German authorities cannot access a cryptocurrency wallet containing 1,700 BTC that belongs to a convicted hacker because the owner did not provide a private key.
According to a Reuters publication, German law enforcement authorities confiscated a cryptocurrency wallet containing 1,700 BTC worth more than $67 million at current exchange rates from the fraudster. The hacker was sentenced to prison and has already served his sentence. However, he still refuses to give information to access the wallet.
According to a Kempten-based prosecutor, police have repeatedly tried to crack the password to access the 1,700 BTC.
"We have asked about the password, but he doesn't say it," said prosecutor Sebastian Murer. "He probably doesn't know it."
The scammer was sentenced to more than two years in prison for installing hidden cryptocurrency miners on victims' computers. According to the publication, "prosecutors made sure the hacker could not access his BTC."
In December, a story appeared on Reddit about a user who recovered the keys to a Bitcoin wallet, which had held 127 BTC since 2011. And in January it became known that programmer Stefan Thomas had forgotten the password to a secure drive, which stored the wallet's locked keys with 7,002 BTC. He had only two attempts to find the password.