Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–229 of 229 posts

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#221

Post by blep_ »

cortic wrote: post #154
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which means the feds didn't actually seize anything Seizure is tied to possession, a legal concept [1]. Not control. Courts commonly authorize the seizure assets not yet under the government's physical control. (I agree the terminology is misleading.) [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/seizure

So when i read that a suspect was seized by police; They might have just recovered a picture of the person..? But then the real person can't change addresses as they would be charged with escaping from police custody.. Doesn't seem right.

Silly dystopia ideas: police seize an NFT of the suspect.

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#222

Post by synicalx »

xapata wrote: post #103
synicalx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine owning a Google Glass though, that's arguably worse

It's so obviously the future, though. Just produced too early.

Oh yeah 100% - I got the chance to try one out at an old job and I could immediately see why the idea would work. But yeah just too early, long before we had the ability to make it "nice".

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#223

Post by cantSpellSober »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #93
cantSpellSober wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> forever Good! Nothing to worry about then? Our coins are forever un-seizeable? Robert Peel? Nuance please.

FBI hires external consultants (“experts”) when there is $311 million at stake. In this case I’m sure they hired at least one crypto expert. In other words, they don’t need to understand private keys, pins, and passphrases in detail in order to be effective.

But I was told "we will see these amateur-hour mistakes being made for as long as crypto exists in its current form," it sounds like the "crypto experts" they're hiring make that false.

My coins are seizeable after all!

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#224

Post by [deleted] »

cantSpellSober wrote: post #223
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FBI hires external consultants (“experts”) when there is $311 million at stake. In this case I’m sure they hired at least one crypto expert. In other words, they don’t need to understand private keys, pins, and passphrases in detail in order to be effective.

But I was told "we will see these amateur-hour mistakes being made for as long as crypto exists in its current form," it sounds like the "crypto experts" they're hiring make that false. My coins are seizeable after all!

[deleted]

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#225

Post by Thorrez »

mjthrowaway1 wrote: post #213
Thorrez wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's very good parallel construction. They say they only got the picture after subpoenaing data from his cloud account. So the police talking about this picture doesn't eliminate any public discussion of how the police got enough suspicion and evidence in order to get a subpoena in the first place.

The purpose of parallel construction is to not disclose the actual methods used by law enforcement because they may be illegal and/or disclose sources of information that they would like to keep confidential. It only needs to be minimally believable as a “stroke of luck” to the court. Law enforcement doesn’t particularly care if the public believes it or not as long as the methods aren’t disclosed.

I'm not saying anything about whether it's believable or not.

I'm saying that parallel construction is an explanation the government gives of how they found someone. But the government isn't saying they found him from this picture. They're saying they first found him, then subpoenaed his cloud account, then found this picture. Since this picture isn't an explanation of how they found him, it's not parallel construction.

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#227

Post by Elizabeh »

Losing money to crypto and digital assets theft can be devastating so need to get a legitimate fund recovery team arise. Few weeks back I fell for an ad on crypto investment which I invested blindly due to the return on investment. After few days of investing I tried to check through how my investment has grown and to my surprise the account that was created for me got deleted and I tried reaching the support team all to no avail. Instantly I knew I’ve been swindled but amazingly 2 days ago I read a review about Dave with the mail: (RamsayMacDonald@Consultant.com) who I wrote and he recovered all my fortune using some forensics and digital currency recovery techniques. He’s truly the real deal

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#228

Post by BizarroLand »

ghastmaster wrote: post #83
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of crimes require mens rea , ie. being guilty would require knowing the bitcoins are shady.

While perhaps not criminal, receiving them could subject a person to asset seizure. Usually stolen things are seized whether the receiver knows they are stolen or not. The burden is then on the receiver to persue criminal, or more likely, civil action.

So when the bitcoin are traced to a washing service in a location where the FBI has no jurisdiction (so that they cannot go after the washing service), split into individual satoshis and then sent through hundreds of thousands of transactions before being put back into the wild in a format that is completely and totally randomized and then one day months or years later re-enter the FBI's jurisdiction you think that there's a chance in hell that they will be able to identify specifically which individual satoshis are illegal and which ones are not?

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#229

Post by ghastmaster »

BizarroLand wrote: post #228
ghastmaster wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While perhaps not criminal, receiving them could subject a person to asset seizure. Usually stolen things are seized whether the receiver knows they are stolen or not. The burden is then on the receiver to persue criminal, or more likely, civil action.

So when the bitcoin are traced to a washing service in a location where the FBI has no jurisdiction (so that they cannot go after the washing service), split into individual satoshis and then sent through hundreds of thousands of transactions before being put back into the wild in a format that is completely and totally randomized and then one day months or years later re-enter the FBI's jurisdiction you think that t…

If I steal $1,000 and promptly donate $1,000 to charity, it is very likely that that money would be tracked down and returned.

On the other hand, if I steal $1,000 and make retail purchases over the course of twelve months less than $5 each, the monies would not be returned from the retailers to the victim of my theft. At that point it is up to the courts(civil and criminal) to force me to make amends to the original victim.

Your scenario is similar to the latter example for most of the end recipients. If an account with zero bitcoins receives a stolen bitcoin and sends it to one recipient, that recipient would certainly fall under the first scenario I put forth. As the transactions become more complex and diffuse, the latter scenario is more likely.

Post reply on HN