Nova Scotia Judge Orders Bitcoin (BTC) Wallet Held Since 2015 Returned to Sandeson Family

Justice Bodurtha’s Ruling in Halifax

A Nova Scotia Supreme Court justice has ordered that a laptop holding a Bitcoin (BTC) wallet be returned to the family of William Sandeson, the Canadian man serving a life sentence for the 2015 murder of a fellow Dalhousie University student. Justice John Bodurtha issued the order on Tuesday, November 3, finding that prosecutors failed to establish any connection between the coins and the killing, the underlying drug transaction or proceeds of crime. Sandeson, who joined the Halifax hearing by video link, had filed a motion in April seeking the return of property seized after his August 2015 arrest. Under the seizure rules at play, the state carries the burden of proving that assets are crime-linked, and Bodurtha concluded that showing had not been made. In the written order, he found the Crown “has not met its burden” to demonstrate the cryptocurrency was used in the drug transaction, constituted proceeds of crime or was otherwise tainted by criminality, and he described any possible use of the coins in the deal as “hypothetical.” The judge did keep one asset with the state: about C$5,000, or roughly $3,600, in cash found in the apartment was ruled offence-related property and will not go back. The laptop itself leaves police custody entirely. Court records do not disclose how much Bitcoin (BTC) the machine holds or how its keys were stored. The balance sits on an ordinary consumer laptop rather than a dedicated hardware wallet, and a wallet kept on an internet-connected machine of that kind is what the market calls a hot wallet, a setup accepted for convenience but treated as a higher theft risk than offline storage. The case has become a rare test of how Canadian courts treat seized Bitcoin holdings.

Update (5 Nov 03:53 UTC): The new detail also clarifies the scale of the alleged deal: Sandeson arranged for Samson to come to his apartment to sell roughly 18 kilograms of cannabis.

The order lands in a case that has run through more than a decade of Canadian courtrooms. Halifax police carried out the search that produced the laptop in the same month as the arrest, and the device has remained in evidence custody since. Prosecutors said at Sandeson’s 2023 trial that he, then 23 and about to begin medical school at Dalhousie, had Samson, then 22, travel to his apartment on August 15, 2015 to sell him cannabis in a deal priced at C$40,000. Sandeson shot Samson, kept the drugs and the money, and later admitted dumping the body into a river feeding the Bay of Fundy; Samson’s remains have never been found. A jury convicted him of first-degree murder in 2017, and an appeals court overturned that verdict in 2020. At the retrial he admitted the shooting but argued self-defence, and the jury returned a second-degree murder verdict, a conviction that carries an automatic life sentence. He is serving the term in Quebec and becomes eligible for parole in 2030. The wallet’s worth has been disputed since the seizure. Sandeson has valued it at C$8,000 to C$10,000, about $5,800 to $7,200, while a lawyer acting for Samson’s family has said the holdings could now be worth more than C$200,000, or roughly $144,000. The court file does not state how many coins the wallet contains, a gap that has kept both valuations in play. That twenty-fold spread mirrors Bitcoin price gains across the decade the coins sat locked in evidence; Bitcoin technical analysis from our desk has followed the market’s swings, most recently a rebound to $77,800 after a slide toward $76,400 support. The coins sat at the center of a wrongful death lawsuit the Samson family brought separately, a civil claim that proceeds regardless of Tuesday’s ruling.

New detail from the ruling adds context on the cash and the trial finances: police found the C$5,000 hidden at the bottom of a garbage can. At trial, Sandeson testified he used a $200,000 line of credit, co-signed by his mother and meant to pay for university, to buy the drugs. The balance on that line of credit, earlier reported at $77,800 when he was arrested, was later revised to $80,000 in an updated reading by 15:50 UTC on Thursday. A 2024 decision by Justice Cindy Bourgeois of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal put his combined Bitcoin (BTC) and cash holdings at about $640,000 when he was jailed, and used that finding to deny him publicly funded legal help for his appeal. The Samson family had earlier obtained a temporary order in December 2022 blocking the laptop's return, arguing the coins could cover damages in their wrongful death claim. Linda Boutilier, Samson's mother, was in the courtroom for Tuesday's ruling but declined to comment.

The ruling's text adds a direct quote on the hypothetical use question. Bodurtha wrote that the possibility the cryptocurrency could have gone toward the drug deal "was only hypothetical," adding there was "no evidence that the applicant actually intended to use it in the transaction," and that the Crown had provided no proof of any real connection between the Bitcoin and the murder. The new detail also clarifies the scale of the alleged deal: Sandeson arranged for Samson to come to his apartment to sell roughly 18 kilograms of cannabis. Beyond the family, the case sits alongside a wider pattern in Canadian crypto litigation: an Ontario court froze assets tied to the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest, including digital currency, and the UK High Court issued a global freeze against Craig Wright in July 2024, orders that, like the Samson family's injunction, aim to keep property available for civil claims.

A Higher Bar for Crypto Seizures

The order sets a concrete bar for crypto seizures: the state must show a demonstrated link between specific assets and a specific offence, not a plausible one. The split outcome makes the bar visible, since the C$5,000 in cash stays seized as offence-related property while the laptop goes home. The ten-year gap between seizure and ruling also shows how a frozen balance can appreciate past every party’s original estimate. For Canadian readers weighing their own custody choices, our guide to buying Bitcoin in Canada covers exchange accounts and a Tangem Mobile Wallet among the options. The Samson family’s wrongful death claim now moves forward with the wallet outside police hands.