Posted on 02/09/2022 4:27:00 PM PST by BenLurkin
On Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department announced it seized most of the 119,754 Bitcoins (worth almost 3.6 billion today) lost during this infamous hack and have arrested a New York couple who is accused of attempting to launder the stolen funds.
Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife Heather Morgan, 31, were arrested without incident Tuesday morning in Manhattan and face charges related to conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Government. The couple, however, is not being charged for the hack itself as the investigation is ongoing.
The department partially credited the “blockchain” or the underlying technology in Bitcoin for their success in retrieving the stolen funds.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
It is obviously not the anonymous panacea from Government theft some folks might think it is.
Interesting multicultural name there. Russian first name and German or Jewish last name.
Bet Heather walks off into the sunset.
While there is a level of anonymity with blockchain, it is possible to identify the owner of a wallet (address) that is holding the coins in question. It does require some detective work to identify the wallet owner. Lots of times the detective work can be done outside of the chain.
For example, if a person goes to an ATM that is blockchain enabled and withdraws funds, the transaction is recorded in the chain, likely the bank or service that owns the ATM can identify the specific date and time. By consulting video feeds, it is often possible to get a face or car license plate, cell phone SIM, etc. Piece together a few of these and it will point to one or two people.
Whoa, from .01% elites to jailbirds in moments.
Bummerooski.
Most or the vast majority? #bringbackourbitcoin
“Interesting multicultural name there. Russian first name and German or Jewish last name.”
Only because most of the famous Russian Jews took other names.
Perhaps a little study on the Russian revolution and Russian Jew influence in our media and Hollywood is in order.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Russia#Jews_in_the_revolutionary_movement
Ever here of Benjamin Wonsal? Nope. He changed his name to Warner. The Warner brothers were Russian Jews.
Interesting story about European Jewish names:
https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/ashkenazic-names-2/
… Ashkenazic Jews were among the last Europeans to take family names. Some German-speaking Jews took last names as early as the 17th century, but the overwhelming majority of Jews lived in Eastern Europe and did not take last names until compelled to do so. The process began in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1787 and ended in Czarist Russia in 1844...
So how do you carry around 3.6 million Bitcoin? Is it a thrumbdrive/password with access to a network? Anybody got change for a Bitcoin?
Just like trying to pass marked bills.
hacked Bitcoin?
I didn’t that was supposed to be possible.
No hacking of Bitcoin itself occurred. The theft was accomplished by hacking Bitfinex who had custody of some Bitcoin.
The Feds found the keys to most of the stolen Bitcoin and copious other evidence in files the couple had online. Whoever owns the keys owns the Bitcoin.
Rosa Luxemburg was a German Jew.
“Rosa Luxemburg was a German Jew.”
Not sure of why you mention her but she was not German.
She died a German citizen, she got her citizenship in 1898. Born in the Russian empire, in what later became part of Poland. Despite getting her degree in Switzerland, she apparently never picked up Swiss citizenship to add to her collection.
So feel free to call her a Russian Jew or a Polish Jew if her German citizenship is offensive.
“She died a German citizen, she got her citizenship in 1898.”
A political necessity to help her international ambitions.
Luksemburg continued to identify as Polish and disliked living in Germany, which she saw as a political necessity, making various negative comments about contemporary German society in her private correspondence that was written in Polish; at
I still don’t know why you referenced her?
It is obviously not the anonymous panacea from Government theft some folks might think it is.
Contrary to what the media claims, using Bitcoin would be an especially bad choice for criminals. Every single Bitcoin can be traced. The blockchain holds a permanent record.
If you want to use crypto for privacy or for criminal purposes, you would need to use a privacy token like Monero which the IRS has been unable to break.
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