He trained cops to fight crypto crime and allegedly ran a dark-web drug market
wired.com
wired.com
The police was somehow able to trace the ransoms received by the psychotherapy Vastaamo hacker despite his similar efforts of blockchain hopping. Likely same technique.
almost, but he did it backwards.
always swap to monero with new clean funds straight from an exchange, let it sit in Monero for a week, and then swap to new unseen addresses, in several different amounts than you initially sent. This thwarts the timing attacks.
additionally, either access the nodes you are using via TOR, or only access nodes with Onion addresses
use the funds in the previously unseen addresses to buy goods and services such as your domain names and other things
just completely segregate them in their own subnet of addresses unlinked from anything besides the swap/mixer
everyone has nearly infinite addresses on every blockchain, there's no reason not to do this, there's no rush and transaction fees have dropped as block space has improved
Jokes aside, it’s incredible that the FBI could still attribute transactions
its just a step in a broader goal though, whether you are just creating privacy from competitors or a merchant seeking privacy from their customers, or the customer seeking privacy from the data brokers, or the laundering trying to reintegrate funds that would otherwise be subjected to civil and criminal sanctions
to answer your "joke", if you are starting with illicit cash then getting it to crypto to further unlink is the harder part and fraught with its own paper trails and controls. but if you are starting with crypto earnings like a darknet operator is, then this is more applicable. the addresses on the server should have been funded with monero and never used for clearnet things, just accumulating more crypto from the marketplace to reintegrate back to clearnet addresses or the local fiat currency when desired, if ever.
What an idiot.