Vallerius was caught by police forces at the Atlanta airport in 2017 and will serve his sentence in Southern Florida’s state jail. The French-Israeli citizen admitted in his plea agreement that he sold drugs like oxycodone, cocaine, heroin, Ritalin, and fentanyl. Payments were made using Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
Over 100 BTC and around 122 BCH, amounting to over $700, 000, were seized and will be forfeited by the U.S. government.
Forfeit of cryptocurrencies is not new – in 2015 dark web’s Silk Road owner Ross Ulbricht received a life sentence and the government seized 144,336 BTC from his personal computer. The government auctioned the coins, earning more than $48 million in profit. If the US government were selling Bitcoins today, it would make them over $900 million.
Vallerius agreed to grant access to “all of his passwords” for his crypto wallets. For now, it’s a plain guess if the government will auction these tokens, too, or hold them until cryptocurrencies reach a higher price.
Earlier this week, another drug dealer - Gary Davis (known as Libertas), pleaded guilty to selling drugs on the Silk Road. Last year, the Californian District Court seized $8 million in cryptocurrencies from Alexandre Cazes, who was believed to be behind the darknet marketplace AlphaBay.
Cazes was arrested on July 5, 2017, and took his life just ten days later. Researchers discovered over $800, 000 in Bitcoin transactions, passing every day from dark web users. They purchased drugs, pornography, credit card information, and weapons.