29 January 2018, Monday, 17:47 70

Court Arrests Bitcoin Wallets Of ForkLog Blockchain Magazine's Founder Kaplan

Редактор: Daria Zubkova

The Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv has arrested bitcoin wallets seized from founder of the ForkLog blockchain magazine Anatolii Kaplan.

The Ukrainian News Agency learnt this from the court's ruling dated January 11.

According to the report, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) during the search conduced on December 15, 2017 at the place of actual residence of the magazine founder discovered and seized an Apple iPad, two PCs Apple MacBook Pro, three bitcoin wallets OpenDime and two bitcoin wallets Ledger Nano S and Ledger Blue.

In addition, during the search the law enforcers found draft notes about purchase and sale of bitcoins as well as access keys to bitcoin addresses with 27.50272864 bitcoins (approximately worth USD 486,725) registered on them.

The law enforcers seized an Apple iMac personal computer, upon examination of which it was discovered that it contained correspondence with a user named Toly Kaplan that revealed records about outflow of funds through foreign entities.

This led the SBU to believe that the ForkLog founder could be involved in legalization (laundering) of funds acquired through illegal means, including by using the above computer hardware and bitcoin wallets.

This rendered the aforesaid seized objects as evidence in a legal proceeding and justified their arrest.

In addition, unable to access the seized computers protected by a multilevel smart protection system, the SBU assigned the computers and the software for an expert examination.

The court completely held with the SBU claims and granted an arrest of all the hardware and bitcoin wallets.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, on January 4, the court ordered the SBU to return the USD 13,500 and two DELL monitors seized during the search at the ForkLog office.

In December 2017, law enforcers seized hardware and storage devices with cryptocurrencies stored on them during the search at the place of founder of major blockchain magazine the ForkLog, Anatolii Kaplan.