London police seize bitcoin worth $667,000 from hacker

London police have seized half a million pounds ($667,000) worth of bitcoin from a prolific computer hacker in a case described as the first of its kind for the 188-year-old department.

Cybercrime detectives seized the bitcoin from Grant West, 26, who was sentenced to 10 years and 8 months in prison Friday for attacking some 100 companies worldwide, largely using 'phishing' email scams to obtain the financial data.

Once he obtained the data, West would then sell the material to market places on the dark web and convert his profits into bitcoin.

The London Metropolitan police discovered evidence of cyberattacks on 17 major firms including Sainsbury's, Asda, the British Cardiovascular Society and the Finnish bitcoin exchange.

Officers also recovered a memory card containing approximately 78 million individual usernames and passwords.