This article was poorly written

The mining machines have been confiscated by the authorities and are now being examined to find evidence of other illegal activities.

To my knowledge an ASIC can only mine lol

"The problem here is that the regulatory agencies of the United States are extremely fractured, and each of these want to oversee the adoption of bitcoin in their own particular way, with little regard for the other agencies, bitcoin or the users themselves. Trying to pin down the decentralized virtual currency is the aim of the game it seems, no matter the cost to those who are using it." Kate L - coinreport.net