Russia “starts selling” 1,032 Bitcoins seized in scam

PANews January 10 news, according to Cryptonews, Russia has begun selling Bitcoins confiscated in its investigation of the Infraud hacker group in 2023. The move indicates that Moscow hopes to convert more than 1,000 Bitcoins into fiat currency. Russia's state-run news agency TASS confirmed the development and said Moscow would first sell nearly $10 million worth of Bitcoin seized from former Russian Investigative Committee investigator Marat Tambiev.

Last year, Tambiev was convicted of accepting bribes from the hacking group. Prosecutors found hundreds of bitcoins on his computer and storage devices. The former investigator was convicted of receiving 1,032.1 Bitcoins from the organization and sentenced to 16 years in prison. However, the bailiff's efforts to liquidate all 1,032.1 Bitcoins were complicated by legal obstacles. Tambiev appears to have divided the bitcoins into smaller amounts. This means that the bailiff must submit a separate court ruling to allow Moscow to obtain the Bitcoins. However, the bailiffs have successfully persuaded the court to allow them to sell the first batch of Bitcoins. They said Tambiev stored the bitcoins in a Ledger Nano X hardware cryptographic wallet. The TASS news agency quoted sources as saying that prosecutors also want to sell another batch of Bitcoins "worth millions of rubles", and they also want to sell "several properties in the Moscow region" and a "Honda motorcycle."