BestMixer is gone, seized by the Financial Crime Investigation

[figmentofmyass]

For a mixer to be shutdown this easily, something is not adding up!
I Wonder whose buttons got pressed for this to unravel....domain provider.....unsatisfied customer???

i don't think it's very hard when the servers are stored in the netherlands and luxembourg, lol. with TOR so full of holes and the network so full of adversaries, IP address obfuscation is only as useful as police inability to enter your jurisdiction.

the FIOD said they were sitting on this case for a years time. i'm guessing those servers have been mirrored for many months already. the domain is just an afterthought.

best suggestion ITT:

I'm leaning towards the honeypot angle, myself. Nobody is stupid enough to run this service from the Netherlands.

Doesn't anyone remember what the Dutch police did with Hansa? They hijacked the market and ran it themselves, altering code and social engineering sellers into leaking their location and other identifying info.

In their probe into that free-trade zone, which would come to be known as Operation Bayonet, the Dutch investigators not only identified the two alleged administrators of Hansa's black market operation in Germany, but went so far as to hijack the two arrested men's accounts to take full control of the site itself.

'We thought maybe we could really damage the trust in this whole system.' -Marinus Boekelo, NHTCU

The NHTCU officers explained how, in the undercover work that followed, they surveilled Hansa's buyers and sellers, discreetly altered the site's code to grab more identifying information of those users, and even tricked dozens of Hansa's anonymous sellers into opening a beacon file on their computers that revealed their locations.

These Dutch police are ruthless and sneaky. I wouldn't put it past them to spin up the site themselves. Now they have a treasure chest of data on darknet smugglers. I'm sure many arrests will come from this. Probably none to do with operation of the mixer though.

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[ene1980]

So where are you heading with this statement of yours lol. The situation bestmixer currently find themselves in, has nothing to do with their downgrading of other mixers. it was just a business strategy they employed. Irrespective of whether your downgrade other mixer or not, if the government body have you under their radar they'll come for you.

If best mixer had the best practice when it comes to hosting and how they secure their servers as well as their domain, these kind of situations does not arise, all they could do is seize the domain name and nothing can be done other than that, but that is not the case here, they were investigating them for a year, took all the details and then acted, if you are running a service like this, which cleans all the tracks of your coins, you have to be aware that you might end up in a situation like this.

[LeGaulois]

If the person is arrested, I wonder what he would have in court. He could argue to say that the platform is used to anonymize bitcoins but that he has no control over what people on his platform do or say that he does not have the resources to know that the bitcoins came from illegal activity.(Especially if the website mentioned the bitcoins can't come from illegal activities)
well you know, like the banks.

So where are you heading with this statement of yours lol. The situation bestmixer currently find themselves in, has nothing to do with their downgrading of other mixers. it was just a business strategy they employed. Irrespective of whether your downgrade other mixer or not, if the government body have you under their radar they'll come for you.

If best mixer had the best practice when it comes to hosting and how they secure their servers as well as their domain, these kind of situations does not arise, all they could do is seize the domain name and nothing can be done other than that, but that is not the case here, they were investigating them for a year, took all the details and then acted, if you are running a service like this, which cleans all the tracks of your coins, you have to be aware that you might end up in a situation like this.

Offshore domain name registrars do exist and tend to ignore complains (until a court order)

[PrimeNumber7]

If the person is arrested, I wonder what he would have in court. He could argue to say that the platform is used to anonymize bitcoins but that he has no control over what people on his platform do or say that he does not have the resources to know that the bitcoins came from illegal activity.(Especially if the website mentioned the bitcoins can't come from illegal activities)
well you know, like the banks.

IIRC, they did have some terms in their TOS that may have protected the operator a little bit.

I don't know the statute or legal theory that was used to seize the domain/servers, so I cannot review the text of the law to see what, if any affect the TOS would have done to protect the operators. 

[gentlemand]

Bitblender just announced they're shutting down also. I guess this is a disease that's spreading rapidly. Looks like Bitmixer.io sniffed something long before anyone else. If I were completely confident in my anonymity I'd stick around to see if they attempted to hang a case on someone. I get why you wouldn't linger though.

[akamit]

Looks like Bitmixer.io sniffed something long before anyone else.

