According to Arkham, the 3,940 BTC deposit this morning came from the US government's Banmeet Singh Seized Funds address bc1qrl0epuu42c7pvzhsrghy7qdkkw5xevazznaprq. Searching for Banmeet Singh on the US Department of Justice website shows that the 3,940 BTC confiscated is related to an Indian drug trafficking organization case.
The general case: Between mid-2012 and July 2017, Indian Banmeet Singh created supplier marketing websites on dark web markets (such as Silk Road, Alpha Bay, Hansa, etc.) to sell controlled drugs including fentanyl, LSD, ecstasy, alprazolam and tramadol. Customers ordered controlled drugs on the marketing website and paid with cryptocurrency. Banmeet Singh then personally shipped or arranged to ship controlled drugs from Europe to the United States via the U.S. Postal Service or other transportation services.
With the cooperation of US and British law enforcement agencies, Banmeet Singh was arrested in London in April 2019 and extradited to the United States in 2023.
On January 26, 2024, Banmeet Singh finally pleaded guilty and was confiscated virtual currency worth $150 million. The unit price of BTC on January 26 was about $39,000, and the total amount of fines and confiscations was $150 million. The amount of fines and confiscations is equivalent to the amount of money that the US government escrow address charged into Coinbase Prime early this morning.
Therefore, this large amount of BTC recharge this morning is a judicial disposal of the property involved in this drug trafficking case. The BTC in other addresses of the US government also need to wait until the relevant cases have completed the relevant judicial procedures before being disposed of.
The US government currently holds 213,000 BTC in its addresses.
This includes 69,370 BTC generated from drug sales on Silk Road, which were confiscated from a hacker named "Individual X," and 94,643 BTC confiscated in the Bitfinex exchange hack.
