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> The prosecutors accuse Harmon of a very unusual crime: remotely swiping Bitcoin... As opposed to what, "locally" swiping Bitcoin? > ... Bitcoin stored on a

> The prosecutors accuse Harmon of a very unusual crime: remotely swiping Bitcoin... As opposed to what, "locally" swiping Bitcoin? > ... Bitcoin stored on a computer device the government had already seized in another case Yeah that's your problem Mr. Prosecutor, you have no idea where bitcoins are "stored" or what the device you have seized is. Which leads me to think you are not qualified to "seize" this type of assets. It's 2022, Bitcoin has been working practically non-stop since 2009, and governments and the medias have been claiming that only criminals/terrorists use Bitcoin for almost as long... you would think people in his position would know what private keys are and how to secure Bitcoin funds they pretend to "seize". It's simple, like all crypto newbies this prosecutor has just learned: Not your keys, not your coins. This apllies if you have keys and you are not certain you are the only one to have them... anyone else with these keys can/will most likely claim them before you.

deleted 4y ago
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cantSpellSober 4y ago
> as opposed to what? There are more words in that sentence. Are there other examples where someone "remotely [swiped] Bitcoin stored on a computer device the government had already seized in another case?" They seem to define "stored on service" in this case as "accessible only with access to device." It's an interesting case: is it harder to recover physical assets from a police storage locker than digital?
- giancarlostoro 4y ago
  > It's an interesting case because it's harder to recover physical assets from a police storage locker than digital. I feel like you missed the whole point the comment you replied to made. If the person who stored the cryptocoins on the physically seized computer had a copy of the private keys on another computer (COMPLETELY NORMAL) and the prosecutor never transferred the coins making the assumption that physically holding them was good enough, then that is an invaluable lesson they just learned. As the previous comment says, if two people have access to the private keys for a wallet, whoever gets to it first is the real owner.
  - cantSpellSober 4y ago
    So let's flip it: how long will it stay that way: where law enforcement is unaware they've left ostensibly seized assets unsecured?
    - denkmoon 4y ago
      that goes right back to OPs point. If LEO are leaving these "seized" assets unsecured, they are simply not qualified to be doing what they are doing. To directly answer your question, forever. Policing is sufficiently distributed and poor at retaining or integrating new knowledge that I am sure we will see these amateur-hour mistakes being made for as long as crypto exists in its current form. Modern policing has not changed much since its inception with the Met Police and Robert Peel.
      - cantSpellSober 4y ago
        > forever Good! Nothing to worry about then? Our coins are forever un-seizeable? Robert Peel? Nuance please.
        TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
        FBI hires external consultants (“experts”) when there is $311 million at stake. In this case I’m sure they hired at least one crypto expert. In other words, they don’t need to understand private keys, pins, and passphrases in detail in order to be effective.
        cantSpellSober 4y ago
        But I was told "we will see these amateur-hour mistakes being made for as long as crypto exists in its current form," it sounds like the "crypto experts" they're hiring make that false. My coins are seizeable after all!
        deleted 4y ago
- dmix 4y ago
  It’s like ‘seizing’ a copy of digital pictures by a well known photographer (or a hard copy of the camera film reel) without actually being in control of the original pictures. And being surprised that another person got access to the photos and sold the originals on the market to another buyer. It didn’t require breaking into the police evidence locker to make copies. The key difference here in this analogy is that with pictures the cloned digital assets might have some value but not securing the original keys is like not securing the copyright.
mNovak 4y ago
>> you would think people in his position would know what private keys are and how to secure Bitcoin funds they pretend to "seize" How exactly would you have handled this differently? They were well aware the account could be recovered via mnemonic, but they couldn't move the funds because they didn't have the PIN.
- giancarlostoro 4y ago
  Sounds like they did not truly secure the crypto then. Shouldn't call it seizing if you don't have it digitally in your own secure wallet.
  - bfung 4y ago
    Wait until the prosecutors learn about gas fees. XD
  - sidewndr46 4y ago
    But what will they say at the press conference then?
    - mianos 4y ago
      They should say they have identified the account. I cant see them having anything else.
- netheril96 4y ago
  Don’t call it seizing then.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    obviously if they call it seizing and are willing to make the case in court that they had it seized, then the 'stealing' of it is a separate crime that probably has even worse penalties given that the argument would be it was stolen from government secured storage. Which I guess would make for an interesting case. If they don't charge for another theft then it would be obvious that they don't believe enough in that they had it 'seized' and that what happened was a 'theft'. on edit: I guess I need to go find it on archive.org to figure out if that has happened or not though.
Avshalom 4y ago
