zlacker

Will he get his possesions back then?

50,676 bitcoins, today valued at 5,3 billion USD.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-h...

>>bdhcui+(OP)
I am not sure of the legality around his possessions but they are long gone. Even the ones stolen by FBI officers during the course of the investigation.

>>bdhcui+(OP)
Hey may have other wallets...

>>misiti+U
with a name like DPR id have to assume its buried treasure

>>bdhcui+(OP)
If they were from the commission of a crime, then no.

>>ktalle+l
I think that requires convincing evidence. Also, how is it relevant to the question?

>>bb88+M1
It's a full pardon; there is no crime.

>>bdhcui+(OP)
No, generally a pardon does not eliminate any civil liability or entitle you to refunds once the assets have been transferred to Treasury. He would still have to answer Yes to having been convicted of a felony and he would still not be entitled to vote in states that do not permit felons to vote.

> Where a person has paid a monetary penalty or forfeited property, the consequences of a pardon depend in part on when it was issued. If a monetary fine or contraband cash has been transferred to the Treasury, a pardon conveys no right to a refund, nor does the person pardoned have a right to reacquire property or the equivalent in cash from a legitimate purchaser of his seized assets or from an informant who was rewarded with cash taken from the pardoned person before he was pardoned.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/presidential-pardons-sett...

>>bdhcui+(OP)
Until now I oddly never questioned how any government could seize someone's bitcoin and how a government keeps the private keys of their crypto wallets secure.

>>idlewo+j4
I don’t believe that’s true. A pardon does not excuse a crime.

>>bdhcui+(OP)
obviously not.

>>bdhcui+(OP)
Was that profits or users’ deposits?

>>idlewo+j4
Hard to agree here. A jury of his peers convicted him of the crime.

>>mmooss+a4
Well the American Government auctioned the bitcoin, and the two FBI agents were tried and sentenced for theft. I don't need evidence.

I am curious how the American government can reimburse those pardoned.

>>idlewo+j4
That's not how it works. The money can still be guilty of a crime outside of the Defendant's acquittal in civil cases like this.

source: hundreds of hours in forfeiture court

>>arctic+25
This is obviously incorrect. Actually pardon means the charges filed has been voided, hence anything happening afterwards has had no merits and court decisions made are now rendered moot. For example, Roger Stone was charged and found guilty of multiple crimes and Trump pardoned him; he still brandish guns and was "proudly voting Trump" in 2024 in state of Florida. Getting pardon is literally like it never happened in the first place.

>>idlewo+j4
A pardon results in the relief from the consequences of a crime. There being a pardon doesn't necessarily mean there was no crime.

>>mmooss+a4
It is easy to look up the cases against the agents. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-federal-agents-charged...

Both served time.

>>112358+27
Thanks, that links to the charges.

"Two former federal agents have been charged with wire fraud, money laundering and related offenses for stealing digital currency during their investigation of the Silk Road ..."

>>throwa+75
a lot of known best practices were not followed in 2013.

Every advancement in crypto was done after the government made a move. And all subsequent moves netted the government less.

Now it takes more agencies to seize darknet markets, and most merchants and consumers get their money back because it was a multisignature transaction and the server stored nothing. Even domains have been seized back from the government.

The crypto space calls it "antifragility", as in the idea - and now history - that the asset class and infrastructure improves under pressure.

>>qingch+P6
Pardon the money!

>>joerin+S6
The pardon can restore certain rights in some cases, I'm not entirely familiar with the Stone shenanigans, but knowing the parties involved I can't assume that Stone was legally entitled to do what he did after the pardon, and maybe he was.

That said, the recovery of assets after transfer to Treasury is settled law. [1]

> More broadly, the Court ruled in several cases during this period that pardons entitled their recipients to recover property forfeited or seized on the basis of the underlying offenses, so long as vested third-party rights would not be affected and money had not already been paid into the Treasury (except as authorized by statute).

Was covered in Osborne v. United States, Knote v. United States, In re: Armstrong's Foundry, Cent. R.R. v. Bosworth and Jenkins v. Collard

Subsequent cases make it clear that the offense is not in fact "gone."

> ... the Court in Burdick stated that a pardon “carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it."

> ... then, in Carlesi v. New York, the Court determined that a pardoned offense could still be considered “as a circumstance of aggravation” under a state habitual-offender law, reflecting that although a pardon may obviate the punishment for a federal crime, it does not erase the facts associated with the crime or preclude all collateral effects arising from those facts.

The court holds that it is not in fact as if it never happened.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-2/sec...

>>mmooss+x7
I'm more than happy to have the discussion with you but I have no requirement to provide all of the information that is widely available in the public domain.

>>joerin+S6
Part of getting pardoned is admitting guilt - ask joe arpaio ...

