Bitcoin Forum

Nowadays It's modern to speak about how bitcoin is not really anonymous but after all those bitcoins heists, hacks and what not, has anyone been actually caught, ever?

Yes, I've seen stories about people getting their money back after a hacker has taken it back for them and there are people here who specialise in that kind of thing if you give them a share of the loot, the problem is the media either don't know anything about it because they're stupid or the hackers that go after these big heists know how to cover their tracks.

"The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable." - Sun Tzu

There are some examples of caught hackers in this forum.
I'm almost sure to have read something about it recently here but at the moment can't find a link to the thread,
btw I'll update if I'll find something.

Yes. Sometimes hackers returned BTC under pressure of price that was on "their head" (for catching em, not killing or something like that). But i'm guessing those are very....very....very rare occasions. 99% of thefts go by without of any possibility of catching the thief.

Big scam which are originated from US can still be prosecuted.

So, if you intend to run a ponzi scheme, do it abroad.

Mark Karpeles. sort of...

The most amazing thing is that the guy who sent 800 BTC to Mt. Gox after it already went belly-up, got his money back. He wrote to some people at the Bitcoin foundation and also to the lawyers organizing Mt. Gox's insolvency, and he got them back! Fat chance!

Didn't Klee get like 1100+ BTC stolen from his wallet and has already received over 550 back?  Sounds like the hacker is getting scared because people are finding out about him.

Anyway I can't imagine the authorities would even look kindly on hacking and thieving...since Bitcoin is considered property in the US, perhaps it would be theft still I am not sure how that works exactly.

Um, I guess he just extorted Klee by asking him to promise he wouldn't go the legal route and just forget about the whole thing. In return he'd return some percentage of the BTC stolen. Klee agreed, I really don't know what I'd be doing in such a situation!  :-\ Poor guy!

Karpeles is like OJ.  we all know he's guilty...but he's evading justice.

although in the end OJ ended up in prison.  we can only hope justice
finds Karpeles too.

At least Karpeles didn't kill anyone! Oh wait, didn't some CEO kill herself because her BTC were on Mt. Gox? I wonder how many lives have been ruined by the downfall of Karpeles. Do we have any numbers?

apart from blackmailing your money back. karpeles and pirate@40 both got caught. but in both cases the victims WILL NOT get 100% return.,

once people start to realise that the best they can aim for is 50%, they can then realise that they can reclaim their funds legally.

the simplest and cheapest method is to get a debt collection agency in the town of the perpetrator involved, yes they take a fee, but atleast you know you will be getting atleast your 50% back, and doing it legally. even the threat of a debt collection agency annoying their real lives is enough to get some recompense from the scammer.

people will then stop waiting for months whining and moaning that the SEC wont help them or get involved, or that courts take too long or that its not worth the plane ticket to slap the scammer with a wet fish. and also people will start doing their due diligence of asking for ID so that the other party is not a stranger to them.

this is the kind of consumer protection knowledge that needs to be taught to people..

Stealing $500 million is worse than killing someone. Because for $100,000 you can save a child's life in the developing world, by sponsoring their medical expenses. So a robbery of $500 million is equivalent to killing 5,000 people.

I think part of the problem is finding out the identity of the person who stole the coins, right?  I mean I know that's the major problem for a lot of thefts, you might be able to see their address but you can't connect someone to the address. And it seems like in some cases you can, but then it seems like often the person is in another country and unless you're going to hire someone in that country, or go yourself, it'd be hard to recover anything. 

In many places around the world you can live on less than $10,000 a year, so stealing $500,000,000 is like killing 50,000 people!

I know the son of a billionaire, I should tell him that his dad is killing 100,000 people he isn't busy giving all of his money away, afterall, it's like theft from the world isn't it?

Satoshi is letting tens of thousands die whilst leaving their Bitcoin sit around doing nothing, that money can save people right now!

In fact I am responsible for some deaths of my own, not giving it to those who are dying of starvation.

Don't steal from the world, if your money can be used to save a life do it!

Bryant, time to give and stop accumulating Bitcoins!

This is really not accurate as the money that would be stolen would not otherwise be used to save children's lives. There is not enough medical infrastructure in the third world to spend this kind of money performing this kind of expensive procedures in the "third world"

Most children that die in the third world do not die from treatable medical issues, but rather from not being able to eat enough, or from untreatable disease or from a simple medical issue that goes untreated because even simple medical treatment is not available.    

You can't effectively say that keeping money from the general public is killing people. If that money was in circulation, the whole supply of money itself would be worth less. Rich people keeping a large stash of money so to say keep inflation down.
Is that a crazy idea? I'm no economics expert!

