9 ms·

Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says

93 points by optimalsolver 5y ago

Hydraulix9899 5y ago
There's this misconception that bitcoin is private / "safe" for criminals. In reality, the block chain is public (and all of its transactions inside... that is how distributed ledger consensus is achieved among miners) and the on-ramps and off-ramps between fiat are all logged / tracked, especially Coinbase (since they are taking the "safe route" and playing by all of the rules with governments / regulators). Your last-mile exchange from bitcoin back to USD on Coinbase, for example, is logged and monitored by Coinbase -- furthermore, the bank is incentivized to file Suspicious Activity Reports whenever they see these large wire transfers to the virtual banks used by the exchanges for withdrawing and depositing fiat. So, even privacy coins are tracked in this way (these necessary fiat exchanges). You can basically say the same thing about IRS tracking crypto tax evaders.
- klaudius 5y ago
  Use Monero
  - timbit42 5y ago
    Monero is not completely untraceable either.
    - sedeki 5y ago
      Can you elaborate? I know very little about Monero.
      - LanternLight83 5y ago
        Well, I can't speak for why it might be tracable, but can conversely testify that it has dedicated mechanisms for obfuscating and confusing transaction details such as who sent money, who received it, and how much was transferred- mechanisms which are used by default for every transaction, not just for "private" transactions, creating a cloudy swarm of activity in which you can only really tell that "transactions are happening" without access to (or the intense brute-force effort of obtaining) one of the several private keys involved in any given action. Some ground-laying patents have been filed by CipherTrace, but I think it speaks for itself that the IRS's $625,000.00 bounty on tracing Monero still stands.
    - tmashb 5y ago
      Almost the entire comments mix "crypto" with Bitcoin or "all cryptos are the same" which is factually false. Please explain how different it is in comparison, the thread is flooded with baseless claims. This is analogous to placing your money under the bed vs. in a bank vault, they're both unsafe technically, but the difference is vast.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  But what if he merely sent the Bitcoin from Coinbase to another wallet first - say a brain wallet he knows in his head - and then transfered the Bitcoins to the hitman? Wouldn't that be enough for him to be able to say "no i just bought some weed sorry, jail me for a month. i dont know why that person then went on to try to kill my wife."?
  - me_me_me 5y ago
    Yes you can do it with any money. What's your point?
  - the_local_host 5y ago
    I suspect there are few real-world examples where "you could just say X" actually works... but in this case the story is that a random "weed dealer" killed not a random person, but a specific person known to the "weed purchaser"? Who would believe that story?
    - cwkoss 5y ago
      How does prosecution prove the payment was connected to the hitman and not the weed? Seems like they'd need to seize the hitman's digital communications, at which point the jig is probably already up.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - DennisP 5y ago
        It's "beyond a reasonable doubt," not "beyond all doubt."
      - mywittyname 5y ago
        Evidence. A grand jury must look through the evidence and conclude that there is enough there to possibly result in a conviction.
  - mindslight 5y ago
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Yep. The Bitcoin Blockchain is a permanent historical ledger. As time passes and info about who transacted what becomes public, the cost of identifying a transaction decreases. (Assuming Bitcoin is still around) we should assume that over time, the cost to unmask any given btc txn to asymptotically approach $0. Even if you escape the statute of limitations, there is a good chance your grandchildren will be able to see what you did with Bitcoin by just looking it up on a public website in half a century.
  - Out_of_Characte 5y ago
    >the cost to unmask any given btc txn to asymptotically approach $0. Mind you, there are several ways to obfuscate transactions even in the bitcoin network. and there are also privacy focused blockchains to whitewash money
    - cwkoss 5y ago
