One spring day in a village just west of London, residents saw a man being muscled into a vehicle in front of a nearby house. He reappeared with cuts and bruises 13 hours later, but the cops had already discovered the house was a cannabis-growing operation. A separate search of the man’s home in a nearby town turned up something more intriguing some of the first cryptocurrency that would ever be seized by British police.
That era-defining 2017 case yielded a safety-deposit box containing jewelry, gold bars, ￡263,000 (US$342,000) in cash and an item that flummoxed the lead investigator, Matthew
The qualities that make cryptocurrencies attractive to criminals some think they’re easier to hide and transfer than other assets are challenging law enforcement.
Victims of cryptocurrency scams say one of the most infuriating aspects is the fact that they can observe their stolen assets being moved around—and in the case of last.