[Xphile]

FULL NCA ARTICLE

NCA Twitter Post

21 people have been arrested across the UK as part of an operation targeting customers of WeLeakInfo (taken down in January 2020) a service that advertised stolen credentials.

• The operation, which ran over the past five weeks, was coordinated by the National Crime Agency and involved cybercrime teams from across the Team Cyber UK network.
  
• Of those 21 arrested - all men aged between 18-38 - nine were detained on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act offences, nine for Fraud offences and three are under investigation for both.
  
• NCA officers conducted 11 of the arrests and seized over £41,000 (~$54,862) in bitcoin.
  
• As well as being customers of WeLeakInfo, evidence suggests that some had also purchased other cybercrime tools such as remote access Trojans (RATs) and crypters.
  
• Additionally, three subjects have been found to be in possession of, or involved with, indecent images of children.
  

[flavoral]

oh damn National Crime Agency UK still popin'

[Angel]

Well done my G National Crime Agency UK well done...

[Tjm]

Good work, CC/identity fraud is the shittest thing to do to someone. What do they end up doing with seized crypto assets anyways?

[Xphile]

Good work, CC/identity fraud is the shittest thing to do to someone. What do they end up doing with seized crypto assets anyways?

After skimming over the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, it seems that if the court decides that the defendant has a "criminal lifestyle" and has benefited from their "criminal conduct", they can determine a recoverable amount of money and make a confiscation order, where the defendant must pay the court.

So in usual instances, the seized assets are given a value and then the defendant has to pay that amount or they'll get a default criminal sentence + interest on the order (on top of their conviction for Computer Misuse or Fraud in this case) - unsure how this applies to crypto however, UK legislation doesn't seem to accommodate for that just yet? But I would assume that it's handled the same way and paid to the court and subsequently paid to the victims (where possible) or put into government funding, either way, I doubt the defendants are ever going to see it again. lol

UK Legislation page - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/29/contents
Fact sheet for POCA 2002 - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk...CA__2_.pdf