ChainCatcher News, according to a joint announcement by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York and the National Security Division, the U.S. government has filed a civil forfeiture lawsuit for approximately 127,271 bitcoins (currently valued at about $15 billion), and confirmed that these funds are now in U.S. custody.
The announcement stated that these crypto assets were obtained by the defendants through fraud and money laundering activities, and were originally stored in non-custodial wallets controlled by them. The U.S. authorities have now obtained the private keys and taken over the storage addresses of the funds. The Department of Justice stated that this is the largest crypto asset seizure operation in U.S. history.