A reminder on crypto anonymity

Pekelo

Pekelo

"Analyzing transactions on the blockchain, the group claims to have seen the proceeds from several high-profile Bitcoin thefts pass through wallets listed under Vinnik’s name."

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/26/...bitcoin-alexander-vinnik-mt-gox-theft-suspect

Just a reminder, in case you ever thought cryptos being anonymous. Once a transaction/purchase can be connected to you, that wallet's all transactions can be traced backwards... Thus is the technology of the blockchain.
And if you also thought that you being a citizen of X country living in country Y (X and Y not being the USA) will save your ass, well, the above fellow is a Russian and was arrested in Greece following a request by the mighty USA.

TL;DR: When money laundering, stick to cash and restaurants/nail salons instead of crypto brokerages....
 
An explanation of the US jurisdiction of the case:
"
  • They registered their domain through an AUS/UK company
  • They hosted their DNS though a prominent US company
  • They hosted their email through a prominent US company
The indictment claims they also hosted their servers in the US...."

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6q00wt/attempting_to_make_sense_of_btces_ongoing_downtime/

BTC-e didn't serve US clients, so I am not sure why would they use anything US related, emails, servers....

And just a warning for traders of cryptos:

" my $1.6 million accumulated legally over years using nearly solely arbs and their metatrader margin trading? I am in strong denial now otherwise would be puking guts. Tell me someone my life savings are safe."
 
Interesting the prime suspect of Mt.Gox was so close to home. These crypto exchanges must be under some serious scrutiny right now. I reckon a few of them will be shitting themselves.

They think because they're not regulated that anything goes but they're about to find out how things really go.
 
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Not to myself: After a bank robbery, NEVER put the stolen money back to the same bank.

"Some of the funds moved to BTC-e seem to have moved straight to internal storage rather than customer deposit addresses, hinting at a relationship between Vinnik and BTC-e. The stolen MtGox coins were not the only stolen coins handled by Vinnik; coins stolen from Bitcoinica, Bitfloor and several other thefts from back in 2011 and 2012 were all laundered through the same wallets.

Moving coins back onto MtGox was what let us identify Vinnik, as the MtGox accounts he used could be linked to his online identity "WME".

Having identified the actual transactions for the bulk of the stolen MtGox bitcoins, we traced them and clustered all addresses involved, quickly finding that other stolen coins were making their way into the same wallets."

http://blog.wizsec.jp/2017/07/breaking-open-mtgox-1.html
 
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