Scottish prosecutors have successfully seized and converted 23.5 Bitcoin into cash from a 2020 robbery involving three men armed with a machete and a Toblerone chocolate bar, near Glasgow. This marked the first instance of cryptocurrency being traced and seized in a Scottish robbery, highlighting a notable use of proceeds of crime legislation.
Detective Inspector Craig Potter from Police Scotland’s Cyber Investigations unit described the case as “the first robbery in Scotland to involve tracing stolen cryptocurrency.” During the March 2020 home invasion in Blantyre, southeast of Glasgow, one of the robbers attacked a woman with a personalized Toblerone bar, using it to beat her and eventually making a “throat-slitting gesture” with the bloodied chocolate before fleeing with his accomplices. The victim, who remains unnamed for legal reasons, reported waking to find another assailant threatening him with a machete, compelling him to transfer Bitcoin.
BBC News reported on Sept. 2 that this was also the first time Scottish prosecutors utilized legislation to convert stolen Bitcoin into cash. Lawyers at Edinburgh’s High Court finalized the conversion on Sept. 3, totaling $144,017 (109,601 British pounds), which represents approximately 10% of the current value of 23.5 BTC but corresponds to the cryptocurrency’s value at the time of the robbery when Bitcoin was trading around $5,400.
The seized Bitcoin belonged to John Ross Rennie, who was found guilty of possessing the stolen Bitcoin in November. Despite his claims of innocence, asserting that a “scary” relative coerced him into depositing the Bitcoin into an exchange account, the court recognized Rennie as the “technical brains” behind the operation. Edinburgh High Court judge Lord Scott noted Rennie’s critical role in facilitating the Bitcoin transfer and sentenced him to 150 hours of unpaid work and a six-month supervision order.
