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At
Southwark Crown Court, judge Joanna Korner ruled that the state
could confiscate 922,978.14 pounds ($1.13 million) worth of
cryptocurrencies from Grant West, 27.
West, from Kent in southeast England, was sentenced in May last
year to over 10 years in prison for charges from conspiracy to
defraud and possession of criminal property to the possession of
drugs. He must obey the confiscation order or face an extra four
years in prison, Korner said.
The Metropolitan Police said West used phishing emails in
attacks on more than 100 companies worldwide, stealing tens of
thousands of customers' financial details before selling the
data on dark web marketplaces. He later converted the profits to
cryptocurrencies.
West operated on the dark web under the alias of "Courvoisier,"
the Metropolitan Police said. A judge at his trial last year
described him as a "one-man cyber crime wave," the BBC reported
at the time.
While other British police forces have previously seized from
criminals bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the seizure was
the first of its kind for the Metropolitan Police.
The wild fluctuations of the price of bitcoin, which regularly
sees double-digit intraday price moves, caused a headache for
the prosecutors in setting the value of the confiscation, said
prosecuting barrister Kevin Barry.
The cryptocurrency seized at the time of West's arrest in
September 2017 was at the time worth 1.6 million pounds ($1.95
million).
The relative anonymity of cryptocurrencies has been a draw for
criminals since their inception a decade ago, with the
challenges in accessing encrypted digital wallets presenting
headaches for law enforcement.
(Reporting by Tom Wilson; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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