Scottish prosecutors have seized and converted 23.5 Bitcoin into cash from a 2020 robbery that saw three men armed with a machete and a Toblerone chocolate bar break into a home near Glasgow.
The case — initially heard last year — “was the first robbery in Scotland to involve tracing stolen cryptocurrency,” said Detective Inspector Craig Potter from Police Scotland’s Cyber Investigations unit.
In a first for the country, prosecutors used proceeds of crime legislation to seize and convert the Bitcoin (BTC) stolen in the March 2020 robbery into cash, BBC News reported on Sept. 2.
Weaponized Toblerone
The court heard last year that three men conducted the home invasion in the town of Blantyre, southeast of Glasgow, and one repeatedly beat a woman at the property with a personalized Toblerone bar and threw her into a bedroom.
The victim, who isn’t named for legal reasons, testified that he awoke to find a man standing over him with a machete before he was forced to transfer Bitcoin.
The man who beat the woman then made a “throat-slitting gesture” with the bloodied Toblerone bar before all three fled.
“It has been an unusual case throughout,” said Rennie’s lawyer Marco Guarino.
Lawyers at Edinburgh’s High Court agreed on Sept. 3 that the 23.5 BTC could be converted into cash for a total sum of $144,017 (109,601 British pounds).
The sum is around 10% of the current value of 23.5 BTC but is in line with the time of the robbery when Bitcoin was trading at around $5,400.
The price of Bitcoin has risen nearly 1,000% since the March 2020 robbery. Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro
Related: 4 suspects forced a Bitcoiner to transfer BTC before killing him, police say
The Bitcoin was seized from John Ross Rennie, who was convicted of possessing the stolen Bitcoin in November.
Prosecutors pinned Rennie as the “technical brains” of the raid. Rennie denies he took part in the crime, saying a “scary” relative forced him to deposit the Bitcoin in an exchange account.
But Edinburgh High Court judge Lord Scott said his role — giving instruction on how to transfer the Bitcoin — “was pivotal” in the theft and gave Rennie 150 hours of unpaid work and a six-month supervision order as part of his conviction.
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