Tracing down the coins from Co-Insecure hack

[Rotten Egg]

Coinsecure was an Indian exchange developed by Benson Samuel. In April, 2018, they claimed they have lost 438 BTC and was shut down. They claimed that Dr. Amitabh Saxena, an employee of Coinsecure, is responsible for the hack.



In a series of posts, Prayank Gahlot is trying to trace the stolen coins...

1. https://medium.com/@prayankgahlot/co-insecure-part-1-19e8f2b76ea8

2. https://medium.com/@prayankgahlot/co-insecure-part2-f6130de1a4f

3. https://medium.com/@prayankgahlot/co-insecure-part-3-ff96ab4fa7ff

4. https://medium.com/@prayankgahlot/co-insecure-part-4-32c15e4931f2

[Clement Kaliyar]

So what is the situation now, is there any investigation being done, i did not loose any coins because i never used to keep any coins in any exchange but the manner in which they lost the funds and one man holding the private key is dubious and since there is no regulation and the government is not having any clarity on what to do with it, i do not think there will be any investigation on the subject, if not we would have heard something by now as it is more than a year.

[pawanjain]

So what is the situation now, is there any investigation being done, i did not loose any coins because i never used to keep any coins in any exchange but the manner in which they lost the funds and one man holding the private key is dubious and since there is no regulation and the government is not having any clarity on what to do with it, i do not think there will be any investigation on the subject, if not we would have heard something by now as it is more than a year.

But the above letter says that the private keys were being held by Dr. Amitabh as well as Mr. Mohit. So we never know who might be the actual fraudster here.
Besides that, it's too difficult to crack down such frauds and trace the bitcoins especially when the country doesn't have any regulations.
So I guess nothing is gonna happen in this case.

[amishmanish]

A lot of people waiting for this to resolve. Having Benson screwed over like that was terrible for the Indian bitcoin community, Just goes to show that you cannot trust anyone here. That guy Saxena was supposed to be a phD. If a research candidate has such ethics then God help us commoners.
The painful transaction trail doesn't seem to be leading anywhere though except that the stolen funds have been moved through mixers and exchanges like they normally do in these cases. Also, I don't know if you've taken his permission for this but you should avoid being the person who links someone's name to their forum identity.
Its better if you edit it.

[Clement Kaliyar]

But the above letter says that the private keys were being held by Dr. Amitabh as well as Mr. Mohit. So we never know who might be the actual fraudster here.

From what i understand Amitabh and Mohit were holding two separate private keys or both having the same private keys and they have doubt on Amitabh Saxena and he might be behind the entire drama and it is a combined failure of the entire team.

Besides that, it's too difficult to crack down such frauds and trace the bitcoins especially when the country doesn't have any regulations.
So I guess nothing is gonna happen in this case.

You really do not need regulations to monitor fraudulent activities and even if the there are regulations i doubt the police will be able to find anything, you need a specialist to monitor all the movement of the coin and if the person behind it makes a mistake then it can be traced.

[RapTarX]

The investigation from Prayank Gahlot is somewhat a speculation I guess. I have read one of the 4 links shared above. Hacker is using Bitcoin Fog for mixing the hacked BTC, FYI, Bitcoin Fog has been marked as scam site as per bitcointalk. I guess this will almost be impossible to trace if hacker use some popular mixing method like Coinjoin feature & Chipmixer.
I don't get why a hacker would use a mixing site which is marked as scam, as well as which privacy can be broken down. I guess something else is there. They might be somehow connected to Bitcoin Fog. Otherwise, this makes zero sense using BF while better options are there for the hackers.