said that a final decision had not yet been made about the utilization of the Bitcoins.
Investigative work by several authorities
The background to the confiscation of the digital money is a joint investigation by the Dresden Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Saxony State Criminal Police Office (LKA) and the tax investigation department of the Leipzig II tax office against two men. The 40-year-old German and the 37-year-old Pole are accused of commercial violation of copyright law and subsequent money laundering. They are said to have operated the German pirated portal “movie2k.to” until the end of May 2013. They are said to have invested income from advertising and subscription traps in Bitcoins.
INES
* The Integrated Investigation Unit Saxony (INES) was founded in 2004.
* It is made up of public prosecutors, economic experts, investigators and tax investigators and deals with particularly serious or organized crime.
As early as August 2020, the investigative group consisting of the LKA, public prosecutor’s office and tax investigation with the abbreviation INES had obtained Bitcoins from the portal operators with a total value of more than 25 million euros secured. The two main operators are accused of, together with other people involved, distributing over 880,000 pirated copies and operating an illegal streaming service from autumn 2008 to May 2013.