A Queensland man has forfeited over $2.9 million price of property, including a waterfront mansion, a Mercedes-Benz sedan, and fair about 25 BTC, valued at $2.6 million, following a court docket account for.
The probe modified into launched after AUSTRAC, Australia’s financial intelligence company, acquired a tip-off from authorities in Luxembourg about suspicious Bitcoin movements tied to the Queensland resident.
The AFP did not in the present day retort to Decrypt’s seek files from for clarification on the estimated label of forfeited property.
Though he has not been identified, police said in a negate that the man had previously been convicted of hacking a U.S. gaming company.
Investigators later linked him to the 2013 theft of 950 Bitcoin from an unnamed French crypto alternate.
No costs were filed, but Australia’s proceeds of crime authorized guidelines allow the seizure of property believed to be connected to criminal job, even in the absence of a conviction.
The confiscation stems from an investigation by the Australian Federal Police’s Prison Sources Confiscation Taskforce (CACT), which has been probing historic crypto theft and cyber hacking offences since 2018.
Since mid-2019, CACT has restrained some $770 million price of suspected criminal property, including homes, yachts, vehicles, luxury goods, sparkling artwork, and crypto, as a part of its expanding mandate to disrupt financially motivated crime.
The Beachmere dwelling, luxury automobile, and Bitcoin were first restrained in July 2023 after authorities deemed them disproportionate to the man’s known profits. A Queensland District Court docket authorized their forfeiture in April 2025.
Proceeds from their sale will possible be transferred to the Commonwealth Confiscated Sources Memoir and later ragged to fund neighborhood-focused crime prevention and legislation enforcement functions.
Previous CACT actions hang moreover involved the seizure of crypto. In October 2024, the duty force restrained $6 million in digital property in a case tied to Ghost, an encrypted communications platform below investigation as a part of Operation Kraken.
It moreover seized $500,000 in crypto tied to firearms trafficking and $330,000 linked to a Gold Flee money laundering ring.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
