191 BTC or almost $1.5M confiscated from child porn site in South Korea

The Supreme Court of South Korea has declared that digital currency in possession of the website AVsnoop.club (apparently closed by now) is an actual valuable property and indeed can be confiscated by the authorities.

This cancels the previous decision of the Suwon District Court in South Korea, although there were some indications that the judges have recently changed their minds: out of 216 total bitcoins, 191 have been confirmed to belong to one of the members of the criminal group responsible for the website with obscene materials. The Suwon Court stated in January 31 that Bitcoin can actually be viewed as a valuable possession and changed into money, and now the Supreme Court additionally confirms that in this case, 191 bitcoins are subject to confiscation.

This information is currently being shared on the media websites of South Korea. Notably, 191 BTC makes a great sum of 1 425 875,16 USD at the press time. As noted by some media publications, this is the first ever confiscation of bitcoins in South Korea.

Meanwhile in America, it has become a routine procedure for the US Marshals to sell confiscated digital currencies (usually Bitcoin) on auctions. In China, there has been no examples of cryptocoins seized by the government, although the local police has appropriated mining hardware in at least one notable case.

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