Afair when they closed the business, some members here were requesting the owner not to close or sale the business.
But the owner said something that the "Bitcoin is not an anonymous thing anymore" and "I can sell the business for $5m-$6m but I'll not do that"
Maybe the owner predicted the future consequences about mixing services and decided to shut it down. Well, the Bitmixer owner left the industry with respect I guess.

I had created a thread with some of my questions but the mod has removed it may be because of this thread. I'm posting it here again. I have read the first 2 pages of this thread and then you can say I felt lazy to read more, so not sure if my question has been answered or not. The thread was as below.

****************

I would like to ask the community about their current thoughts after BestMixer Seized by Feds.



According to the image (LeGaulois says it could be fake), it says FIOD were investigating Bestmixer since June 2018, that's almost a year. They say they have collected information about transactions, letters of guarantee and support messages.

And also said "YOU ARE NOT ANONYMOUS", not sure if it is a bluff or they really know who are those users using bestmixer.


To the point, Bestmixer is gone and there are others still alive and I was wondering about the following things...

1. Is it possible, that any authority is investigating any other mixers under the user's nose and collecting information and one day the mixer will be seized as like bestmixer?
    Bestmixer users never knew that there was an ongoing investigation under their nose for almost a year.

2. Do you guys think that mixing gives real anonymity? after reading some posts, it seemed that 100% anonymity is not possible.

3. Do the users are in danger and is there any possible threat?

4. Please also write about other concerns which you think appropriate about the case.

[gentlemand]

1. Is it possible, that any authority is investigating any other mixers under the user's nose and collecting information and one day the mixer will be seized as like bestmixer?
    Bestmixer users never knew that there was an ongoing investigation under their nose for almost a year.

3. Do the users are in danger and is there any possible threat?

I think it may have been raised elsewhere in this thread, but it's quite possible the police were running it for quite some time. For all we know maybe they founded it.

If I was running a mixing service I would be surprised by all this but I also would've expected it was going to happen some day and planned accordingly from the start.

If I were mixing because of nefarious activities I would be nervous indeed. Like anything centralised you're depending on an unknown third party to do it properly and not get busted.

[marlboroza]

Something is not right here.

[PrimeNumber7]

Something is not right here.

If I have physical access to your computer, I can access anything in RAM, and can copy the entire contents of your hard drive. If some files are encrypted, the decryption keys will be stored in RAM when you decrypt the file. I can do this without anything on your computer telling you I am doing this (you would see me with your eyes).

If you have a server or a VPS, the servers are located in a datacenter, and both the datacenter operator and the hosting provider can physically access the server without the customer knowing. If the Dutch investigators obtained a legally enforceable order for the hosting provider to give the investigators physical access to the servers, and to not inform the customer, they would have to do exactly that.

[Twinkledoe]

1. Is it possible, that any authority is investigating any other mixers under the user's nose and collecting information and one day the mixer will be seized as like bestmixer?
    Bestmixer users never knew that there was an ongoing investigation under their nose for almost a year.

3. Do the users are in danger and is there any possible threat?

I think it may have been raised elsewhere in this thread, but it's quite possible the police were running it for quite some time. For all we know maybe they founded it.

If I was running a mixing service I would be surprised by all this but I also would've expected it was going to happen some day and planned accordingly from the start.

If I were mixing because of nefarious activities I would be nervous indeed. Like anything centralised you're depending on an unknown third party to do it properly and not get busted.

I believe they know that they will be hot in the eyes of those investigators even before starting their business. We really don't know the real story behind this. All are just speculations. But I honestly thought everything is in proper order with them because they were running a sig campaign here. Oh well, that's life!

[gentlemand]

I believe they know that they will be hot in the eyes of those investigators even before starting their business. We really don't know the real story behind this. All are just speculations. But I honestly thought everything is in proper order with them because they were running a sig campaign here. Oh well, that's life!

If you think sig campaigns are a mark of respectability you're headed for a life of disappointment.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the concept of mixing. People will mix to stop others seeing all of their affairs, do some perfectly legal gambling in their own jurisdiction hidden from some asshole exchange. If I were running one I'd prefer to have nothing to do with theft or hacks. I don't want my efforts benefiting dishonest pricks. Presumably they could intercept and return the most obvious cases. I've never heard of such a thing though.

