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Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

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Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#801

Post by shp0ngle »

bostonsre wrote: post #286
paulpauper wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just unreal. this guy was living a double life of being the greatest criminal ever. So among our community was a $4 billion hacker, just nonchalantly posting. I don't think he will be commenting anytime soon again if this really is him https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=il like your neighbor being a serial killer or something

I don't understand why he wouldn't move to somewhere that doesn't have an extradition policy with the US. If you go down that path, it seems like you should probably be willing to abandon your life. It's the same with Ross Ulbricht, seems like it would be terrifying living with that sword of damocles hanging over your head absolutely constantly.

Well, then you need to move to Russia or Venesuela or Iran or such.

Goodbuy to the luxurious live you enjoy in SV. Part of being a financial criminal is to post about "hustle culture" on linkedin and doing LSD with VC buddies or something

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#802

Post by raducu »

arcticbull wrote: post #439
cobookman wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he instead started to draw NFTs, and sell it from his KYC account to his dirty wallet, could he still be convicted? What if only one out of every 100 NFTs his dirty wallet purchased was from his KYC account? Or what if he decided to create his own crypto-currency and it just so happened that his dirty wallet was an early investor of ETH to his fund. Seems like he could have done more to distance himself.

> Seems like he could have done more to distance himself. Bitcoin's public ledger makes transactions into prosecution futures. This is why it's such a poor choice for revolutionaries and funding the marginalized. You leave a permanent indelible public record in posterity that will in the course of time be de-anonymized, automatically, and traced back to you.

But you could exchange the bitcoin for moneor and then back to bitcoin, and that would make things harder for investigators, right?

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#803

Post by afiori »

dragonelite wrote: post #794
arcticbull wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems like he could have done more to distance himself. Bitcoin's public ledger makes transactions into prosecution futures. This is why it's such a poor choice for revolutionaries and funding the marginalized. You leave a permanent indelible public record in posterity that will in the course of time be de-anonymized, automatically, and traced back to you.

Yeah somehow those crypto expert on social media don't even think about it, when they shout bitcoin will fix this.

To be fair there are some cc* that try to address this. Apparently signal was forced to choose the relatively unknown MobileCoin exactly to avoid this problem.

*cryptocurrency is too long

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#804

Post by raducu »

digianarchist wrote: post #585
GekkePrutser wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Such hacking prowess. Such bad opsec. Weird. Ps not condoning the theft but I just find it strange that people with the skills to steal this much get caught using bog standard cloud storage. You'd think they could afford something better ;) Something along the lines of "you don't take notes on a criminal f** conspiracy" :)

Honestly don’t know why people don’t AES/GPG encrypt the keys and send a message to alt.anonymous.messages. That’s 30+ years of storage for free.

Why couldn't they just use a brain wallet on an offline device with no internal storage. Keep a hand written copy of the generated passphrase laminated in some plastic in some fake plaster rock under a tree in a wood or something.

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#805

Post by BenoitP »

albroland wrote: post #6

fwiw, it appears one of the named here is a YC Alum: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=il https://www.linkedin.com/in/unrealdutch/

From the last comment, on 2021-11-04:

> Like it or hate it, there is a sea change happening in how governments treat cryptocurrency.

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#806

Post by vishnugupta »

sdenton4 wrote: post #391
tptacek wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty silly argument. I'm not opining on whether or not prosecutions are coercive; I'm certain they are. But a lower conviction rate would be a bad thing: it would mean the DOJ was bringing more cases they weren't certain they would win, and even exoneration comes with immense costs to the accused.

The argument around plea bargains is pretty simple. You have someone over a barrel: "Take the deal and go to prison for two or five years, or take a risk on a trial where you'll be put away for life. And btw, our conviction rate is 99.96%." You'd be crazy not to take the deal, even if you're innocent. Thus, the conviction rate doesn't actually tell us much about how strong the federal cases actually are.

> five years..or life. You'd be crazy not to take the deal, even if you're innocent.

To boot, mounting a good defence against the state doesn't cheap. Competent defence attorneys charge quite some money.

In this instance however, it's safe to assume the accused can afford a good legal team/firm.

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#807

Post by MayeulC »

sratner wrote: post #783
pshc wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, gathering multisigs would be much safer than gathering SSS shares because you wouldn't be carrying around bits of the private key.

Any single SSS share does not disclose any additional information about the private key (i.e. it is not like splitting the key itself into parts).

And SSS also allows n out of m.

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#808

Post by user-the-name »

zozbot234 wrote: post #199
paulpauper wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just unreal. this guy was living a double life of being the greatest criminal ever. So among our community was a $4 billion hacker, just nonchalantly posting. I don't think he will be commenting anytime soon again if this really is him https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=il like your neighbor being a serial killer or something

He was just a million-dollar hacker, but the power of HODL boosted his illicit fortune to the billion-dollar range.

His theoretical fortune, on paper. Even if the coins were legit you can't just cash out those kinds of amounts.

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#809

Post by user-the-name »

paulpauper wrote: post #178
albroland wrote: post #6

fwiw, it appears one of the named here is a YC Alum: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=il https://www.linkedin.com/in/unrealdutch/

This is just unreal. this guy was living a double life of being the greatest criminal ever. So among our community was a $4 billion hacker, just nonchalantly posting. I don't think he will be commenting anytime soon again if this really is him https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=il like your neighbor being a serial killer or something

Well, there is a persistent rumour that Ghislaine Maxwell was a mod on some large subreddits, and had a top ten amount of karma on there.

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#810

Post by [deleted] »

porknubbins wrote: post #788
sbierwagen wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a closely related scenario, if you sell a kilogram of gold to a buyer who pays in counterfeited US currency, then the secret service will seize the $50,000 and you will not be compensated. Doing business with criminals can bite you, even if you were not participating in a criminal enterprise.

I don’t think thats quite the whole story though. The feds would have no obligation to make you whole but you would almost certainly have a civil cause of action vs the buyer for the full amount, if you could ever collect. So don’t do business with people who can disappear or avoid court judgements.

[deleted]
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