...to allow people to withdraw their coins?
Once the government identified Ross Ulbricht and had control of the Silk Road servers, why didn't they keep the site open so that people could withdraw their bitcoins? They could have blocked the ability to trade (so as to not facilitate any drug deals) and instead only allow people to log onto their accounts at the site and withdraw their funds to their own Bitcoin addresses.
This is the part I'm talking about:
Funds held by users of the site, however, were not so well-protected. Before completing transactions on the Silk Road, users would load Bitcoins into an escrow account on the site. The agreed upon coins would only be transferred to the seller’s private wallet once the buyer had verified delivery of the goods. When the feds took over the Silk Road, there were over 26,000 Bitcoins in user accounts that were relatively easy to snatch up.
The FBI has transferred all 26,000-plus seized Bitcoins to its own personal wallet, but because Bitcoin transactions are tracked publicly, it didn’t take the internet long to find the FBI’s wallet address. Users have taken to transferring tiny fractions of a Bitcoin to the FBI with public comments attached decrying the war on drugs and the arrest of Ulbricht. Users have even helpfully tagged the wallet address as “Silkroad Seized Coins.” You can check out the comments as they come in by watching the blockchain for the FBI’s wallet.
Link:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/168139-fbi-unable-to-seize-600000-bitcoins-from-silk-road-operator