Volcia County officials were forced to return the seized code and pay legal fees after targeting a foreign employer targeting a serious procedural violation and lack of evidence.
Leslie Samis, a lawyer at Samis’ law firm, represented the EU-licensed brokerage, whose Kraken account was frozen and seized in April.
Details of the case were revealed in a Tuesday post by the law firm, highlighting what Samis called “a strange world of forfeiture of civil assets.”
The cryptographic attack began after authorities in Wisconsin and Florida followed a $20,000 scam in Kraken accounts, which belong to the brokerage.
The company had no knowledge of fraud and was fully cooperating with both investigations, but the Kraken account, which held at the time more than $450,000 in crypto, was suddenly frozen on March 28th, eventually rising Crypto’s value to over $700,000.
The Volusia County Sheriff of Florida secured a sealed seizure warrant of 1.19121 BTC on April 9, directing Kraken to transfer funds to a state-controlled wallet and settle it in the US dollar.
Wisconsin issued a similar order for 0.93733 BTC, but because there was no infrastructure to receive the crypto directly, authorities there relied on Volusia County to sell some of the seized parts Bitcoin And we send you a check for $95,030.59 under a roughly defined mutual aid agreement.
However, attorney Leslie Samis revealed that Florida’s seizure warrant did not lack a case number, raising serious due process concerns as it was not filed in court and did not provide appropriate documents.
Her investigation Blockchain The tracing software revealed that there is no link between the $20,000 fraud and the client’s wallet.
After Samis detailed the legal flaws in the attack and warned of a potential lawsuit, the Borussia County Sheriff’s Office agreed to cancel the damages by recovering the remaining code to his client and being sent to Wisconsin to cover attorney’s fees.
One of the original fraud victims was deceived by criminals pretending to be the “Federal Reserve Governor’s Committee,” which distributed counterfeit asset attack notifications.
“However, the government is confiscating property in an unusual way, and this ridiculous fraud has unfortunately been successful in tricking the victims,” Samis wrote.
Crypto fraud mimics the institution
Fake government impersonation is part of a broader pattern of crypto fraud that utilizes official resonating agencies.
On Monday, Arizona resident Vincent Mazzotta pleaded guilty on Monday to money laundering and obstruction charges in a $13 million investment fraud.
In the scam, Mazotta established a fake “federal crypto reserve” to scam people, collecting fraudulent investigation fees from those he has already scamed.
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