This whole process just seems incredibly weird to me. What happens if the person is found not guilty of anything criminal after all the assets are sold off? This seems like police state tactics, pardon my French.
The beneficial owner(s) can show up in court and assert a legitimate claim on the goods if so inclined. Often they are not so inclined, as the cash in question was found in proximity to bricks of cocaine or suchlike and staking a claim to the cash tends to suggest an incriminating connection to the contraband.
In this case there's abundant evidence of a criminal enterprise involving the sale of drugs, attempts to purchase the services of hitmen etc. etc. So 'Dread Pirate Roberts' only likely defense is to claim something along the lines of 3v1l H4x0rs taking over his computer for the last several years while he played minesweeper or suchlike, and disavow any awareness of of or custody over the money; otherwise he'd have to explain just how he came to be in possession of several $m of BTC that was sent to Silk Road.
This is interesting as an example of BTC's strength being a vulnerability. Suppose you were arrested in a warehouse with a pile of cash and numerous bricks of cocaine, AK-47s, etc. Of course the government would claim you're a drug dealer, but you could attempt to convince the court that you had won the money in Vagas/sold a great deal of pizza/whatever and been kidnapped by evil drug dealers on your way to the bank, only to wake up alone and confused next to your cash in the warehouse just before the cops arrived. An unlikely story to be sure, but there are many legal means through which you might come to possess a large stack of currency (and which might also provide you with a much-needed alibi, eg video of you winning big and leaving the casino only to be waylaid on the strip by masked bandits). Where BTC is concerned, though, the blockchain itself is proof that the money was sent to the receiving address given out by Silk Road in exchange for contraband, so the government has a prima facie case that it consists of revenue from a criminal enterprise.
I believe that they have used raids on Silk Road buyer bitcoins going into this wallet as prima facie evidence that his wallet was credited for purchases verified to be sales on Silk Road.
He’s going to struggle to show why people around the world have paid $100M in bitcoins to him, some of which tie to Silk Road directly, and that the bitcoins are his and shouldn’t be seized or forfeited, but that the drug connection is false.
That fails the straight faced reasonable person test. It’s interesting how when it comes to some things like this, people conflate the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard to be “beyond any doubt”.
How much evidence is required to stake your claim to whatever goods were seized? "Innocent until proven guilty" is still a founding principle of the rule of law, although your arguments make sense if we don't consider that part of it. The US justice system has in many cases removed itself quite far from the ideal concepts of the rule of law, and I don't think this is a good thing.
