Bitcoins Worth $1 Million Seized by Court to Compensate Cyber Attack Victims

[erricducducan26]

In the first-ever case of its kind, a British judge has ordered confiscation of Bitcoins worth $1 million from a jailed hacker.
https://coingape.com/british-court-compensation-bitcoins/

[hugeblack]

Good news It is good to see justice take its course but there is nothing new in the news.

Earlier, the authorities had already confiscated about $1 million from West at the time of the arrest. Reportedly, FBI in the US has about $200,000 worth in Bitcoins seized by them. The Metropolitan Police had seized the rest of the amount and is now under the protection of the crown.

The criminal was arrested in possession of a sum of money valued in US dollars, "not in cryptocurrencies," just as the seizure of any asset.
Also, there was no effort in tracking the coins and arresting him but was caught with the money.

It is good that victims are compensated and this is what should be done if they do when an exchange platform hack occurs.

[Kakmakr]

Why should bitcoins be any different from anything else with financial value? The law enforcement agencies must take a portion of that to increase their capacity to catch more of these criminals and the rest must go as compensation for the victims of these crimes.

People think Bitcoin is something special, but it is just another "currency" or a "payment" option that can be used for criminal actions too. The community should actually pitch in to help "report" suspicious sites and schemes and to provide information that would lead to the criminal prosecution of these criminals. 

[fiulpro]

I think considering how the hacker was responsible for taking over 1 million ..naturally it was expected by the judge to take the amount and actually get that to where it belongs , no matter if it's gold , bitcoins , etherum or anything else at the end of the day what matters is their value , they are worth 1 million and that's something no one can actually change .
Any court or any judge is bound to take the value into account no matter how twisted it is.

[leftgirly]

In this case, the judge treated the  bitcoin  as stolen assets that needs to be returned to it's rightful owner. This is a real test case and a good call also. Hope similar judgement can be conferred on hackers who attack the various crypto exchanges when they are identified and arraigned before any court.

[pooya87]

In the first-ever case of its kind,

it is in no way the "first" case where the government seizes bitcoins from someone specially if that someone is a criminal. there has been lots of cases before this, Silk Road for the most popular and old example where FBI seized somewhere around $100 million in total if not more from those involved in it.

[avikz]

In the first-ever case of its kind, a British judge has ordered confiscation of Bitcoins worth $1 million from a jailed hacker.
https://coingape.com/british-court-compensation-bitcoins/

It's always a pleasure to see when justice is delivered. Such kind hackers like Grant West are the worms of our society and contributes to the reputation loss of bitcoin and cryptos worldwide. Thefts and hacks are always discussed at the forefront whenever potential risk of cryptos are being discussed by the regulatory authorities and such kind of incidents are one of the major roadblocks for cryptos to become a legal tender in many countries. Grant West is just one example of an wasted talent.

[Jating]

In this case, the judge treated the  bitcoin  as stolen assets that needs to be returned to it's rightful owner. This is a real test case and a good call also. Hope similar judgement can be conferred on hackers who attack the various crypto exchanges when they are identified and arraigned before any court.

Well it could served as precedent in history, as we all know that once our coins are stolen, there's no way we can't get it back from the criminals. So I guess this is a good call from the judge to return or someone compensated the victims here by ordering that stolen coins return to rightful owner.

And the end, justice is served no matter what. Time to give those criminals and would be criminals a lesson here.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…> So I guess this is a good call from the judge to return or someone compensated the victims here by ordering that stolen coins return to rightful owner.
 

Technically though he didn’t steal BTC (or other crypyo) from his victims. What he stole were user accounts from over 100 large corporations such as Sainsbury’s and Uber, and sold them on the black market for crypto. The customers being compensated are mainly these corporations for their costs in resolving the hack on their end.

[Red-Apple]

In this case, the judge treated the  bitcoin  as stolen assets that needs to be returned to it's rightful owner. This is a real test case and a good call also. Hope similar judgement can be conferred on hackers who attack the various crypto exchanges when they are identified and arraigned before any court.

Well it could served as precedent in history, as we all know that once our coins are stolen, there's no way we can't get it back from the criminals. So I guess this is a good call from the judge to return or someone compensated the victims here by ordering that stolen coins return to rightful owner.

that could be said about anything else. if you have your "anything" stolen by criminals you can't get it back. your car, your phone, your jewelry, your cash,... that is not something that happens only to bitcoin.
and just like anything else if you could catch the criminals, then you would have some chance of getting your valuables back.

[eaLiTy]

In the first-ever case of its kind, a British judge has ordered confiscation of Bitcoins worth $1 million from a jailed hacker.

It is a really great turn of events, the hacker had a dream of living a luxury free life by stealing other people's hard work and earnings and now he is behind bars and the time he spent stealing others are gone. I wish all the hackers go through the same phase and i am certain that majority of hacks will come to light in the future and all the culprits will be behind bars and their loot returned to the rightful owners and hopefully this is just the beginning.

[Karlinz]

The judgement is a good development as it will act as deterrent to a lot of persons that feel they can swindle unsuspecting victims and go free because of how intractable bitcoin transactions are. This is the main reason why one should not invest in any scheme or project that the real identities of the owners are not known.

