A district judge in Austin, capital of the state of Texas in the United States, this week ordered Frank Richard Ahlgren to hand over the private keys to his bitcoin (BTC) wallet. The order seeks to recover at least $120 million in BTC, about 1,200 coins.
Judge Robert Pitman ruled that Ahlgren reveal your access codes and any devices used to store these digital assets. You must also identify all your cryptocurrency accounts, as reported by Bloomberg.
In total, there are 1,287 bitcoins that were moved by the defendant in 2020 through a transaction mixer, in order to make it difficult to trace.
Ahlgren was convicted to two years in prison in December 2024 and owes the State more than $1 million in restitution from the criminal case. Ahlgren, who lives in Austin, was the first American convicted of tax crimes related solely to the sale of crypto assets.
Under the agreement, it will pay the amount to the US to cover tax losses from failing to declare capital gains on the sale of $3.7 million worth of bitcoin. According to prosecutors, the convicted man used part of the profits to buy a house in Park City, Utahas seen in a press release from the Department of Justice at that time.
Prosecutors argued that Ahlgren’s property “cannot be seized by ordinary physical means.” For this reason, they requested not only to restrict any virtual currency by order of this court, but also to obtain the private keys “so that it cannot be moved by others.” They also recalled that, in the event of loss or destruction of the private keys, the stored BTC are irrecoverable.
Judge Pitman, who approved this petition, also ordered that Ahlgren You cannot transfer or sell any property without prior approval from the court, although you can use money for “normal monthly living expenses.”
The court order forcing Ahlgren to hand over his private keys to the bitcoin wallets goes against the spirit of the new Donald Trump administration. who has expressed intention to defend and respect the right to privacy and the self-custody of bitcoin, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
This decision could set a precedent for future cases where cryptocurrency private keys are part of tax or criminal litigation. The ruling also raises questions about the effectiveness and ethics of forcing individuals to reveal information that, by design, should be private and secure.
Bitcoin self-custody is based on the premise that only the holder of the private keys can move or access fundswhich is a fundamental characteristic of emerging technology.
