Feds sell $3 million of seized Silk Road bitcoins

In August of last year, Netherlands-based drug trafficker Cornelis Jan Slomp was arrested at Miami International Airport in a sting operation targeting users of the now-defunct Silk Road online black market site. Slomp recently plead guilty to illegally importing and distributing a massive amount of drugs from March 2012 to August 2013, including 104KG of MDMA and over 4kg of cocaine, making him one of the highest-profile catches from the sting operation.

According to a report on Bloomberg, Slomp was merely one part of a much larger web of drug traffickers.

Slomp is alleged to have had 11 European co-conspirators who aided in the manufacturing, packing and shipping of illegal drugs including ecstasy tablets bearing a question mark, which prosecutors said was Slomp’s identifying logo. … He was identified by U.S. officials as the person who mailed drugs from the Netherlands that were seized in April 2012 in an otherwise empty digital video disc case at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Authorities said they subsequently collected more than 100 similar shipments.

According to court documents, Slomp earned more than 385,000 BTC in a little over a year on Silk Road, worth over $172 million at today’s exchange rate. Due to mandatory minimum sentencing rules, Slomp is certain to serve five years, and he faces up to 40 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines.

It’s not clear how many bitcoins were seized from Slomp’s bitcoin wallets following the bust, but late last week the prosecutors filed for the forfeiture and sale of more than $3 million worth of bitcoin.