How to Launder Stolen Bitcoins
Bitcoin's main problem is that every transaction is public. Such a feature makes it difficult to launder stolen bitcoins. Take this $5m thief as the example. The person controlling 19,000 of Bitstamp's coins has a problem. Anyone can follow the coins as they move between addresses. Lucky for them (or not as we'll see), there exist tools to assist in hiding, disguising, and making it difficult to prove where your bitcoins originate. Mixers combine your coins with the coins of others. Everyone sends coins to a central address. The mixer sends a transaction back to each user from the key....
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Thousands of bitcoins have been stolen from users since the virtual currency started, and yet we can see all of these thefts happen, in real time, on the block chain. We know which addresses the stolen coins are sent to, and which ones they are stolen from. We can track the life of a bitcoin through the network. Why, then, can't we simply take those stolen coins out of commission? A UK-based digital forensic services firm, Systech, has begun offering a recovery service for lost and stolen bitcoins. The service is twofold: firstly, it will use its traditional forensic data recovery....
Last week, four men were arrested in the Netherlands for spreading a type of malware that allowed them to obtain Dutch bank account information. And they used a bitcoin exchange to launder some of $1.4 million that was stolen from approximately 150 bank accounts. The malware, known as TorRAT, targeted only Dutch speakers. TorRAT used the anonymizing network Tor to use its command and control (C&C) servers. The men also paid for a Turkish crypting service to circumvent antivirus software and utilized the hosted tormail.org in order to communicate. Once the malicious software was able to....
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) arrested two individuals that are accused of an “alleged conspiracy to launder” 94,636 bitcoins stolen from Bitfinex in 2016. Interestingly, both of the suspects are known individuals within the tech industry as Ilya Lichtenstein was the co-founder of Mixrank, a Y-Combinator backed startup and Heather Morgan was a writer for Forbes.
The Myriad of Mysterious Bitcoin Transfers From the 2016 Bitfinex Hack
The U.S. government announced the “largest cryptocurrency seizure to date” after the DOJ seized 94,636....
On February 8, 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) arrested a couple that is accused of laundering 94,636 bitcoins stolen from Bitfinex in 2016. The DOJ alleges that the tech entrepreneur, Ilya Lichtenstein, and his wife Heather Morgan, conspired to launder billions of dollars worth of bitcoin. The duo could face 25 years in federal prison if convicted. Five months later, a report indicates that a federal judge has given Morgan permission to get a job and “engage in legitimate employment.” Former Forbes Author and Street Rapper Heather Morgan Granted Pre-Trial Release....
According to a PeckShield report, The Harmony attacker has already mixed more than $12 million through the protocol, and they’re sending 100 ETH to Tornado Cash every six minutes. On Thursday morning, the proof of stake blockchain “Harmony” disclosed that $100 million worth of cryptocurrency had been stolen from its Horizon bridge. Related reading | Breaking: […]