of course now anyone who can be traced to a wallet that interacts with these coins is now a criminal for receiving stolen goods, or obstruction of justice or probably a dozen other things.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
  A lot of crimes require mens rea, ie. being guilty would require knowing the bitcoins are shady.
  - ghastmaster 4y ago
    While perhaps not criminal, receiving them could subject a person to asset seizure. Usually stolen things are seized whether the receiver knows they are stolen or not. The burden is then on the receiver to persue criminal, or more likely, civil action.
    - BizarroLand 4y ago
      So when the bitcoin are traced to a washing service in a location where the FBI has no jurisdiction (so that they cannot go after the washing service), split into individual satoshis and then sent through hundreds of thousands of transactions before being put back into the wild in a format that is completely and totally randomized and then one day months or years later re-enter the FBI's jurisdiction you think that there's a chance in hell that they will be able to identify specifically which individual satoshis are illegal and which ones are not?
      - ghastmaster 4y ago
        If I steal $1,000 and promptly donate $1,000 to charity, it is very likely that that money would be tracked down and returned. On the other hand, if I steal $1,000 and make retail purchases over the course of twelve months less than $5 each, the monies would not be returned from the retailers to the victim of my theft. At that point it is up to the courts(civil and criminal) to force me to make amends to the original victim. Your scenario is similar to the latter example for most of the end recipients. If an account with zero bitcoins receives a stolen bitcoin and sends it to one recipient, that recipient would certainly fall under the first scenario I put forth. As the transactions become more complex and diffuse, the latter scenario is more likely.
FormerBandmate 4y ago
>It's simple, like all crypto newbies this prosecutor has just learned: Not your keys, not your coins. The US government can throw your ass in prison for the rest of your life so yes, it is their coins. This is the basis of all government power and in a lot of cases, like this, it's good
- kylebenzle 4y ago
- cube00 4y ago
  What happened to Kevin Mitnick is a cautionary tale that you can be held for at least five years without bail before you get the opportunity to plead your case.
  - FederalAgent47 4y ago
    Except he was in jail because he was fugitive from violating probation on a earlier fraud conviction
- once_inc 4y ago
  Imagine sending in a hard-core, 2009-era bitcoiner with a single address containing 10k bitcoin. The bitcoiner isn't going to hand over his coins for any reason (including torture, torture of family members, bribery, etc). How does the US government own the coins by incarcerating the bitcoiner?
  - Cederfjard 4y ago
    Just because you hide a big bag of cash where no one can find it, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s yours, just that you have it. If the US government says that it has lawfully seized your bitcoin, then by law the US government owns the bitcoin, even if they don’t possess it. If you’re successfully keeping it from them, they can and will punish you for it. Again, as FormerBandmate said, that’s the basis of their power.
jonas21 4y ago
Uh, those are the reporter's words, not the prosecutor's. If you read the indictment [1], the word "remotely" never appears, and it's pretty clear the prosecutors understand how Bitcoin works. If anyone's clueless here, it's Gary Harmon, who showed up at his brother's court hearing, learned that the government had not yet secured the Bitcoin that it legally had a right to, then almost immediately moved that Bitcoin to other wallets, and... just figured nobody would notice? [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/521749057/USA-v-Gary-Harmon-Indictment https://www.scribd.com/document/521749057/USA-v-Gary-Harmon-...
- cyphertruck 4y ago
  Government had bo legal right to the bitcoin. Innocent until proven guilty, means the government stole the bitcoin in a criminal attempt to deny him an adequate defense. You can’t “steal” your own property. The government agents involved are all felons under 18 U.S. Code § 241. Conspiracy against rights - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/241 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/241 and 18 U.S. Code § 242. Deprivation of rights under color of law - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242 The problem us our country is so corrupt you have forgotten we have a constitution and have probably never heard of the above two statutes.
  - cedilla 4y ago
    It's always funny to see someone who first talks about the presumption of innocence then going on to call huge groups of people felons without even knowing the details of the case.
  - iudqnolq 4y ago
    As I understand it your (incorrect) reading of 241 is that when the government securely holds your property pending the final outcome of your trial that violates the clause of 241 that forbids a conspiracy to "injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person". If that was true detaining a person would be a much more serious violation than detaining your property. Now I happen to believe that pretrial detention is almost never moral. However, it's pretty obviously not a federal crime for a judge to order someone accused of murder to be held in jail until their trial.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Locally swiping = physical access to media with the keys. Remote = remote access to such media, or getting the key some other way remotely.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

