30,000 BITCOIN FORFEITURE IN SILK ROAD CASE IS BIGGEST EVER

Nearly 30,000 bitcoins were ordered forfeited by the Silk Road website in the largest such action ever involving the e-currency, federal prosecutors said Thurday in New York.

But thats a drop in the bitcoin bucket in this case: The government says it has another 144,336 bitcoins seized from computers belonging to Ross Ulbricht, the alleged founder and mastermind behind Silk Road. The 29,655 in the forfeiture order signed by U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday were seized earlier from Silk Road servers.

Ulbricht was arrested Oct. 1 in San Francisco on charges that he ran the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet a place where drug dealers and customers could make transactions beyond the eyes of law enforcement.

Silk Road used bitcoin, an electronic currency untethered to any government, to help keep the deals secret, prosecutors said. In addition to the drugs, according to a federal complaint, Silk Road facilitated deals on computer hacking, forgeries, even hitmen.

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