Two guys are chasing a Bitcoin thief

[Its About Sharing]

All he has to do is send the coins to localbitcoins, sell them there, for cash, and he is golden.  Not rocket science.

You don't understand forensic computer science very well and so far the thief doesn't appear to either. This thief is moving a HUGE amount of mostly very traceable money.
One little slip up with ALL that money, just one, and/or one little assist from those with a "grasp" on TOR and what not  , and he is caught. It may happen now, in a few months, or even years.
But, I'd say he is as good as caught.

Its About Sharing

I understand completely actually.

He sends the btc to a localbtc address.  There is no way that you know that the address he sends to is a localbtc address.  All you know is that he sent the coins to another wallet.  He sells for cash.  Localbtc transfers coins to buyer. 

How are you going to trace him?  You can keep following the coins, but you will be chasing the wrong person.

First, there is a world of improvement needed for coin washing for starters. It is not quite there yet and when you are going to wash that many coins, which this guys hasn't done much of, you will still be able to follow them, just due to the amount.

bryant.coleman mentioned one possibility and if you think it ends there, there are for sure more. I can think of a few ways but will not post them here. No sense in helping the thief. 

We are in the very early days and this guy has already left enough fingerprints imo that intelligence agencies (e.g. NSA) if they get involved, could probably already point him out. In a way, it is nice they didn't nab him as it give hope to other thieves.

I just don't think this one or few guys are as smart as the mass of computer experts following him around. He is going to make a mistake and get nabbed is my educated guess.

IAS

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[SnakePlisken]

It would be great if somehow they managed to catch this guy but I just don't see it happening. There are too many anonymous exchanges out there where he could easily convert some BTC to an altcoin, move it around a bit and then later convert back to BTC if he wants. Sure, they can watch the blockchain but what happens after he sends some to BTER or BTC-e, converts to an altcoin and then moves the altcoins out?

[apsvinet]

He sends the btc to a localbtc address.  There is no way that you know that the address he sends to is a localbtc address. 

There are ways to find it out. Most of the localbitcoins wallets are tagged. Even if they are not, we can send alerts to the localbitcoins admins.

If I had some btc laying around, I would prove to you that you cannot trace coins for longer than 24 hours, if someone does not want you to.  This guy is just a moron.

Care to place a bet?  Have someone send me .01 btc, and then tag it however you want.  I bet you wont be able to trace it, and I will return it totally clean, no tumbler service needed.

I agree, they don't have a chance to track it down tbh.

[LiteCoinGuy]

search for him:

[WetSeals]

Cleaning this would be easy if the thief knew what he was doing.

Break the sum into several thousand random size wallets and simaltaneously start a massive hoping trail across various alts and exchanges via a few herds. I would love to see these "heroes"  track tens of thousands of smaller wallets converted between dozens of alts, re assembled and mixed again. Estimated loss is 20% of the haul but $180 Million cleaned still isn't too bad.


~BCX~

Wouldnt even take that much or than many wallets.  Loss of ~1%, and 24 hours.  Simple.

[apsvinet]

search for him:

Hm, that finger looks quite suspicious. I'm just kidding. I know it's photoshopped, and really bad at that.

[herebittybittybitty]

I have mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, I don't like thieves and hope they get caught (I lost a significant amount on MtGox and would love to see some bastards in jail). On the other hand, I want bitcoin to be as anonymous as possible.

[appl]

interesting article

[Its About Sharing]

Cleaning this would be easy if the thief knew what he was doing.

Break the sum into several thousand random size wallets and simaltaneously start a massive hoping trail across various alts and exchanges via a few herds. I would love to see these "heroes"  track tens of thousands of smaller wallets converted between dozens of alts, re assembled and mixed again. Estimated loss is 20% of the haul but $180 Million cleaned still isn't too bad.


~BCX~

The problem with cleaning so much money is that it just takes 1 Satoshi to bring things back to him, just 1.
And something further to consider is the laundering itself is going to leave a huge fingerprint moving so much around.
Perhaps a fair analogy is how the NSA can still track people who are using TOR because, in part, of TOR's latency. There is a similar, but much clearer fingerprint the thief is leaving as he moves coins around, cleaning or not. The depths at which Computer Forensics is capable of is mind blowing and then throw some big computers into the equation.

A bigger fear is that these intelligence agencies get their hands on the coins and don't tell us...

[WetSeals]

Cleaning this would be easy if the thief knew what he was doing.

Break the sum into several thousand random size wallets and simaltaneously start a massive hoping trail across various alts and exchanges via a few herds. I would love to see these "heroes"  track tens of thousands of smaller wallets converted between dozens of alts, re assembled and mixed again. Estimated loss is 20% of the haul but $180 Million cleaned still isn't too bad.