cantSpellSober 4y ago

> as opposed to what? There are more words in that sentence. Are there other examples where someone "remotely [swiped] Bitcoin stored on a computer device the government had already seized in another case?" They seem to define "stored on service" in this case as "accessible only with access to device." It's an interesting case: is it harder to recover physical assets from a police storage locker than digital?

giancarlostoro 4y ago
> It's an interesting case because it's harder to recover physical assets from a police storage locker than digital. I feel like you missed the whole point the comment you replied to made. If the person who stored the cryptocoins on the physically seized computer had a copy of the private keys on another computer (COMPLETELY NORMAL) and the prosecutor never transferred the coins making the assumption that physically holding them was good enough, then that is an invaluable lesson they just learned. As the previous comment says, if two people have access to the private keys for a wallet, whoever gets to it first is the real owner.
- cantSpellSober 4y ago
  So let's flip it: how long will it stay that way: where law enforcement is unaware they've left ostensibly seized assets unsecured?
  - denkmoon 4y ago
    that goes right back to OPs point. If LEO are leaving these "seized" assets unsecured, they are simply not qualified to be doing what they are doing. To directly answer your question, forever. Policing is sufficiently distributed and poor at retaining or integrating new knowledge that I am sure we will see these amateur-hour mistakes being made for as long as crypto exists in its current form. Modern policing has not changed much since its inception with the Met Police and Robert Peel.
    - cantSpellSober 4y ago
      > forever Good! Nothing to worry about then? Our coins are forever un-seizeable? Robert Peel? Nuance please.
      - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
        FBI hires external consultants (“experts”) when there is $311 million at stake. In this case I’m sure they hired at least one crypto expert. In other words, they don’t need to understand private keys, pins, and passphrases in detail in order to be effective.
        cantSpellSober 4y ago
        But I was told "we will see these amateur-hour mistakes being made for as long as crypto exists in its current form," it sounds like the "crypto experts" they're hiring make that false. My coins are seizeable after all!
        deleted 4y ago
dmix 4y ago
It’s like ‘seizing’ a copy of digital pictures by a well known photographer (or a hard copy of the camera film reel) without actually being in control of the original pictures. And being surprised that another person got access to the photos and sold the originals on the market to another buyer. It didn’t require breaking into the police evidence locker to make copies. The key difference here in this analogy is that with pictures the cloned digital assets might have some value but not securing the original keys is like not securing the copyright.

mNovak 4y ago

>> you would think people in his position would know what private keys are and how to secure Bitcoin funds they pretend to "seize" How exactly would you have handled this differently? They were well aware the account could be recovered via mnemonic, but they couldn't move the funds because they didn't have the PIN.

giancarlostoro 4y ago
Sounds like they did not truly secure the crypto then. Shouldn't call it seizing if you don't have it digitally in your own secure wallet.
- bfung 4y ago
  Wait until the prosecutors learn about gas fees. XD
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  But what will they say at the press conference then?
  - mianos 4y ago
    They should say they have identified the account. I cant see them having anything else.
netheril96 4y ago
Don’t call it seizing then.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  obviously if they call it seizing and are willing to make the case in court that they had it seized, then the 'stealing' of it is a separate crime that probably has even worse penalties given that the argument would be it was stolen from government secured storage. Which I guess would make for an interesting case. If they don't charge for another theft then it would be obvious that they don't believe enough in that they had it 'seized' and that what happened was a 'theft'. on edit: I guess I need to go find it on archive.org to figure out if that has happened or not though.

