Bitcoin Forum

The Polish Cybercrime Unit based in Krakow have announced the arrest of a 28-year old man in connection with the theft of around 85,000 PLN from Polish Bitcoin exchange BitMarket.pl

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/32033a/bitmarket_thief_arrested_by_polish_cybercrime_unit/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/32033a/bitmarket_thief_arrested_by_polish_cybercrime_unit/)

now they can hunt Josh Garza and Mark K  :D

They are a good exchange, I remember every time they were in trouble the owner covered everything with his own money. The article also lacks details, like the fact that they quickly found a new bank to cover the withdrawals and the site is fully functional. I hope now that the thief has been caught the funds can be recovered.

So, the owner is not the thief in this case...

The funds might be returned if found because it didn't happen in the USA. If that happened in the U.S. the recovered funds would be stolen by the government and never returned.

wounder if same scums where operating BitMarket.eu and then gambled away customer funds
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5441.msg5344257#msg5344257 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5441.msg5344257#msg5344257)

Always good news, hopefully this will deter some future criminal activities, but I doubt it  :-\

AFAIK no, these 2 companies are not the same. Bitmarket.pl is operated by this guy: https://www.facebook.com/michal.pleban

Hmm. I wonder how they caught him it doesn't say in the article. I think actually catching bitcoin criminals is rare due to the nature of it but they usually slip up when they try sell the coins for fiat or launder them in other ways like that darknet owner got busted for after he scammed his users.

Mark Karpeles is the master Thieft, they can't get him. If they didn't get him now, when will they? im still waiting for something to happen and I didn't even lost any money on it.

Out of a 100 bankrobbers around 90(approx) are caught, out of 10 bitcoin hacks only 1 is caught, so I doubt a bitcoin hacker being caught would deter people from doing it in the future .

Excellent

It was probably the same with this thief. Recently some Czech guy creator, manager and admin of Dark Markt in Czech turned to be fraudster who grabbed bitcoins of users was caught when trying to buy a house for stolen bitcoins, he transferred money to his girlfriend account and it did not help him. I see the light in the tunnel when I read that more and more bitcoin thieves are being caught by the police!

Good. I really hope that more and more Bitcoin thieves will get caught. This news comes after the capture of Tomáš Jiřikovský a few days ago. He was the one who committed the 2nd largest Bitcoin robbery in the world (Sheep Marketplace). Now we can hope that the biggest Bitcoin thief Mark Karpelès will be arrested and the stolen coins will be returned to its rightful owners.

I most suprised they actually have a cybercrime unit in Poland.

It's just like anywhere else in Western Europe these days. Actually I was rather annoyed by that. It wasn't foreign enough for my liking.

Considering the combo of blockchain analysis and the necessity to cash it out via exchanges, I'm pretty surprised there aren't more thieves who've been nailed to the wall. No doubt it'll become harder in the years to come to get away with it.

From venturing into Poland not too long ago, picture me unimpressed, but they've probably improved a lot the last decades, I'd give them that. Still they have a long way to go.

I expect this will be true over time. Thieves will learn the hard way it is difficult to _perfectly_ cover your tracks in an ecosystem where every transfer is logged. Forever. And available to every sleuth. With a bank robber, if he hasn't been caught in six months he can probably breathe a little easier. Not so with bitcoin.

Heh.

Mark K was arrested too. Nothing happened. If u have not done anything against the state, state has nothing against u. Ross Ulbricht & Charlie Shrem tried to defy the state. They are now jailed.

That's new:


if I get this right, he didn't steal any bitcoins, but found a way to withdraw fiat money (PLN) that didn't belong to him?

That's rather unusual for BTC exchange hack.

If that's correct, it was probably way easier for the cops to trace the money.


Always wondered, is this guy and "Bitmar" (admin @ forum.bitcoin.pl) the same person?

the only bad thing about bitcoin is the felons

And sadly they will never be far away. If you'd asked a scumbag ten years ago what the perfect vehicle for enriching themselves would be, something like Bitcoin would've popped out of their slobbering mouths.

It'll take a much brighter public, or plenty of bulletproof middle men for it to become a trusted option.

Excellent news! wonder if Tokyo police could get some support from them?  ;D

History is made by extremists as well as moderates.

Mark K did the exact opposite of what Ross Ulbricht & Charlie Shrem did. The latter tried to popularize the crypto-currency, defying the state and the banking cartels. The former tried to destroy the crypto, by damaging its reputation, thereby aiding the banking cartel.

I wish it could be that simple :)
Respect to Polish Cybercrime Unit, Bitcoin is quite new and they managed to operate in its borders

Someone scammed me out of 2.8 BTC for an asic advertised here on adsense. I would sure love to see that back!

I don't think that you're going to see them hunt your guy. You'd have to be the one who will start the investigation. You'd need real ID, proof and then you just sue the man.

Anyhow I'm glad to see some people are finally getting arrested. These scams are getting out of hand. Someone has to start taking down the bad guys before more innocent people get hurt in the meantime.

They seem to be an old show now, but yeah these thieves must definitely be caught in order to prove everyone (esp. scammers) that they can't get away this easy even in Bitcoin Tale.

Mark K might have done a deal with the Feds to get off the hook by dropping Pirate in it, I'm hoping the Japanese weren't involved in any deal and go after him instead.

I am still waiting for them to catch the bitcoin trader bastards. They dealt in fiat as well so it should not be that difficult to find them. Scammers and theives are the biggest threat to bitcoin by a wide margin.

i want to add that it's more of a incompetence of the average user, that don't know how to protct their wallet, many don't even run antivirus, or they download too many shit on their machine

thieves would have an harder time if people knew how to use their pc better

But if we go for the largest bitcoin losses - the inputs wallet, bitcoin savings and trust, gox, numerous dark markets - it had nothing to do with bad pc security and everything to do with being gullible and not applying due diligence.

You can have the securest computer ever, but it counts for nothing if the coins are handed over willingly by people who should know better.

so true