>>mmooss+x7
I’ll let you Google the pleas and sentences. Stop with the asinine recalcitrance.

>>idlewo+j4
That would arguably create some of the worst perverse incentives, as far as financial crimes go.

Any two-bit governor could team up with some criminal, and make enough money to be set up for life against a pardon. Even worse if it's a president, as they could likely get off scot-free.

Trump could literally scam everyone and everyone, step down, receive a pardon from the VP, and happy days.

>>joerin+S6
Your example doesn't seem to involve restoring property / funds due to a pardon that were already confiscated / already paid.

Is there some example of someone getting such money back?

>>idlewo+A7
He can't. The President doesn't have civil pardon power.

>>idlewo+j4
Pardons are forgiveness. They don’t roll back the clock, although the Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that acceptance of a pardon is not an assumption of guilt.

>>Tracke+m9
That’s exactly what it’s doing. As long as you misbehave in Washington DC or commit a crime not chargeable in a state or too complex to prosecute, you’re good.

For example, you could defraud suckers into buying a pump and dump memecoin. Elon has repeatedly demonstrated that nobody will prosecute, and POTUS is above the law for as long as he decides to stay in office.

>>misiti+U
I suspect there'll be a lot of people very carefully watching for transactions from wallets with some sort of links to Silk Road that have been dormant for 12 years or so.

>>qingch+P6
Civil asset forfeiture should not be considered constitutional, and some day a test case will make it to the SCOTUS. As for this case though... the pardon does not make Ulbritch innocent! On the contrary, accepting the pardon implies guilt. So the pardon need not and might not extend to forfeitures. Though it's also possible that the presidential pardon could extend to the forfeitures, but I suspect that's a constitutional grey area.

>>Spooky+8d
Was acceptance of a pardon an "assumption" by the court? Is it not "admission* of guilt", which I believe itself was never the case as this was based on a judge's aside that people didn't accept pardons because it was *percieved* as "an admission of guilt", i.e. the "percieved" part was not actually articulated in court but rather the judge was completing a thought before it was fully articulated.

>>crypto+bf
Cases have made it to the Supreme Court --- recently! --- and it held up just fine. This is another message board fixation. I'm sure it's abused all over the place. It wasn't in this case.

>>ajcp+pf
My apologies I made a mistake. The Burdick SCOTUS case from 1915 said “carries an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it”

In 2021, an appeals court opined that: “not every acceptance of a pardon constitutes a confession of guilt.”

I thought the 2021 case was a Supreme Court case, and I was incorrect. I think in the public eye the pardon is viewed differently based on however the story is told.

>>ajcp+pf
What I find interesting is that the 5th amendment no longer applies after a pardon. The pardoned can no longer claim that protection for the crime he was convicted of.

>>crypto+bf
Civil asset forfeiture connected to an actual crime should be. You should not own the guns you used to murder someone else, e.g.

Otherwise it's "your $100,000 in dollars in cash looks guilty to me."

>>tptace+Qh
If the cases start with: "US v $200,000", that probably needs to go away.

I doubt I would be able to get away with "bb88 v $2B". It should so belong to me.

>>bb88+Yj
Right, if you've been found guilty, the your assets can be forfeited.

>>tptace+Qh
https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/news/16740-civil-forfeiture-d... ?

That's not very conclusive.

>>crypto+Gm
What part of this makes you thing CAF is on shaky constitutional ground? This is a CAF case with reach-y fact patterns for the government and they won it handily. We didn't even get close to the question of whether CAF is itself constitutional; the court simply presumed it.

>>ktalle+98
Are you replying to the wrong comment? :)

>>yieldc+y7
> a lot of known best practices were not followed in 2013.

like Secret Service and DEA agents getting immediately caught trying to steal Bitcoin from Silk Road?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/03/30/federal-agent...

>>bdhcui+(OP)
I don't think it's crazy to suspect that Ulbricht knows a password or two and cut a deal here.

>>dmix+Ms
Yes, like that

I was referring to hot and cold wallet practices, methods for unlinking transaction activity from your KYC’d funds, and the immaturity of multi-signature at the time

>>notfed+Yx
Yeah, something's a little fishy about the whole thing.

>>tptace+Lm
This was about the timing of a hearing about forfeiture, not about whether forfeiture is ok. Though I've not read this case yet, but now that I'm aware of it I'm keen to read it. I'll comment again later.

>>idlewo+j4
“A pardon is an expression of the president's forgiveness and ordinarily is granted in recognition of the applicant's acceptance of responsibility for the crime and established good conduct for a significant period of time after conviction or completion of sentence. It does not signify innocence.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_pardons_in_the_Unite...

>>notfed+Yx
I expected those would come out sooner, by rubber hose technique in prison.

>>bdhcui+(OP)
those are not his possessions. user account balances are included in that sum