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Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says

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Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says

#71

Post by sudosysgen »

cwkoss wrote: post #62
theshadowknows wrote: post #56

I am morbidly curious how much being a hit man pays. I don't want to look it up for fear of finding myself 'on a list' :) but it's such a high risk occupation that one assumes it's pretty profitable. In the US, anyway. This brings me to bitcoin. Would it be smarter as a murderer-for-hire to ask to be paid in a less-expensive (for now) but growing currency such as Etherium or Litecoin? I mean, ask the 'client' for X d…

From my reading of probably unreliable/fake sources, a "hit" on a normal civilian typically ranges from $10-50k. Cost increases with difficulty of accessing target, risk of detection and making it look accidental. A hitman may wish to delay use of payment for opsec reasons, but I think it's odd to think their desire for speculative risk would be much different than the general public.

There have been murders for hires in the US for as little as 2000$, often done by teenagers.

Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says

#72

Post by asimjalis »

theshadowknows wrote: post #56

I am morbidly curious how much being a hit man pays. I don't want to look it up for fear of finding myself 'on a list' :) but it's such a high risk occupation that one assumes it's pretty profitable. In the US, anyway. This brings me to bitcoin. Would it be smarter as a murderer-for-hire to ask to be paid in a less-expensive (for now) but growing currency such as Etherium or Litecoin? I mean, ask the 'client' for X d…

In this case it was $17,800 according to

https://www.google.com/amp/s/wwmt.com/amp/news/local/former-...

Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says

#73

Post by LanternLight83 »

sedeki wrote: post #61
timbit42 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monero is not completely untraceable either.

Can you elaborate? I know very little about Monero.

Well, I can't speak for why it might be tracable, but can conversely testify that it has dedicated mechanisms for obfuscating and confusing transaction details such as who sent money, who received it, and how much was transferred- mechanisms which are used by default for every transaction, not just for "private" transactions, creating a cloudy swarm of activity in which you can only really tell that "transactions are happening" without access to (or the intense brute-force effort of obtaining) one of the several private keys involved in any given action.

Some ground-laying patents have been filed by CipherTrace, but I think it speaks for itself that the IRS's $625,000.00 bounty on tracing Monero still stands.

Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says

#74

Post by theshadowknows »

capableweb wrote: post #58
theshadowknows wrote: post #56

I am morbidly curious how much being a hit man pays. I don't want to look it up for fear of finding myself 'on a list' :) but it's such a high risk occupation that one assumes it's pretty profitable. In the US, anyway. This brings me to bitcoin. Would it be smarter as a murderer-for-hire to ask to be paid in a less-expensive (for now) but growing currency such as Etherium or Litecoin? I mean, ask the 'client' for X d…

Seems to go for less than $100K USD, which surprised me (source is Australian though http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/02/05/australia.ki... ) The Wikipedia page has more info on "contract killing", won't put you on a list to just read that :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_killing Since this murder-for-hire chose to use a global and transparent ledger that will have that transaction until either the…

That’s a great point. And it brings up a question I’ve never had before :)

What would it take for the Bitcoin blockchain to atrophy enough so as to be unusable?

Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says

#75

Post by caeril »

ignoramous wrote: post #45
jeppesen-io wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only because the criminal hasn't yet tried to use that bitcoin to buy something in the real world. An asumption you're making and likely untrue. There are many ways to convert to fiat or skip that step and luander through the dark web

Don't need darkweb for that if you're very careful with how you execute trades on https://localbitcoins.com/ (a service that I believe predates coinbase, circle et al) Usually, one'd use a coin like Monero instead, the project's wretched history notwithstanding.

What is wretched about Monero's history?

Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says

#76

Post by tw04 »

m4x wrote: post #37
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like it worked just great for one of the criminals... From TFA "The FBI has not, however, been able to identify the hitman as yet. The reason is almost certainly because the hitman did not use a commercial service like Coinbase, which must comply with know-your-customer laws, for the Bitcoin transactions but instead relied on his own personal wallet—one that did not reveal any information about his identity."

Only because the criminal hasn't yet tried to use that bitcoin to buy something in the real world. If they try to convert to fiat via an exchange, they can be identified the same way the husband was. If they try to buy products directly without using fiat then it is harder for law enforcement to get the records they need, but still quite possible. They will probably be safe if they never touch the bitcoin, but that e…

And if they run it through a coin washer?

https://bitcoinlaundry.online/en/index.htm

Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says

#77

Post by Larrikin »

tw04 wrote: post #76
m4x wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because the criminal hasn't yet tried to use that bitcoin to buy something in the real world. If they try to convert to fiat via an exchange, they can be identified the same way the husband was. If they try to buy products directly without using fiat then it is harder for law enforcement to get the records they need, but still quite possible. They will probably be safe if they never touch the bitcoin, but that e…

And if they run it through a coin washer? https://bitcoinlaundry.online/en/index.htm

Most of the big exchanges don't allow cashing out of coins run through those anymore.

Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says

#78

Post by Thorentis »

m4x wrote: post #37
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like it worked just great for one of the criminals... From TFA "The FBI has not, however, been able to identify the hitman as yet. The reason is almost certainly because the hitman did not use a commercial service like Coinbase, which must comply with know-your-customer laws, for the Bitcoin transactions but instead relied on his own personal wallet—one that did not reveal any information about his identity."

Only because the criminal hasn't yet tried to use that bitcoin to buy something in the real world. If they try to convert to fiat via an exchange, they can be identified the same way the husband was. If they try to buy products directly without using fiat then it is harder for law enforcement to get the records they need, but still quite possible. They will probably be safe if they never touch the bitcoin, but that e…

People doing nafarious things don't cash out using exchanges. They use things like localbitcoins to make a trade in person (or through an intermediary), and obviously lose a percent of the value in doing so. At that point it basically becomes a cash transaction.

Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says

#79

Post by freshair »

krisroadruck wrote: post #57
freshair wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the hitman has decided to retire, it's probably only a matter of time before they catch him using good old fashioned detective work. For instance, investigators might be able to catch the hitman in a sting operation, if they know what marketplace the hitman sells his services on.

I feel like you rather overestimate the prowess of law enforcements ability to solve murders, especially non-slam-dunk ones with a witness and an obvious connection between the murderer and victim.

Maybe so, you could be right. But if this man is taking contracts from the general public, I think that must be a good lead.

Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says

#80

Post by SahAssar »

kodah wrote: post #63
SahAssar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't, if a service is properly secured and does not sell it's data then there is no reason to think this. Please stop spreading FUD like this, it only makes people think that privacy is impossible. Even if you are talking about dragnet collection and you assume that for example NSA can store all traffic on the internet (which is basically impossible) in Utah (or wherever) for future decryption with post-quant…

I don't think that's privacy fatalism? Did you know that Reddit's entire graph has been cached on some dudes servers and up until fairly recently allowed search by username? That includes deleted posts and edits. Reddit is not unique. People do this with Twitter too. I forget the name but there's an entire service for caching changes to your Twitter bio. > No, it isn't, if a service is properly secured and does not s…

You're talking about public info, that people posted on public forums. Is anyone surprised that that info would be public?

We may be talking about different things, but to me "all of the internet" means much more than public data and public forums.

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