The US Department of Justice sends a message with its recent efforts to seize $ 225 million in crypto tied to pig trousers: These funds were stolen from the victims.
At least it is Takeaway from Phil Selden, a member of Cole Schotz PC and formerly acting US lawyer for District of Maryland.
DOJ moved to seize these funds last month through a perdition movement, even though it has not yet identified any persons accused of stealing the funds.
But that’s the point, Selden said.
“This is a tone setting case,” said Selden, who is now a member of the law firm Cole Schotz PC. “We have victims on the US streets, and the department made it clear that they would not wait for an arrest to actually make sure the crypto was actually seized.”
This tone, Selden said, sets the direction of the Ministry of Justice under Matthew Galeotti, the new leader of his criminal department. Selden describes Galeotti as an experienced, methodological prosecutor who used to take down New York’s toughest organized crime rings.
Galeotti, Selden said, understands how criminal networks move money, how they utilize weak legislative frameworks, and most importantly how they hurt every day
“This is not just a technical history or a financing story,” he continued. “It’s a story that families are losing their savings and small towns are losing their banks.”
The Little Bybank was Heartland Tri-State Bank, a Kansas-based agricultural lender that became illikvous and collapsed in 2023, after its CEO Shan Hanes submitted nearly $ 50 million and moved the funds to crypto-lives towards pigs that fought scammers.
Hanes was also the biggest victim in DOJ’s complaint.
“In Hong Kong or Shanghai or New York or San Francisco there is a financial institution on every corner. In Kansas there is not,” Selden said. “If you don’t have a good bank, it’s hard to build or maintain a business, it’s hard to get capital for that tractor or crop cycle.”
What’s coming then?
Selden expects criminal charges to be on the horizon, but he thinks DOJ would not wait for an arrest to make sure the crypto was seized and could be returned to his owners.
The extradition of overseas suspects is a possible path, he explained, although it is a slow and complicated process that depends on mutual legal assistance.
Another strategy may involve lures suspects in US jurisdictions where arrests are easier to perform, such as Guam or other US territories.
Even without arrests, extraditions and high -profile trials, Selden believes the case has already done its job. It sends a message to the victims that their losses are taken seriously.
“Crypto crime is not abstract; it’s not offshore,” Selden said. “It affects real people, real communities, and the Ministry of Justice wants Americans to know that it has their backs.”