[figmentofmyass]

There's nothing inherently wrong with the concept of mixing. People will mix to stop others seeing all of their affairs, do some perfectly legal gambling in their own jurisdiction hidden from some asshole exchange. If I were running one I'd prefer to have nothing to do with theft or hacks. I don't want my efforts benefiting dishonest pricks. Presumably they could intercept and return the most obvious cases. I've never heard of such a thing though.

that would definitely come back to bite them. customers would immediately lose trust if a mixer started freezing and stealing "illicit" funds at its discretion.

i am curious what mixers do when they're sent coins from a prominent hack. like the recent binance hack, or the bitfinex hack a few years ago. send them back? steal them? taint their customers' coins with them?

[PrimeNumber7]

i am curious what mixers do when they're sent coins from a prominent hack. like the recent binance hack, or the bitfinex hack a few years ago. send them back? steal them? taint their customers' coins with them?

I don't know what mixers do in these cases. I do know if I mixed my own coins, and got coins that can be traced to a high profile hack such as the binance or bitfinex hack, whose inputs are well known and public, I would be very unhappy. If this happened, and I tried to deposit these coins into an exchange, I don't think I would see this money again. I don't know if these were coins the hacker sent to exchanges, or if some mixers sent these coins to other customers, who sent the coins to exchanges, but 27 BTC was seized from various exchange accounts that can be traced back to the 2016 bitfinex account and this money was returned to bitfinex - https://www.coindesk.com/us-government-returns-bitcoins-retrieved-following-2016-bitfinex-hack

[franckuestein]

FYI, There's an active Bitcointalk trust flag for bestmixer.

Direct link to support it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;flag=29;support

What are trust flags?

[malevolent]

That message left at the bottom of the site (YOU ARE NOT ANONYMOUS) seems almost a sort of threat. They must clearly say what they are going to do with the data or if they intend to prosecute all the users who have used it. Privacy is still a right or am I wrong?

They'll do as they like. They're probably working closely with blockchain analysis companies or using their products, those who can be de-anonymized and found to have participated in illicit activities can expect visits and letters from cops. These days even small-time users in Europe are getting visits from the police if they or the other party to the transaction weren't careful.

P.S. No need to post the same post in three topics.

[LeGaulois]

Since that mixing bitcoins is not yet illegal in any country in the world, I wonder if this is a worrying precedent and what will happen to those who have used this mixer for privacy reasons, to test it or for any other legitimate reason. surely many transactions transited on bestmixer were also legitimate. That message left at the bottom of the site (YOU ARE NOT ANONYMOUS) seems almost a sort of threat. They must clearly say what they are going to do with the data or if they intend to prosecute all the users who have used it. Privacy is still a right or am I wrong?

It would take them too much time for analyzing all TXs and the ROI doesn't worth. What was important to them was to stop a platform with a potential ML activity. Imagine the time to spend to check many things to finally figure out it's a $100 transaction used to pay a whore because he didn't want his wife know it. Perhaps they will filter to find anything above $1 million in value but the rest can be forgotten.

[malevolent]

It would take them too much time for analyzing all TXs and the ROI doesn't worth.

Not necessarily. A lot can be automated, and these days the police in some countries will go even after individual users purchasing, say, small amounts of drugs for private consumption. There were quite a few threads of on this topic on reddit of Germans on dnm subreddits getting visits from the police over small purchases.

[dunfida]

Since that mixing bitcoins is not yet illegal in any country in the world, I wonder if this is a worrying precedent and what will happen to those who have used this mixer for privacy reasons, to test it or for any other legitimate reason. surely many transactions transited on bestmixer were also legitimate. That message left at the bottom of the site (YOU ARE NOT ANONYMOUS) seems almost a sort of threat. They must clearly say what they are going to do with the data or if they intend to prosecute all the users who have used it. Privacy is still a right or am I wrong?

It would take them too much time for analyzing all TXs and the ROI doesn't worth. What was important to them was to stop a platform with a potential ML activity. Imagine the time to spend to check many things to finally figure out it's a $100 transaction used to pay a whore because he didn't want his wife know it. Perhaps they will filter to find anything above $1 million in value but the rest can be forgotten.

https://bitcointalk.
They would really care on big fishes and neglect the smaller ones yet they do know that it is really just a waste of money.
As malevolent said above that anything nowadays can really be automated so there's still chances that anyone can really be traced out
on whose using up the service but the real thing here is that they dont waste up time/funding and effort just to that as a whole.