Supreme Court annuls digital asset and cryptocurrency seizure

di Fulvio Sarzana, Studio legale Sarzana e Associati

The Court of Cassation, Fifth Criminal Section, with a recent ruling at the end of April 2026, intervened on the issue of evidentiary seizure of digital devices and digital assetsstating that a seizure resulting in an indiscriminate acquisition of the suspect's digital assets is unlawful in the absence of predetermined selection criteria and deadlines for the return of irrelevant material.

The case

The case originates from an investigation by the Emilia-Romagna Postal Police, supported by the FBI, into the administrator of a company believed to be a financial intermediary for the proceeds of a website, accused of unauthorized possession and dissemination of access codes to computer systems.

In execution of a public prosecutor's decree numerous devicescloud accounts, and cryptocurrencie worth over $62,000 kept on a hardware wallet were seized

The Court of Bologna, during the review stage (riesame), upheld the seizure, deeming it necessary to maintain the restriction to allow the completion of forensic copying operations by experts.

The genetic flaw: the generic nature of the seizure

The public prosecutor's decree authorized the acquisition of anything "deemed useful for the purpose of the investigation," without any indication of the specific information to be searched for, the criteria for data extraction, or the timeframes within which to proceed with copying and returning the irrelevant material. The Court accepted the defense's appeal, annulling without remand both the review order and the original seizure decree.

The established principles

continued on NOVA-Il Sole 24 ore