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> identified using a picture of their fingerprints It's not clear to me that they identified him that way. It might be that they arrested him due to other evid
by microtherion 6y ago
> identified using a picture of their fingerprints
It's not clear to me that they identified him that way. It might be that they arrested him due to other evidence, compared the fingerprints afterward, and told him that they could prove the fingerprints matched, whereupon he pled guilty.
It's no unheard of to elicit guilty pleas using less than scientifically robust forensic methods.
- refurb 6y agoIndeed. I got the impression this was one of many pieces of evidence used to put the case together. The biggest one was the money laundering. Porras had used a money laundering service controlled by Homeland Security Investigations. Vendors sent the money launderer a certain amount of Bitcoin and the money launderer mailed cash back to the vendor. At some point in the money launderer’s career, federal agents quietly took control of the money laundering operation and used the position to identify dozens of darkweb vendors.
- jcrawfordor 6y agoWhen I wrote my thesis on Bitcoin money laundering I could not locate any hard evidence that law enforcement had operated a honeypot laundering service, other than it being an extremely obvious thing to do. That was a bit ago, but I wonder whether or not this is the first instance of an agency disclosing they had done so.