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

washingtonpost.com

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

#431

Post by pyronite »

ncmncm wrote: post #418

Quoted post unavailable.

> He snagged a Pulitzer for a story about something that never had any primary source, that was entirely fabricated by political operatives then working for Hillary Clinton's campaign.

There was a multi-year government report indicating that "the Russian government 'interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion' and 'violated U.S. criminal law'."

Source and further reading if desired: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Russian_interfe...

The Justice Department under former Attorney General Bill Barr tried to determine who had leaked to the reporter, Devlin Barrett, because the information he published was accurate and classified: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/washington-...

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

#432

Post by pcthrowaway »

knownjorbist wrote: post #390
pcthrowaway wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works with the smart contracts with USDC, it's just that there's an authority which has permission to update the state to deny transfers from a specific address. This is because USDC is a centralized stablecoin (as is USDT). There are decentralized stablecoins such as UST and MIM (and I believe DAI as well).

Correct, though on second thought, given how slow many DAOs are to operate, the perpetrators would already be in some other uncontrollable currency by the time people voted to blacklist certain wallets.

A DAO could have a privileged user (voted in by the DAO of course) who has the ability to blocklist specific addresses that aren't explicitly on an allow-list. Then the DAO vote could add accounts to the allow-list.

Doing so would mean the token could be transacted, except by users who are on the blocklist and not on the allow-list. And this would prevent a privileged user from abusing the power to add accounts to the block-list. Getting unblocked at the speed of DAO is less of a concern, as long as blocked account-holders can still vote with their tokens.

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

#434

Post by cgriswald »

djanogo wrote: post #317
bostonsre wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If he goes somewhere which doesn't have extradition, FED's will just call him and tell him they will go public that he has $4B bitcoin and ALL criminals will be hunting them after that.

I'm not certain I understand. There are billionaires in the world already. How do they protect themselves from criminals?

Granted, their billions aren't in cash. However, once he fled the country he could immediately start converting his position to other assets that aren't so easily stolen. He'd also be able to afford to hide himself, pay taxes and bribes, and pay for some security.

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

#436

Post by bostonsre »

thebean11 wrote: post #387
aeturnum wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The work of preparing to leave the country is necessarily public in a way that doing crypto stuff might not be. I suspect they were worried that preparing to leave the country would tip their hand - and they could have been caught earlier if they tried it. It just turns out they were caught anyway.

Hmm what work is that? Getting a visa? With that much cash I'd leave first (on a tourist visa) and figure the rest out later..

Yea, maybe bring your cat or dog but literally pack like you're going on vacation. If they arrest you before leaving the country then you were screwed already.

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

#437

Post by evdubs »

tiffanyh wrote: post #186
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/

Let's be fair to these individuals and not presume guilt. In the US, it's "innocent until proven guilty". Media is so quick to assume the person is guilty just because of an allegation.

Heather Morgan admitted to the hack on TikTok

https://twitter.com/BillSPACman/status/1491131214014869505

Edit: whoops. That video is fake. It's from

https://www.tiktok.com/@realrazzlekhan/video/690851478968159...

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

#438

Post by cirowrc »

uncomputation wrote: post #208
jrav wrote: post #136

Probably stupid question: Why not just exchange it to zcash or monero or some other coin that hides transaction details? Then you can send it to a new wallet; theoretically 100% untraceably. Is this not a valid approach?

The transaction from BTC to Monero is traceable.

with atomic swaps that make use of taproot, that wouldn't be distinguishable from, say, opening a lightning channel, but still, there's not enough liquidity there (and this is very recent stuff anyway)

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

#439

Post by arcticbull »

cobookman wrote: post #318
tyrfing wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they found a file listing private keys, after gaining access to the suspect's cloud storage That's backwards. It's how they wrapped it all up. The real trail is pretty clearly AlphaBay 2016/2017 transactions (under gov control around that timeframe), to KYC-flagged accounts at an exchange, with a web of accounts with real info linked together past there.

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.

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