In November 2016, Aaron Shamo along with his partner Drew W. Crandal were charged with running a multi-million dollar opioid ring out the suburbs of Salt Lake City Utah though darknet marketplaces. In the arrests the government seized bitcoins. The seized bitcoins (513.1490393) were worth $500,000 at the time of the seizure, however are now worth $8.7 million in Bitcoin, and $949,000 in Bitcoin Cash (512.9274588). The U.S Attorney's office in Utah filed a request of sale for the seized cryptos on Dec 12, 2017 and was approved to do so by U.S. district judge Dale Kimball on the same day. The court order says
"The BTC and BCH have been transferred to a government wallet. Due to the volatile market for cryptocurrencies, the BTC and BCH risk losing value during the pendency of the forfeiture proceedings ... For these reasons, the United States seeks an interlocutory sale."
To prevent fraud, the government plans on selling all the coins on commercial cryptocurrency exchanges no more than 50 coins at a time with proceeds going directly to Treasury Forfeiture Fund Suspense account.