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BTC-e users are currently signing petitions to the Department of justice through change.org started by Tamer Dahdul.

Tamer Dahdul  has started a petition on change.org to the department of justice.

Continue Reading=>  https://zycrypto.com/btc-e-users-signing-petitions-department-justice/

Read More => https://zycrypto.com/btc-e-users-signing-petitions-department-justice

There are many law abiding citizens that lost their money because of it, and Alexander Vinnik was the cause of all this commotions, and because of the shutdown of this crypto exchange that is BTC-e I think the petition is necessary to take action and if I were in their shoe's I would certainly freak out, money is still money, you have invested and give time on it, the government doesn't need to permanently shutdown the exchange sites or rather return the money of the affected citizens, this is truly outrageous!

yea they need to have their money back by all means.

https://zycrypto.com

Sorry to sound unsympathetic, but there's more likelihood of the DoJ prosecuting you for being financially involved than there is in you getting any of your bitcoins back.  You may well be law-abiding, but that's not what they will naturally assume.  The way they see it, your petition is basically saying "I've been helping fund this suspected criminal you just arrested and I'd like my money back, please".   ::)

I'm not saying they were right to seize the funds or anything (Team America: World Police, etc).  I thought this exchange was based in Bulgaria, just ever so slightly outside of US jurisdiction.  But seriously... how likely do you think it is they're actually going to hand over the bitcoins?  Not just because they aren't going to see it from your perspective, but also because they simply don't care.  America isn't "the land of the free".  It only counts as freedom when it suits them and I can assure you this particular matter of freedom doesn't even show on their radar.  You have no rights here as far as they're concerned, which is awful, I know, but that's just how it is.  You need to learn and accept that if you leave your funds in the control of an exchange, they can vanish at any point and you are more than likely to get nothing in return. 

Rule #1 of Bitcoin is that if you don't have control over the private keys, you don't have control over your bitcoins.

That is not how it works, if you have done nothing illegal then they have no legal basis to confiscate your coins.

However I haven't seen any statement regarding if or how many coins they managed to seize and think it is likely still in the possession of the owners.

Exactly this. Unfortunately for those who lost their bitcoins on this exchange, the chances of getting your money back is very slim. Perhaps if they find a flaw in the seizing of the funds but even that is quite far fetched and incredibly unlikely. Another lesson for people to never store your bitcoin on exchanges or online wallets.

Very low chance that any of BTC-e users will see their coins/money ever again. People should be aware of the risk of investing in unregulated financial instruments/services.
They could always choose an exchange which is fully complied with the law and in the case of fuck up their money would be most likely safe - for example Gemini.
I somewhat have this feeling that no amount of petitions will change anything in this case.

I think that most of the exchange's userbase was law-abiding. Mostly traders, some miners. I was there because it was long-running and trusted, with a reliable trade engine and API. They had a very wide variety of financial partners for deposit/withdrawal and KYC was always required to move fiat money out of the exchange. I don't think that most users felt that this was a "criminal" exchange at all. Sure, some users tried to use it to launder funds (like other services, brokers, casinos). Didn't they freeze coins incoming from the EVO darknet marketplace exit scam? I think there were other examples like this, too.

Anyway, this petition is useless. The government doesn't care about change.org petitions, and they basically announced in the indictment that if you are a customer, you are probably a criminal of sorts.

This is a very sad thing, when the trust of people is already high against Btc-e instead involved cases like this. While our money stored there there is no clarity whether it will be returned or not. I hope there is a notice from the btc-e admin regarding our money settling there.