Posted on 12/02/2013 3:44:07 PM PST by Lazamataz
Did a hacker or hackers pull off a huge heist from one of the biggest black market drug-selling sites, or did the operators of the anonymous digital narcotics bazaar, Sheep Marketplace, just get away with stealing at least $5.4 million and perhaps as much as $40 million from their clients?Sheep Marketplace and stolen bitcoins
After the shutdown of Silk Road in October, Sheep Marketplace became the most popular illicit virtual drug shop. Like Silk Road, Sheep Marketplace was a Deep Web site accessible via the Tor network; customers paid in the digital currency Bitcoins. But by Saturday, Tapscape reported, "It appears as though the entire site was a scam, resulting in all of the buyers and sellers losing their money. Concerns regarding the legitimacy of the site came into play once the administrators at the marketplace decided to prevent vendors from withdrawing any of their bitcoins from the site."
Then on Sunday, Sheep Marketplace administrators posted on the homepage
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.computerworld.com ...
Good luck finding it or them.
Those bitcoins have probably changed hands dozens of times through many shadow accounts and false fronts by now. The original account ebook101 was probably disposable.
Forbes’ Andy Greenburg reported: Sheep’s owners have used that theft to justify closing the market without returning the bitcoins stored in the market by users, despite claiming that they would redistribute those coins to users’ “emergency addresses.”
Oopsie. Would these fine anonymous people compromise their reputation for a mere $44 million?
Maybe I should rephrase that...
Let’s leave just leave this currency business to the adults at the Fed. They know what they are doing.
How exactly was the value of the amount lost calculated? Not exactly the kind of situation where someone goes to the cops to report a theft. So with these deep web sites how is it possible to verify much of anything.
Let the bits fall where they may, this is a learning experience for this kind of thing. Bitcoin seems to have some deep problems, hopefully the next digital currency will have those addressed.
It is encouraging that people are experimenting. MUCH more power to-em.
Distant acquaintance of mine bought two bit coins a year or two ago for $80 each and cashed them in late last week for $1000 each.
Money is in his hand so it was real.
This story wasn’t a “Bitcoin problem” — it was a problem that is inherent with any kind of currency, when you use that currency to engage in transactions with drug dealers and criminals.
Well ... Heck! If I had followed through with my instincts (and I was talking seriously about doing it) — I could have turned about $140 into about $2,400 in the space of about eight months.
I was seriously looking at it and was thinking I could afford to gamble the money, but I just never got around to it.
The same thing happened to me with gold, too ... as I was talking to a relative about i (a number of years ago). I had about $20,000 to mess around with at the time and I was expecting gold to take a big jump. I could have turned that into about $100,000!
Oh well ... missed opportunities ...
This might be the pin-prick that pops the Bitcoin bubble.
Sorry folks, this is clearly simply a case of an illegal drug deal (actually a multitude of deals) gone bad. Folks engaging in illegal activity that involves money are a traditional target of other criminals. I’m not losing any sleep over this.
Got bitcoins? Make sure you secure them properly—they are, in effect, just like cash.
Maybe for drug deals - but not for legitimate transactions.
However, the fact of the matter is that is the nature of dealing in illegal activities and with criminals - no matter what currency you use in the world.
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