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This is a funny and bizarre story which shows how important it is to understand rules before applying them. This took place over the last four years in Sweden, I've linked the articles about the two men selling drugs for bitcoin and will basically summarize the events and translate them.
This story finished today but got started back before 2018, when a group of drug dealers were doing what they do best, selling drugs. Of course they didn't want money sent to their bank account as that takes time and gives them a paper trail. Tradional money was an alternative and most common, however that easily raises suspicion if they get caught and makes them ideal targets for robbers?
The group found an alternative that was quick, easy and keep their identity secret, bitcoin. Going forward they charged their customers in the market price for the drugs they were selling for bitcoin.
When they were caught in 2018 and brought to court in April 2019, they had 36 bitcoins on them which the state siezed, the current value was 1.3 million swedish kronor. They got placed in prison for possesion & selling of illegal substances and got four and six years respectively. The fine they had to pay came down to roughly one million swedish kronor, which the two men didn't have enough funds to cover so the state owned debt collector siezed their bitcoin to sell and cover the fine.
For reasons not explained yet by the people working in the state owned debt collectors Kronofogden it took them around 2 years selling these bitcoins. They managed to auction and sell all of them back in March of this year. However the money they sold for were closer to 13 million swedish kronor instead of 1.3 million. This covered the fine by far, however this wasn't the plan and against the law as you can't make money performing illegal activites. The reason was that the punishment and fine was decided in 2019 and it can't be changed after the fact. Meaning that the 13 million they made only faced a lower 8% fine instead of the close to 100% they were supposed to get.
This story ended with the government paying the two men 12 million Swedish kronor (roughly 1.4 million USD) as reward for their crimes. So if you waddle through the red tape and beauracy of court you might find that crime do sometimes pay.
