That's backwards. It's how they wrapped it all up. The real trail is pretty clearly AlphaBay 2016/2017 transactions (under gov control around that timeframe), to KYC-flagged accounts at an exchange, with a web of accounts with real info linked together past there.
Or what if he decided to create his own crypto-currency and it just so happened that his dirty wallet was an early investor of ETH to his fund.
Seems like he could have done more to distance himself.
On a value system with an inherently public ledger that eventually has to hit a fiat off ramp with KYC/AML requirements? Nah. Everyone has quality opsec until they don't, and the record of your criminal activity is immutable and highly durable.
also, as time goes on, the proportion of btc that are "dirty" approaches 1, so these chainalysis strategies become less effective, assuming you aren't stupid enough to do some criminal act then cash out at a kyc exchange the next day from the same wallet
Presumably, this would do the trick.
Morgan and Ilya appear to be the original hackers as well so on top of the money laundering sentencing which is around 10~20 years, they now have to deal with the hacking charge which appears to be a separate trial.
Morgan and Ilya aren't the only ones involved and the rest of the guys will eventually appear on DOJ website.
I don't follow what you're saying here. Nothing stops something from being dirty multiple times, does it? So nobody might care that it could be traced back to something sketchy 5 years ago, if more immediately it's traced back to last month's crime.
Bitcoin's public ledger makes transactions into prosecution futures.
This is why it's such a poor choice for revolutionaries and funding the marginalized. You leave a permanent indelible public record in posterity that will in the course of time be de-anonymized, automatically, and traced back to you.
is the onus on an artist or on an "auction house" to vet buyers. If post sale it turns out the money was fraudulent, does the artist need to pay it back?
In crypto terms. You the artist simply put a NFT up for auction at OpenSea. You the scammer happened to purchase the artwork on OpenSea. However KYC is not well enforced, enabling for money laundering between the two wallets.
Auction houses are known to be on the trick -- that is passively mainly/ they don't care and work to "pump" the prices of artwork. But of course law enforcement agencies know about it too.
It shouldn't be illegal: people should be free to buy what they want. But let's not hide behind our noses.
Maybe? IIRC, if you unknowingly buy stolen property, and they trace it to you, I think you have to surrender it to its rightful owner (without compensation from the police).
https://www.wilsonelser.com/files/repository/PHLY_Article_Cl...
Doing business with criminals can bite you, even if you were not participating in a criminal enterprise.
No. Normally you have to return items that were stolen from someone even if you purchased them without knowing they were stolen. But money is an exception. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_dat_quod_non_habet
(I don’t know whether Bitcoin would be treated as money for these purposes…)
Law on receiving stolen goods is vague, complex, and jurisdiction-dependent. But in some cases, if the money you get paid is "the same" money that was stolen (something that's actually much easier to show with Bitcoin, where every input to every transaction is another transaction's output), and you know about the crime, yes. See People ex Rel. Briggs v. Hanley.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/sohojt/mela...
You can walk in the river instead of trying to cover your tracks.
*cryptocurrency is too long
That’s “credit card”. We’ve already lost “crypto”(graphy), let’s avoid deliberately giving away other common shorthands.
There might be prestige in some circles for taking down some dumbass Solidity coder, and some people seem to be getting some money out still (e.g. Wormhole).
But overall I’m short Trail of Bits consulting rate.