Once the value of Bitcoin starts to trend towards the trillion dollar range, (as a whole), the acts and whims of rich people will have less effect. At the moment many US dollar billionaires could divest their investments and give tens of billions to starving people and the dollar would not move too much, just because of the sheet magnitude of how many dollars there are.

Eventually Bitcoin will be like this.

Right now, Bryant could divest all his Bitcoin and save lives, and his divestment will not influence the market. I agree that Satoshi's movements may be counter productive, but Satoshi is an outlier.

I am of course being sarcastic, the stolen $500,000,000 is nothing like killing 5,000 people, it's unlikely that money would have ever been used to save 5,000 lives, especially considering Bitcoin is a hoarders currency, I can't imagine the Bitcoin rich saving 5,000 people.

Sure, I'll need to dig around though but I remember seeing it on Bitcointalk awhile back I think there's a guy that specialises in that sort of thing here somewhere,

btw, there was some guy who used a brain wallet and had his money jacked. he went on reddit, and the guy who took the btc returned it.. this happened about 1-2 weeks ago.

Pirate totally ended up blowing the money, failing at day trading and whatever else. He ended up personally only getting $0.75 per BTC, which is completely laughable. He was such a massive failure at even scamming.

I have heard of BTC getting returned...but the person being actually physically caught...I haven't heard of any big time stories of that...

Bitfloor "hacker": nope

Pirateat40 is currently on trial in the US after running a 700,000 BTC Ponzi scheme on this message board.

There have been a few instances where the thief has returned the stolen bitcoin

what, really? there's a guy who was able to get away with 700k btc? that sounds pretty funny though, especially when you take into consideration his.. username.

It was a 700k BTC Ponzi of which he had around 200k BTC that wasn't paid out. But he managed to only withdraw ~150k USD in cash so he lost almost all of that extra BTC somehow. Most of it likely on Gox attempting to daytrade as the SEC said. He ended up buying a new truck or something and that's about it... lol.

i wouldn't have thought that users he would be so gullible as to trust someone pushing a ponzi scheme. then again, a lot of silk roaders are cracked out druggies looking to get their next fix.

Woah really??? I mean that's about like a 15-20th of all Bitcoins mined until this date!!! Man, Ponzi schemes are fucked up! There are even Ponzis over in the Gambling forum that admit openly that they in fact are Ponzis! And people participate!!! Messed up!!!

yeah it's kind of strange. i'm convinced that people equally have the knack to make money as they do to losing it. same goes with degenerate gamblers.

Yaaa well, I guess it's the greed getting the best of them! You always see people abandon all their due diligence and cautiousness as soon as there's the chance of winning a lot of money involved!

Fear and greed often cloud the minds of "investors" when they are making what should be sound decisions with their money.

Yes exactly! Many times people only seem to see the potential profits and totally neglect the risks associated with their investment! Also unexperienced investors act out of their emotions and fail to honor their stop-losses! Man, I've adapted some expert terms there  ;D

also, i remember the guy who heisted the sheep marketplace bitcoins was doxed. not sure what happened to him, but i'm assuming he's on the run. i haven't heard much about it recently though.

A lot of these things have gone on in the Scam Accusations sub-forum. May need to do some digging, but there are some gems of a story in there; including some who dox/investigate thieves.

In full disclosure, a "guilty pleasure" of mine when things were quieter was looking at all of the drama that happened there, along with a bunch of the results.

Whoa that's some 'Schadenfreude' you got there  ;D Not good for you Karma. But yeah man, the things over there are unbelievable! Hundreds of BTC lost or scammed!!!
Has anything ever happened to the Bitfunder/Ukyo thing?

I think the only real way to potentially recover stolen bitcoin would be to dox them and confront them in person, or in some manor that is not in their "internet world"

Yes people do get caught sometimes but its not made public too often
There are a few examples on the forum if you look at all the hacks but some do get away with it...
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=576337.0

Sorry, it's actually not in a joy at misery kind of way. It's more in a morbid fascination sort of way. It's the gall that some people have that captures my attention more than anything.

What? When did this happen?

This is a great topic... Thanks for all your hard work to keep us informed :)

Most never get them back. Basic security can prevent most of the thefts. Trust no one and keep only a small amount in your "hot wallet."

Many of them were caught. The real question is how many have been prosecuted, found guilty and sentenced?

I never scam people.
Some people scam to make the most out of it.
While some people scam because they need the money.
Other people are simply just greedy.
It's hard to find scammers because its hard to prove it.