In this case, there was no one to fight on behalf of the Silk Road or its funds because Ross Ulbricht says he isn't Dread Pirate Roberts and doesn't represent the site (though he is fighting to keep the 144,000 BTC found on his computer -- those haven't been forfeited yet).
The real losers here are the Silk Road users who just forfeited whatever they had sitting in the site's coffers. Even if someone made the unwise decision to come forward and say, 'I used the site legally and that's my money,' the feds could still say it was a site devoted mainly to illegal activity and so that argument is moot.
The real losers here are the Silk Road users who just forfeited whatever they had sitting in the site's coffers. Even if someone made the unwise decision to come forward and say, 'I used the site legally and that's my money,' the feds could still say it was a site devoted mainly to illegal activity and so that argument is moot.