      All of the 'trustless' tumbling solutions I've seen tend to leave some evidence on the blockchain, it often only dilutes the certainty that a particular input maps to a particular output. IMO, the only "surefire" way to launder bitcoin is traditional money laundering: send a trusted person dirty bitcoins and they send you back bitcoins from a clean legitimate source. Strong incentive for launderer to take the funds and run, so trust is unstable in this model.
      - warkdarrior 5y ago
        But... trustless! /s
  - f38zf5vdt 5y ago
    > there is a good chance your grandchildren will be able to see what you did with Bitcoin by just looking it up on a public website in half a century. That's all of the internet, forget blockchains.
    - SahAssar 5y ago
- mullingitover 5y ago
  > There's this misconception that bitcoin is private / "safe" for criminals. Is this why we've successfully caught every single ransomware operation transacting in crypto?
  - vkou 5y ago
    To be fair, you have to look at the enormous number of ransomware operators that are conducting their business in fiat... Humm. I suppose that there aren't very many of them. Perhaps cryptocurrencies do make some forms of criminal enterprises much easier to operate. I'm willing to accept that 'Hitman for hire' might not be one of them, though - mostly because you need a local presence, at which point, taking payment in cash has a number of advantages. It would be quite difficult to operate a ransomware operation out of, say, Belarus if you expected your victims to pay by posting you envelopes stuffed with cash.
    - jimmaswell 5y ago
      People make it out like the fiat conversion step is a big gotcha but criminals make fraudulent bank accounts with stolen/synthetic identities all the time.
      - vkou 5y ago
        Then why are ransomware operators getting paid in Bitcoin? It's not impossible to use the regular banking system for crime. But it's a lot harder, and a lot easier to get caught. A cartel in Mexico with an annual income in billions might be able to bribe or threaten the right people, but some techie running a small call center is going to have a harder time.
    - curryst 5y ago
      Cash requires a known location and/or time, and may involve the client seeing your face if face-to-face trades are made. You still need to be local to perform the assassination, but the time and location are still vague. It's basically "somewhere the person will be at some point in the future". Makes it a lot harder to stage a sting because you can't have people set up everywhere that person will be at all times. We're also not terribly far away from remote assassinations being possible. There was an assassination in Iran that allegedly used a computer to control a machine gun to kill someone. Combine that with a self-driving car, or a remotely operated car, and you've got a hitman mobile. Or the cheap and low-tech route, strapping explosives to drones. The cartels have already started using them, so it's not improbable that you could pilot one across the world. Pay the cartel to set up a drone and give you the credentials to control it and you don't even have to leave your home. > It would be quite difficult to operate a ransomware operation out of, say, Belarus if you expected your victims to pay by posting you envelopes stuffed with cash. I don't think that's really true. At the scale of money we're talking about, hiring a courier to handcuff the money to their wrist and fly across the world wouldn't be an excessive cost. The primary downside is the same; there's a known location where the money will be left and picked up.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Sounds like it worked just great for one of the criminals... From TFA "The FBI has not, however, been able to identify the hitman as yet. The reason is almost certainly because the hitman did not use a commercial service like Coinbase, which must comply with know-your-customer laws, for the Bitcoin transactions but instead relied on his own personal wallet—one that did not reveal any information about his identity."
  - gumby 5y ago
    I wonder if the hitman is the one who notified the BBC. Seems like a better way to make some money than actually, you know, doing the job. (not implying that the bbc gave him any money)
    - rOOb85 5y ago
      To me, it sounds like BBC knows more then they let on. Could BBC have been running a undercover investigative story? It just seems too unlikely they could get the hitmans bitcoin address without being somehow involved.
  - m4x 5y ago
