US Attorney: $28M in bitcoins seized
In this April 3, 2013 photo, Mike Caldwell, a 35-year-old software engineer, rolls a stack of bitcoin tokens at his shop in Sandy, Utah. Caldwell mints physical versions of bitcoins, cranking out homemade tokens with codes protected by tamper-proof holographic seals, a retro-futuristic kind of prepaid cash. With up to 70,000 transactions each day over the past month, bitcoins have been propelled from the world of Internet oddities to the cusp of mainstream use, a remarkable breakthrough for a currency which made its online debut only four years ago. (Rick Bowmer/AP Photo, file)
The United States Attorney in New York says about $28 million worth of bitcoins have been seized from a man charged with operating a notorious online drug marketplace known as Silk Road.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Friday more than 144,000 bitcoins were found on computer hardware belonging to Ross William Ulbricht.
Federal authorities in New York have charged Ulbricht with three felonies related to the operation of the website. He was sent to New York from California earlier this month.
The federal public defender who represented Ulbricht in California declined to comment. His New York attorney didn’t immediately return messages.
Silk Road gained notoriety as a black market bazaar where drugs could be bought and sold using bitcoins, a form of online cash.
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