The Swedish government is receiving mounting pressure to pay a drug dealer it arrested for selling drugs online.
The prisoner, who has used his drug-selling proceeds to buy Bitcoin assets, will receive an astounding $1.5 million from the government because his assets have increased in value while he was in jail.
According to the court, the prisoner’s Bitcoin assets (which were worth $100,000 at that time) were seized because they were earned through illegal means.
Bitcoin appreciation
But in the two years since the original conviction, the price of the BTC has risen significantly, and the prisoner’s crypto assets had appreciated to more than $1.5 million.
The problem for the authorities was that 3 Bitcoins were all that was needed to satisfy the court’s original settlement of $100,000 based on the same 36 Bitcoins.
In other words, there are 33 Bitcoins left on the prisoner’s crypto wallet that the Swedish authorities must return. If only they sold the 36 BTC assets at the time of incarceration, this problem would not arise in the first place.
Admitting a mistake
Prosecutor Trove Kullberg admitted in a radio interview that she made a big mistake of reporting the funds in dollars, instead of cryptos. She also added that she had not foreseen the consequences of her mistake.
In the interview, she said that the most important lesson she learned from this crypto case is to keep the value of BTC. And if there is any Bitcoin involved in a crime, always report the number of BTC involved and not its current value.
In Swedish legal history, this was the first time that authorities have dealt with a crypto-related crime.
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