    Only because the criminal hasn't yet tried to use that bitcoin to buy something in the real world. If they try to convert to fiat via an exchange, they can be identified the same way the husband was. If they try to buy products directly without using fiat then it is harder for law enforcement to get the records they need, but still quite possible. They will probably be safe if they never touch the bitcoin, but that entirely defeats the purpose of using it
    - divbzero 5y ago
      Bitcoin is more traceable than cash, but surely creative criminals have worked out a way to launder it?
    - jeppesen-io 5y ago
      > Only because the criminal hasn't yet tried to use that bitcoin to buy something in the real world. An asumption you're making and likely untrue. There are many ways to convert to fiat or skip that step and luander through the dark web
- jeppesen-io 5y ago
  > There's this misconception that bitcoin is private / "safe" for criminals It certainly can be safe and pseudo anonymous. Just need to be careful about fiat on/off ramps and maybe use a mixer or two. These things are not hard to do. The person who used Coinbase was either lazy or ignorant
- jb775 5y ago
  I agree, but think there's still ways to remain truly anonymous if you have the technical ability. Why do you think ransomware groups always accept bitcoin?
PeterStuer 5y ago
"Man Used Bank of America to Pay Hitman in USD for Wife's Murder, FBI Says An FBI agent explains how a BoA account led the agency to the suspect."
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pjc50 5y ago
  Few people would be dumb enough to commit crimes with a bank account in their own name. Except this guy: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/547280-gaetz-paid-accused-sex-trafficker-who-later-sent-same-amount-of-cash-to-teen https://thehill.com/homenews/house/547280-gaetz-paid-accused...
  - smnrchrds 5y ago
    And this guy: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/25/us/ohio-candidate-tells-of-paying-for-prostitute.html https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/25/us/ohio-candidate-tells-o...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
underseacables 5y ago
Wait, this actually works?!
- capableweb 5y ago
  Yes, you can pay people and have them murder others. Some do it on a grand scale even (Academi/Blackwater/Xe Services). Same goes for a bunch of other taboo/illegal things, you have the right amount of money, anything is possible.
- taylorfinley 5y ago
  The article says the FBI intervened before the hit was executed. They were apparently tipped off by the BBC. It's far more likely, in my opinion, that a BBC source would disclose his scam taking bitcoins from would-be hirerers of contract killers, than it is that an actual hitman would have bad enough opsec that the BBC would be the ones to discover his clients.
- whymauri 5y ago
  Kinda crazy. Most DarkWeb 'hitman' sites were just FBI honeypots or good samaritans reporting sketchy individuals to the FBI. I doubt this guy found the services through the 'dark web' or even the Internet. Probably met them through personal connections.
chelmzy 5y ago
Should have used Monero.
- donkey-hotei 5y ago
  He should not have hired a hit man to murder his wife also.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Would not have mattered since this guy was stupid enough to use Coinbase in the first place.
- meowster 5y ago
  That's not an appropriate use of "SHUM".
twostorytower 5y ago
Bitcoin is a dream come true for the FBI/CIA. There are companies building sophisticated software to track the routing of shady payments through the blockchain (wouldn't be surprised if Palantir does this). Eventually, crypto finds it way towards a tangible asset that can be tied to somebody and it's just a matter of a paper trail.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  > There are companies building sophisticated software to track the routing of shady payments through the blockchain https://www.chainalysis.com/ https://www.chainalysis.com/ (no affiliation)
- xgulfie 5y ago
  Serious question, I thought BTC's only usefulness came from its usefulness in laundering money. Is this not true?
  - strombofulous 5y ago
    bitcoin works by distributing the entire history of all bitcoin transactions among a distributed pool of nodes. Anyone can look at any transaction at any time with only a small amount of effort. there are services that will "mix" your coins with a bunch of other people's, but you can see all the coins that went into the service and the addresses they were all sent to so it's not foolproof. I've heard that monero is a coin that can be used for laundering, but I've never looked into it so I can't say for sure