~BCX~

The problem with cleaning so much money is that it just takes 1 Satoshi to bring things back to him, just 1.
And something further to consider is the laundering itself is going to leave a huge fingerprint moving so much around.
Perhaps a fair analogy is how the NSA can still track people who are using TOR because, in part, of TOR's latency. There is a similar, but much clearer fingerprint the thief is leaving as he moves coins around, cleaning or not. The depths at which Computer Forensics is capable of is mind blowing and then throw some big computers into the equation.

A bigger fear is that these intelligence agencies get their hands on the coins and don't tell us...

You honestly believe he can't swap out every satoshi out?  He doesn't have to.

You will never know of you have the right person, ever. You will end up tracking thousands of people, since they all will have some part of that little tag.  You can trick yourself into thinking you can find him....you won't.

[Its About Sharing]

Cleaning this would be easy if the thief knew what he was doing.

Break the sum into several thousand random size wallets and simaltaneously start a massive hoping trail across various alts and exchanges via a few herds. I would love to see these "heroes"  track tens of thousands of smaller wallets converted between dozens of alts, re assembled and mixed again. Estimated loss is 20% of the haul but $180 Million cleaned still isn't too bad.


~BCX~

The problem with cleaning so much money is that it just takes 1 Satoshi to bring things back to him, just 1.
And something further to consider is the laundering itself is going to leave a huge fingerprint moving so much around.
Perhaps a fair analogy is how the NSA can still track people who are using TOR because, in part, of TOR's latency. There is a similar, but much clearer fingerprint the thief is leaving as he moves coins around, cleaning or not. The depths at which Computer Forensics is capable of is mind blowing and then throw some big computers into the equation.

A bigger fear is that these intelligence agencies get their hands on the coins and don't tell us...

You honestly believe he can't swap out every satoshi out?  He doesn't have to.

You will never know of you have the right person, ever. You will end up tracking thousands of people, since they all will have some part of that little tag.  You can trick yourself into thinking you can find him....you won't.

Regarding washing, what I was saying is that nothing exists right now to wash so many coins thoroughly enough. But even beyond that...

Basically, what I'm saying is, there are so many variables involved (e.g. washing, TOR, VPN, etc.) that he/technology will either slip up somewhere or technology/people will intervene somehow. Might even be a close "friend", lots of money and the police asking questions does that...

Analogously, you hear this talk of side chains with bitcoins, perhaps replacing most alt coins. When the debate on this was going on a year or so ago, I tried to communicate that there would be some type of organic movement that would happen, but it was a bit beyond my event horizon, word wise. I didn't have the words or the direct vision for it. I see the same thing happening with this particular area, this theft, because of the amount involved.

[herebittybittybitty]

Couldn't he just start a site and sell/auction off his tainted coin at a discount? It would cost a fair amount, but with enough turnover he could "tumble" a massive amount and start converting to fiat from a random wallet while pretending to be just another tumbler customer.

[MysteryMiner]

It is more like "Two guys chasing dragon" or "Two guys visiting broke-back mountain". If done properly then coins are untraceable. The key work is Properly. It requires deep technological knowledge in bitcoin and anonymity technology as well as understanding how investigation and spy tradecraft works.

[WetSeals]

You don't gotta wash them at all. Swap them. Its so easy to do.

You guys are fooling yourselves.

[Wheelie]

Its going to be hard at this moment to clean so many coins, but then again why hurry if you have so many and have time.

[jc01480]

I think he should donate them to here:

1KiuKpHcsM7gyW6rDKxBgEJui4Y68J82rX

 

[apsvinet]

I think he should donate them to here:

1KiuKpHcsM7gyW6rDKxBgEJui4Y68J82rX

 

Ugh, don't do that man. You'll regret these posts if you're gonna be here for a longer period of time and wanna establish a good reputation in the community.

[bitminerinthecloud]

He could start a small exchange, grow it, sell some chunks of the money little at a time to buyers. Only the exchange owner knows who is the counter-part of the sale.

He could make them lose track of him as way earn more money. And if he thinks he got enough, he sells the exchange and go live.

[bryant.coleman]

If I had some btc laying around, I would prove to you that you cannot trace coins for longer than 24 hours, if someone does not want you to.  This guy is just a moron.

I don't have the resources to conduct an extended chase and have no interest in doing so. But if you really want to trace them, then there are several ways to do so. As a first step, you can post the transaction IDs here in Bitcointalk, for everyone to see. You can alert all the major exchanges (including localbitcoins). That will make sure that the thief is unable to exchange the coins for cash, at normal rates.

[Soros Shorts]

The thieves should just buy a lot of mining power with legit money - say 10% of the hash rate in some DC in the Arctic Circle. Then make 1 Satoshi donations to random addresses on this forum with 1000 BTC transaction fees. Statistically they would get 10% percent of the dirty money back as pristine minted coins. On top of that they will still get the 25 BTC block rewards.