While there are certainly wanton abuses of civil forfeiture statutes, linked to even in this comment thread, applying them here is a no-brainer. Silk Road was very clearly a marketplace for illegal drugs, and the brokerage fee that DPR collected (whoever he or she is) is clearly illegal.
Again, there are obviously situations where civil forfeiture is improperly utilized. This is not one of them, in my opinion.
If it's "clearly illegal," the court should have no trouble coming to the correct conclusion. It's no justification for permanent asset forfeiture without a trial.
> If it's "clearly illegal," the court should have no trouble coming to the correct conclusion. It's no justification for permanent asset forfeiture without a trial.
You can't have a trial with only one party.
The owner of the bitcoins had an opportunity to contest the forfeiture, and didn't step forward to do that. Given the value of the bitcoins and the public nature of the seizure and forfeiture actions, its hardly likely that that was due to lack of effective notice, or it not being worth expending effort to protect the assets.
They're explicitly not selling the Bitcoins seized from his personal wallet(s). They're selling the ones seized from the servers that ran Silk Road.
My bet would be that Ulbricht has denied any connection to those servers as part of his defense since claiming to own/control them would make it too easy for the government to prove its case. If, at this point, those servers belong to anyone else, they're free to come forward and claim to own them...that would stop the sale.
So if no one claims to own them, they're fair game for the government to sell.
Somehow I doubt that's how it works, or at least I really hope it doesn't work that way. The government seizes something and attempts to sell it off before identifying who it belongs to? Sure, sounds the right way to handle things.
The forfeiture action is a civil proceeding against the asset itself. If somebody has a claim to the asset, they can come forward and contest the proceeding, and potentially win. However, in a case like this, coming forward would essentially identify yourself as a co-conspirator in a clearly illegal enterprise. As such, nobody came forward, so a default judgment in favor of the plaintiff was granted because nobody was there to represent themselves as the owner of the asset.
The process here was that government announced forfeiture action, people were given a chance to claim a property interest and fight the forfeiture, and no one chose to do so.
Ulbricht was clearly aware of it, and did assert a claim to other property that was the subject of the same forfeiture action. The seizure was a default judgement because there was no property owner to contest the forfeiture.
What additional process is due, and to whom is it due?
My guess is no one has stepped forward because it would make the party guilty. It'd be like an officer saying "Whose backpack is this?" and it has a bomb in it. The owner is in big trouble if they step up.
Again, there are obviously situations where civil forfeiture is improperly utilized. This is not one of them, in my opinion.