The seizure of 50,000 BTC by the German police.
The confiscated bitcoins worth two billion euros were transferred to the BKA.
Investigators in Saxony have conducted the largest bitcoin backup in Germany to date. They say that the money comes from illegal business with pirated copies on the portal Movie2k.to .
In mid-January, Saxony investigators confiscated almost 50,000 bitcoins. This corresponds to an amount of two billion euros, as confirmed to MDR SACHSEN by Kay Anders, a representative of the State Criminal Police Department. To date, this is the broadest protection of Bitcoin by German law enforcement agencies.
According to the information, one of the accused voluntarily transferred the virtual currency to the Federal Criminal Police Department (BKA). It was said that the final decision on the use of bitcoins has not yet been made.
Investigative work of several agencies
The background to the confiscation of digital money is a joint investigation by the Dresden Prosecutor's Office, the Office of the State Criminal Police of Saxony (LKA) and the Tax investigation department of the Leipzig II Tax Inspectorate in relation to the two men. A 40-year-old German and a 37-year-old Pole are accused of commercial violation of copyright law and subsequent money laundering. It is reported that until the end of May 2013, they operated a German pirate portal Movie2k.to . They are said to have invested the revenue from advertising and subscriptions in Bitcoin.
* INES is The Saxony Integrated Investigations Unit (INES) was founded in 2004.
* It consists of prosecutors, economic experts, investigators and tax specialists, and it deals with particularly serious or organized crime.
Back in August 2020, an investigative team consisting of the LKA, the prosecutor's office and the tax service with the abbreviation INES seized bitcoins worth more than 25 million euros from the portal operators. The two main operators, along with others involved, are accused of distributing more than 880,000 pirated copies and running an illegal streaming service from autumn 2008 to May 2013.