[SirLancelot]

Honestly, if we can have some sort of regulations in the cryptocurrency industry, things will be very easy and the rate of crypto cybercrime will reduce, now they have laid example, but this is not enough to make the rest withdraw, we need full force enforcement and we need more scape goat for others to see that they can no longer go scot free again duping investors of their money through either ICO or through hacking of their account.

Seems UK is a little bit friendlier as regards cryptocurrency than US, because they could have just ignore it and pretend like they never knew so that people would be discouraged from the use of cryptocurrency. Well, it is still a step ahead for us, and I am sure that overtime, we will get much more regulation from different countries.

[joelsamuya]

Hacking should not go unpunished and at the right time victims should be compensated for the value of money they lost from such an evil act. The amount connected with this hacking is just peanuts to the many millions of dollars suffered by different cryptocurrency exchanges in the past many years but unfortunately though we can see the cryptocurrencies going from one wallets to another there was nothing we can do but watch. I am hoping that one day hackers can easily be caught but this is just a pure fantasy as they are always ahead of the game at least 3 steps away from authorities. Good to see an act of justice with this news.

[rdluffy]

This is good news, and very important to show to hackers that nothing is above the law, even cryptos
I know it's hard to investigate, but here in Brazil we are at the very beginning at understanding what cryptos are and there are a few cases where justice is having to deal with cryptos, and they are doing very well

[Darker45]

"Finally, the court decided upon $8,500 as the nominal price of 1 BTC for calculating the compensation."

How will the court proceed from this decision? They have a million USD worth of Bitcoins and because the court decided that the price per BTC is only $8,500, they must have an extra $1,500+ per BTC in this computation, at least according to the price today in CMC. Out of a million USD, there must be around 117 Bitcoins, so an extra $1,500 per Bitcoin would make around $176,000. Will they auction the Bitcoins seized or dump them on exchanges? And to whom will the extra amount goes?

[Slow death]

In the first-ever case of its kind, a British judge has ordered confiscation of Bitcoins worth $1 million from a jailed hacker.
https://coingape.com/british-court-compensation-bitcoins/

I wonder what the main purpose of bitcoin-related news channels is? do bitcoin-related news channels want to destroy the bitcoin image?

Here is another article related to this news:

Between July and December 2015, he carried out a phishing scam by masquerading as online takeaway firm Just Eat to try and obtain the personal details of 165,000 people.

He failed to secure any financial information, but his actions cost Just Eat around £200,000.

West carried out his attacks using a laptop belonging to his girlfriend, Rachael Brookes, and used the computer to store details on more than 100,000 people.

Police also found an SD card at his address that contained 78 million usernames and passwords, and 63,000 credit and debit card details, some of which he would use to pay for treats for himself - including holidays.

In addition to the cryptocurrency, which has its current value of £922,978.14 due to market fluctuations, police also recovered £25,000 in cash and half a kilogram of cannabis from storage units rented by West across Kent.

The cryptocurrency will be sold and the victims will receive compensation.

Source: Grant West: Hacker ordered to pay back almost £1m in cryptocurrency

the crime world is not just about cryptos, we are not going to paint cryptos as the only way the criminals prefer

[fullhdpixel]

In the first-ever case of its kind,

it is in no way the "first" case where the government seizes bitcoins from someone specially if that someone is a criminal. there has been lots of cases before this, Silk Road for the most popular and old example where FBI seized somewhere around $100 million in total if not more from those involved in it.

I was also thinking this would be the first of its king, I have actually heard of physical theft of bitcoin which some were apprehended and handed over to law, but don’t know of apprehending of an hacker. The funds being seized by the government, i, are they refunding it back to the victims, or they would just seize it and add it to government’s purse, if government was able to apprehend the hacker, then it should not be much difficult for government to regulate the cryptocurrency.

I am sure that it was through their kyc that they were able to apprehend those ones and we need those type of news to be on the internet in other to encourage some investors that are scared of their security and that of their money, at least there is chances that an hacker can be caught.

[coin-investor]

In the first-ever case of its kind, a British judge has ordered confiscation of Bitcoins worth $1 million from a jailed hacker.
https://coingape.com/british-court-compensation-bitcoins/

I'm glad we have this kind of news, these hackers are one of the reasons why Cryptocurrency is not moving forward, every time there are hacking the price of Bitcoin plummet, this guy should be sentenced for long years.

The prosecuting counsel noted that a further hearing would be required to determine the difference between the amount sanctioned and the left-over of his ‘client’s assets.

I think all his assets should be confiscated because he got these from stealing from other people, known and unknown.
Hopefully, many more hackers will be caught and prosecuted.

[dothebeats]

Shouldn't this be the action that needs to be done anyway? If someone gets aggravated for another party's wrongdoings, they should be compensated accordingly if the offending party was proven guilty. This is not the first time this has happened. Take for example the Mt. Gox fiasco. Sure it's not the same as this one, but the very nature of the crime for both is similar, and Karpeles and Co. are still paying for damages years after their indictment.