Posted on 02/19/2022 6:06:52 PM PST by dennisw
A Crucial Clue in the $4.5 Billion Bitcoin Heist: A $500 Walmart Gift Card Increasingly sophisticated tools and some gift cards helped lead investigators to charge a young couple with conspiring to launder billions
Federal investigators spent years hunting for clues in the 2016 hacking of the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange, when thieves stole bitcoin now worth $4.5 billion. In the end, what helped lead them to two suspects was something much more quotidian: a $500 Walmart gift card.
That card and more than a dozen others like it, including for Uber, Hotels.com and PlayStation, were linked to emails and cloud service providers belonging to a young Manhattan couple, Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and Heather R. Morgan, according to a criminal complaint. Authorities arrested the couple after seizing $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin allegedly in their control—the Justice Department’s largest financial seizure ever.
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(Excerpt) Read more at archive.fo ...
Parallel Construction.
You got it pal.
Another ends-justifies-the-means case by the thugs who ignore the rules.
Looks like it was good analytics of the public block chains.
Those 2 need to rot 🤪
blockchain transactions infinitely more traceable than ordinary cash ...
Who is Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan? Whats happened?
Fools. They should have assumed AlphaBay was a FED honeypot or infiltrated/compromised.
For those who did not read the entire article, the lady who was arrested retired from her technology career a while ago and started writing and performing rap music on You Tube.
One of the many unkind WSJ comments about her artistic ability included this gem...
"She dances like Sonny Corleone at the causeway tollbooth."
“blockchain transactions infinitely more traceable than ordinary cash ...”
Yes, and just think of your green Federal Reserve notes in your wallet as one time use credit cards. This works for me.
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