How did Alphabay/Hansa get caught ?

[Lionel]

Their admins were using TOR for communicating with the world, and i suppose their coin wallets were linked to TOR as well.
So HOW in the hell did they get identified?

Unless there are secret TOR vulnerabilities that only the NSA knows about...

Maybe NSA can already crack most encryption algos like AES, Twofish, etc. , and the gov is using more advanced encryption for themselves which we don't know about.

P.S. I am not into drug/weapon trafficking.
I am just curious of knowing how can they always manage to know everything and find anyone, and even crack encrypted communication via TOR.
So even free speech or investigative journalism is impossible nowadays if totally private communication doesn't even exist.

[Lionel]

According to a police indictment, he accidentally broadcast his personal Hotmail address in welcome messages sent to new users.

For a period in 2014, when a user of AlphaBay joined the site or forgot their password they were sent an email, the headers of which contained the address Pimp_Alex_91@hotmail.com.

From: http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/after-alleged-alphabay-kingpin-found-dead-in-thai-jail-authorities-announce-huge-dark-web-takedown/news-story/cac0cfa628027cf414dc602bd2b3ec33


But that sounds strange to me... was he that stupid??