- Toledo court sold cryptos worth $19 million
- Court made $16 million in profits from the sale
- Toledo man was sentenced to 2 years in prison in 2019
Proceeds from the sale of a cache of seized cryptos has been bountiful for one federal court in Toledo, Ohio. According to a report by the US Department of Justice, the Bitcoins were forfeited to the state two years ago by a man who was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Apparently, Mark Alex Simon was operating a website where he provided false identification documents to suspicious people who would pay him in Bitcoin. As part of his plea bargain, Mark forfeited Bitcoins then worth around $2.8 million. That was in May 2019. Mark was sentenced to 2 years in prison for his offense.
$16 million profit
The Bitcoins were recently sold by the authorities, netting around $19.2 million in proceeds. This means that the Toledo federal court earned around $16 million in profits from the sale of the seized cryptos that were only worth $2.8 million two years ago. This makes the crypto stash the biggest asset ever to be forfeited in the history of the region.
From the sales, it can be deduced that the seized cryptos multiplied in value by a factor of 6 between their forfeiture and the time of their sale by the court. That’s in line with the fact the Bitcoin market has improved significantly compared to its state the same period back in 2019.
Not the first cache of seized cryptos
The Toledo sale of seized cryptos isn’t the first to happen in the United States. There have many such incidents in the past. Just recently, the US GSA (General Service Administration) auctioned seized cryptos worth $377k.
Such incidents have been used by anti-crypto lobbyists to smear the technology with negative sentiments, saying that cryptos can be used for illegal activities.
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