Avshalom 4y ago

of course now anyone who can be traced to a wallet that interacts with these coins is now a criminal for receiving stolen goods, or obstruction of justice or probably a dozen other things.

fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
A lot of crimes require mens rea, ie. being guilty would require knowing the bitcoins are shady.
- ghastmaster 4y ago
  While perhaps not criminal, receiving them could subject a person to asset seizure. Usually stolen things are seized whether the receiver knows they are stolen or not. The burden is then on the receiver to persue criminal, or more likely, civil action.
  - BizarroLand 4y ago
    So when the bitcoin are traced to a washing service in a location where the FBI has no jurisdiction (so that they cannot go after the washing service), split into individual satoshis and then sent through hundreds of thousands of transactions before being put back into the wild in a format that is completely and totally randomized and then one day months or years later re-enter the FBI's jurisdiction you think that there's a chance in hell that they will be able to identify specifically which individual satoshis are illegal and which ones are not?
    - ghastmaster 4y ago
      If I steal $1,000 and promptly donate $1,000 to charity, it is very likely that that money would be tracked down and returned. On the other hand, if I steal $1,000 and make retail purchases over the course of twelve months less than $5 each, the monies would not be returned from the retailers to the victim of my theft. At that point it is up to the courts(civil and criminal) to force me to make amends to the original victim. Your scenario is similar to the latter example for most of the end recipients. If an account with zero bitcoins receives a stolen bitcoin and sends it to one recipient, that recipient would certainly fall under the first scenario I put forth. As the transactions become more complex and diffuse, the latter scenario is more likely.

FormerBandmate 4y ago

>It's simple, like all crypto newbies this prosecutor has just learned: Not your keys, not your coins. The US government can throw your ass in prison for the rest of your life so yes, it is their coins. This is the basis of all government power and in a lot of cases, like this, it's good

kylebenzle 4y ago
cube00 4y ago
What happened to Kevin Mitnick is a cautionary tale that you can be held for at least five years without bail before you get the opportunity to plead your case.
- FederalAgent47 4y ago
  Except he was in jail because he was fugitive from violating probation on a earlier fraud conviction
once_inc 4y ago
Imagine sending in a hard-core, 2009-era bitcoiner with a single address containing 10k bitcoin. The bitcoiner isn't going to hand over his coins for any reason (including torture, torture of family members, bribery, etc). How does the US government own the coins by incarcerating the bitcoiner?
- Cederfjard 4y ago
  Just because you hide a big bag of cash where no one can find it, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s yours, just that you have it. If the US government says that it has lawfully seized your bitcoin, then by law the US government owns the bitcoin, even if they don’t possess it. If you’re successfully keeping it from them, they can and will punish you for it. Again, as FormerBandmate said, that’s the basis of their power.

jonas21 4y ago

Uh, those are the reporter's words, not the prosecutor's. If you read the indictment [1], the word "remotely" never appears, and it's pretty clear the prosecutors understand how Bitcoin works. If anyone's clueless here, it's Gary Harmon, who showed up at his brother's court hearing, learned that the government had not yet secured the Bitcoin that it legally had a right to, then almost immediately moved that Bitcoin to other wallets, and... just figured nobody would notice? [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/521749057/USA-v-Gary-Harmon-Indictment https://www.scribd.com/document/521749057/USA-v-Gary-Harmon-...

cyphertruck 4y ago
Government had bo legal right to the bitcoin. Innocent until proven guilty, means the government stole the bitcoin in a criminal attempt to deny him an adequate defense. You can’t “steal” your own property. The government agents involved are all felons under 18 U.S. Code § 241. Conspiracy against rights - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/241 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/241 and 18 U.S. Code § 242. Deprivation of rights under color of law - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242 The problem us our country is so corrupt you have forgotten we have a constitution and have probably never heard of the above two statutes.
- cedilla 4y ago
  It's always funny to see someone who first talks about the presumption of innocence then going on to call huge groups of people felons without even knowing the details of the case.
- iudqnolq 4y ago
  As I understand it your (incorrect) reading of 241 is that when the government securely holds your property pending the final outcome of your trial that violates the clause of 241 that forbids a conspiracy to "injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person". If that was true detaining a person would be a much more serious violation than detaining your property. Now I happen to believe that pretrial detention is almost never moral. However, it's pretty obviously not a federal crime for a judge to order someone accused of murder to be held in jail until their trial.

quickthrower2 4y ago

Locally swiping = physical access to media with the keys. Remote = remote access to such media, or getting the key some other way remotely.