An Australian Federal Police officer is being accused of stealing 81.61 Bitcoin (BTC) seized from a drug-trafficking investigation in 2019. 

Suspended federal police officer William Wheatley has appeared in court after being charged with theft, after exploiting 81.61 BTC amounting to $450,000 at the time of the raid and is now worth over $4 million from a drug-related raid way back in 2019. The committal hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court will commence this week.

During the initial investigation, it would appear that the drug traffickers had stolen the missing BTC coins but it was later revealed that a police member was involved. The case was reopened in 2021, after finding new evidence that points out foul play by a law enforcement officer.

The Cyber Crime Squad Detective Deon Achtypis speculated that a police member may have been involved in the transferring of the BTCs. He discovered that the IP address used is linked to the headquarters of the Australian Federal Police in Melbourne and after a thorough investigation, the shreds of evidence all led to the suspended police officer. 

The wallet where the missing BTCs are was found during a raid at a location that was linked to an illegal drug dealer. The investigation was led by the Icarus task force, a joint force of the Victoria Police along with the Australian Federal Police (AFP). As per the search, the task force team discovered evidence from an encrypted email service of drug purchases, finding out that the transactions for “steroid-type” substances were paid through BTC.

Furthermore, the investigators also found a Trezor hardware crypto wallet that was surrendered to the Icarus detectives. They later got approved by the magistrate to “rebuild” the application three weeks after the raid which granted them access to the digital wallet containing the missing BTCs. However, the detectives discovered that the digital assets had been moved from the wallet four days after the device was seized.