A curious mistake turns the Swedish drug dealer into a Bitcoin millionaire
Bitcoin: Price explosion made Swedish drug dealers rich. (Photo: Shutterstock)
A drug dealer will probably receive 1.6 million US dollars in Bitcoin from the Swedish state after serving his sentence. The reasons for this are the price explosion and a strange mistake.
A Swedish drug dealer is a made man after serving a two-year prison sentence – at least in terms of his financial situation. Because the Swedish state, which once put him behind bars, now has to pay him 33 Bitcoin. The background to this is, on the one hand, the sharp rise in the Bitcoin exchange rate, but above all a curious mistake by the public prosecutor in the case.
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$ 100,000 instead of 36 Bitcoin confiscated
As The Telegraph reports, the unnamed drug dealer had been jailed two years ago for selling drugs over the Internet. The illegal online drug trade reportedly earned him 36 Bitcoin. At the time, a Bitcoin was apparently worth just under $ 3,000 – it was about $ 100,000. This money was confiscated as part of the conviction – and should of course not actually be returned.
Here, however, a wrong decision comes into play, which is now ultimately making the drug dealer rich. Because instead of specifying the confiscated amount in Bitcoin, the responsible prosecutor Tove Kullberg gave it 100,000 dollars. Because the 36 bitcoins were apparently not sold immediately, but instead the corresponding wallet was frozen, three bitcoins were now enough to pay the drug dealer’s debts. The remaining 33 Bitcoin are due to the drug dealer.
Prosecutor: Regrettable mistake
After the recent price jump to $ 50,000, the man leaves prison with over $ 1.6 million. Prosecutor Kullberg has meanwhile admitted her mistake in a radio interview. The whole thing was “regrettable in many ways”. In addition, it led to consequences that were not foreseeable at the time. Kullberg therefore advocated that the Swedish state should take money in hand to train public prosecutors and other employees in cryptocurrencies. This would prevent such errors in the future.