  - hackinthebochs 5y ago
    Bitcoin's usefulness comes from being able to transact value without a centralized authority. There are no gatekeepers to determine who can transact with whom, to assign value to a medium, or to take that value away. It is democratization of financial power.
    - xgulfie 5y ago
      I mean pragmatically not abstractly. Bitcoin transaction fees were >$50 recently, so it's useless as a form of payment, and nothing is keeping it from being worthless tomorrow so it's a poor parking spot for money.
rob-olmos 5y ago
What's the CoinBase method for connecting via ACH or is it only wires? Funding via ACH would just be two numbers, at the easiest.
weeweww32 5y ago
Should've used Monero
hhjj 5y ago
So Internet was demonized at first, saying it allowed pedophiles to share child pornography with impunity from their home. Then we learned that internet allowed to catch more pedophiles than ever. Looks like this scheme finally applied to bitcoin. It was very easy to predict though.
theshadowknows 5y ago
I am morbidly curious how much being a hit man pays. I don't want to look it up for fear of finding myself 'on a list' :) but it's such a high risk occupation that one assumes it's pretty profitable. In the US, anyway. This brings me to bitcoin. Would it be smarter as a murderer-for-hire to ask to be paid in a less-expensive (for now) but growing currency such as Etherium or Litecoin? I mean, ask the 'client' for X dollars worth of that coin and then let it appreciate over time. Maybe that's missing the mark. But I sort of feel like you'd be better off going for the long term gains and, potentially at least, being able to cash out earlier?
- capableweb 5y ago
  Seems to go for less than $100K USD, which surprised me (source is Australian though http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/02/05/australia.killings.offbeat.reut/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/02/05/australia.ki...) The Wikipedia page has more info on "contract killing", won't put you on a list to just read that :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_killing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_killing Since this murder-for-hire chose to use a global and transparent ledger that will have that transaction until either the world disappears or the ledger somehow disappears from all nodes, I don't think "smarter" should come anywhere near this. Using blockchains like Bitcoin for crime is far beyond stupid.
  - theshadowknows 5y ago
    That’s a great point. And it brings up a question I’ve never had before :) What would it take for the Bitcoin blockchain to atrophy enough so as to be unusable?
- jstanley 5y ago
  > Would it be smarter as a murderer-for-hire to ask to be paid in a less-expensive (for now) but growing currency such as Etherium or Litecoin? No, because the efficient market hypothesis. If you know that some asset is definitely going to significantly appreciate in value why don't you just buy it and skip out the hitman thing? The answer is that almost noone has any better idea of what the correct price should be than whatever the current price is.
asimjalis 5y ago
How did the BBC know about this plot? This is something that the story does not explain.
yownie 5y ago
Seem's like a pretty obvious use of Parallel constructions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction) going on here for the BBC -> FBI tipoff
doggodaddo78 5y ago
The crypto demonization FUD is always going to be there. "Naughty currencies are bad for you. Trust us, we're the real, old, stodgy currencies who are defending our fiefdoms with mass-media hitpieces."
jl2718 5y ago
Publish the addresses, and criminal use of Bitcoin will end immediately. Offer bitcoin address clemency, and the criminals will be delivered on a silver platter by whomever they cashed out with. Yes; I realize the dystopian possibilities. But if we trust law enforcement, and we believe that the laws are and will always be just, then we should want to help them. Either way, it’s already happening in secret. The question is really whether it should happen in the open.
syspec 5y ago
> Agent Anderson got wind of the scheme, set out in this court filing, from the sheriff in Knoxville, TN, who told him about it after receiving a tip from staff members at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The heck?

