Vastaamo hacker traced via ‘untraceable’ Monero transactions, police says
Vastaamo hacker traced via ‘untraceable’ Monero transactions, police says
Julius Aleksanteri Kivimäki, the suspect believed to be behind an attack against one of Finland's largest psychotherapy clinics, Vastaamo, was allegedly identified by tracing what has been believed to be untraceable Monero transactions.
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Could someone explain to me how he got caught?
Apparently, by being stupid. See https://lemmy.zip/comment/6851063
In essence, he got caught because he traded a certain amount of bitcoin for Monero and then traded a similar amount back? Wouldn't converting to Monero stop the trail right there? Would converting from Monero to Bitcoin in smaller quantities have helped him evade the authorities? How did using bitcoin let them track him?
What would people do if they want to pay in crypto but the service only accepts bitcoin?
Finnish investigators from the National Bureau of Investigation (KRP), with the help of Binance, followed the trail of payments to Kivimäki, who exchanged the funds for Monero and then exchanged them back to Bitcoin.
What probably happened is that he extorted Bitcoin from a known entity, then he went to Binance and traded that Bitcoin for Monero, then sent a similar amount of XMR to Binance to exchange again for BTC thinking he was covering his tracks.
Essentially what I said. If one were to exchange a similar amount amongst cryptocurrenies from brokers like Binance (who definitely run analytics on transactions), even XMR won't be able to save them. With that said, I'd like a more comprehensive explanation, however my posts regarding such experiments have largely been ignored on the Monero forum on Lemmy. Would you know whom I could approach?
@Hestia @MigratingtoLemmy No crypto is a good tool for the problems involved in money laundering.
Once you connect back to the public system of commercial payments, you have to explain where the funds came from. And nobody’s dumb enough to buy NFTs anymore.