The German prosecutor’s office confiscated more than 50 million euros in Bitcoin from a scammer. There’s only one problem: you can’t unlock the money because he doesn’t give you the password.
The man was sentenced to prison and has served his sentence ever since. He has remained silent as police have repeatedly tried unsuccessfully to crack the code to gain access to more than 1,700 bitcoins, a prosecutor said. The Bavarian town of Kempten.
CityAM reports, “We asked him but he didn’t say,” prosecutor Sebastian Murer told Reuters on Friday.
“Perhaps he doesn’t know.”
Bitcoin is stored in software called a digital wallet which is protected by encryption.
A password is used as a decryption key to open the wallet and access bitcoin. If a password is lost, the user will not be able to open the wallet.
The fraudster was sentenced to more than two years in prison for secretly installing software on other computers in order to use his power to mine or produce bitcoins.
When he went behind bars, his bitcoin stash would have been worth a fraction of what it is today. The price of Bitcoin has increased over the past year, reaching a record high of $42,000 in January. It was trading at $37,577 at the weekend, according to cryptocurrency and blockchain website Coindesk.
However, the prosecution claimed that the man cannot access the bitcoin funds.
Tell us your thoughts in the Facebook post and share this with your friends.