93 points by optimalsolver 5y ago

There's this misconception that bitcoin is private / "safe" for criminals. In reality, the block chain is public (and all of its transactions inside... that is how distributed ledger consensus is achieved among miners) and the on-ramps and off-ramps between fiat are all logged / tracked, especially Coinbase (since they are taking the "safe route" and playing by all of the rules with governments / regulators). Your last-mile exchange from bitcoin back to USD on Coinbase, for example, is logged and monitored by Coinbase -- furthermore, the bank is incentivized to file Suspicious Activity Reports whenever they see these large wire transfers to the virtual banks used by the exchanges for withdrawing and depositing fiat. So, even privacy coins are tracked in this way (these necessary fiat exchanges). You can basically say the same thing about IRS tracking crypto tax evaders.

klaudius 5y ago
Use Monero
- timbit42 5y ago
  Monero is not completely untraceable either.
  - sedeki 5y ago
    Can you elaborate? I know very little about Monero.
    - LanternLight83 5y ago
      Well, I can't speak for why it might be tracable, but can conversely testify that it has dedicated mechanisms for obfuscating and confusing transaction details such as who sent money, who received it, and how much was transferred- mechanisms which are used by default for every transaction, not just for "private" transactions, creating a cloudy swarm of activity in which you can only really tell that "transactions are happening" without access to (or the intense brute-force effort of obtaining) one of the several private keys involved in any given action. Some ground-laying patents have been filed by CipherTrace, but I think it speaks for itself that the IRS's $625,000.00 bounty on tracing Monero still stands.
  - tmashb 5y ago
    Almost the entire comments mix "crypto" with Bitcoin or "all cryptos are the same" which is factually false. Please explain how different it is in comparison, the thread is flooded with baseless claims. This is analogous to placing your money under the bed vs. in a bank vault, they're both unsafe technically, but the difference is vast.
axiosgunnar 5y ago
But what if he merely sent the Bitcoin from Coinbase to another wallet first - say a brain wallet he knows in his head - and then transfered the Bitcoins to the hitman? Wouldn't that be enough for him to be able to say "no i just bought some weed sorry, jail me for a month. i dont know why that person then went on to try to kill my wife."?
- me_me_me 5y ago
  Yes you can do it with any money. What's your point?
- the_local_host 5y ago
  I suspect there are few real-world examples where "you could just say X" actually works... but in this case the story is that a random "weed dealer" killed not a random person, but a specific person known to the "weed purchaser"? Who would believe that story?
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    How does prosecution prove the payment was connected to the hitman and not the weed? Seems like they'd need to seize the hitman's digital communications, at which point the jig is probably already up.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - DennisP 5y ago
      It's "beyond a reasonable doubt," not "beyond all doubt."
    - mywittyname 5y ago
      Evidence. A grand jury must look through the evidence and conclude that there is enough there to possibly result in a conviction.
- mindslight 5y ago
cwkoss 5y ago
Yep. The Bitcoin Blockchain is a permanent historical ledger. As time passes and info about who transacted what becomes public, the cost of identifying a transaction decreases. (Assuming Bitcoin is still around) we should assume that over time, the cost to unmask any given btc txn to asymptotically approach $0. Even if you escape the statute of limitations, there is a good chance your grandchildren will be able to see what you did with Bitcoin by just looking it up on a public website in half a century.
- Out_of_Characte 5y ago
  >the cost to unmask any given btc txn to asymptotically approach $0. Mind you, there are several ways to obfuscate transactions even in the bitcoin network. and there are also privacy focused blockchains to whitewash money
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    All of the 'trustless' tumbling solutions I've seen tend to leave some evidence on the blockchain, it often only dilutes the certainty that a particular input maps to a particular output. IMO, the only "surefire" way to launder bitcoin is traditional money laundering: send a trusted person dirty bitcoins and they send you back bitcoins from a clean legitimate source. Strong incentive for launderer to take the funds and run, so trust is unstable in this model.
    - warkdarrior 5y ago
      But... trustless! /s
- f38zf5vdt 5y ago
  > there is a good chance your grandchildren will be able to see what you did with Bitcoin by just looking it up on a public website in half a century. That's all of the internet, forget blockchains.
  - SahAssar 5y ago
mullingitover 5y ago
> There's this misconception that bitcoin is private / "safe" for criminals. Is this why we've successfully caught every single ransomware operation transacting in crypto?
- vkou 5y ago
  To be fair, you have to look at the enormous number of ransomware operators that are conducting their business in fiat... Humm. I suppose that there aren't very many of them. Perhaps cryptocurrencies do make some forms of criminal enterprises much easier to operate. I'm willing to accept that 'Hitman for hire' might not be one of them, though - mostly because you need a local presence, at which point, taking payment in cash has a number of advantages. It would be quite difficult to operate a ransomware operation out of, say, Belarus if you expected your victims to pay by posting you envelopes stuffed with cash.
  - jimmaswell 5y ago
    People make it out like the fiat conversion step is a big gotcha but criminals make fraudulent bank accounts with stolen/synthetic identities all the time.
    - vkou 5y ago
      Then why are ransomware operators getting paid in Bitcoin? It's not impossible to use the regular banking system for crime. But it's a lot harder, and a lot easier to get caught. A cartel in Mexico with an annual income in billions might be able to bribe or threaten the right people, but some techie running a small call center is going to have a harder time.
  - curryst 5y ago
    Cash requires a known location and/or time, and may involve the client seeing your face if face-to-face trades are made. You still need to be local to perform the assassination, but the time and location are still vague. It's basically "somewhere the person will be at some point in the future". Makes it a lot harder to stage a sting because you can't have people set up everywhere that person will be at all times. We're also not terribly far away from remote assassinations being possible. There was an assassination in Iran that allegedly used a computer to control a machine gun to kill someone. Combine that with a self-driving car, or a remotely operated car, and you've got a hitman mobile. Or the cheap and low-tech route, strapping explosives to drones. The cartels have already started using them, so it's not improbable that you could pilot one across the world. Pay the cartel to set up a drone and give you the credentials to control it and you don't even have to leave your home. > It would be quite difficult to operate a ransomware operation out of, say, Belarus if you expected your victims to pay by posting you envelopes stuffed with cash. I don't think that's really true. At the scale of money we're talking about, hiring a courier to handcuff the money to their wrist and fly across the world wouldn't be an excessive cost. The primary downside is the same; there's a known location where the money will be left and picked up.
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
Sounds like it worked just great for one of the criminals... From TFA "The FBI has not, however, been able to identify the hitman as yet. The reason is almost certainly because the hitman did not use a commercial service like Coinbase, which must comply with know-your-customer laws, for the Bitcoin transactions but instead relied on his own personal wallet—one that did not reveal any information about his identity."
- gumby 5y ago
  I wonder if the hitman is the one who notified the BBC. Seems like a better way to make some money than actually, you know, doing the job. (not implying that the bbc gave him any money)
  - rOOb85 5y ago
    To me, it sounds like BBC knows more then they let on. Could BBC have been running a undercover investigative story? It just seems too unlikely they could get the hitmans bitcoin address without being somehow involved.
- m4x 5y ago
  Only because the criminal hasn't yet tried to use that bitcoin to buy something in the real world. If they try to convert to fiat via an exchange, they can be identified the same way the husband was. If they try to buy products directly without using fiat then it is harder for law enforcement to get the records they need, but still quite possible. They will probably be safe if they never touch the bitcoin, but that entirely defeats the purpose of using it
  - divbzero 5y ago
    Bitcoin is more traceable than cash, but surely creative criminals have worked out a way to launder it?
  - jeppesen-io 5y ago
    > Only because the criminal hasn't yet tried to use that bitcoin to buy something in the real world. An asumption you're making and likely untrue. There are many ways to convert to fiat or skip that step and luander through the dark web
jeppesen-io 5y ago
> There's this misconception that bitcoin is private / "safe" for criminals It certainly can be safe and pseudo anonymous. Just need to be careful about fiat on/off ramps and maybe use a mixer or two. These things are not hard to do. The person who used Coinbase was either lazy or ignorant
jb775 5y ago
I agree, but think there's still ways to remain truly anonymous if you have the technical ability. Why do you think ransomware groups always accept bitcoin?

PeterStuer 5y ago

"Man Used Bank of America to Pay Hitman in USD for Wife's Murder, FBI Says An FBI agent explains how a BoA account led the agency to the suspect."

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 5y ago
Few people would be dumb enough to commit crimes with a bank account in their own name. Except this guy: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/547280-gaetz-paid-accused-sex-trafficker-who-later-sent-same-amount-of-cash-to-teen https://thehill.com/homenews/house/547280-gaetz-paid-accused...
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  And this guy: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/25/us/ohio-candidate-tells-of-paying-for-prostitute.html https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/25/us/ohio-candidate-tells-o...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

underseacables 5y ago

Wait, this actually works?!

capableweb 5y ago
Yes, you can pay people and have them murder others. Some do it on a grand scale even (Academi/Blackwater/Xe Services). Same goes for a bunch of other taboo/illegal things, you have the right amount of money, anything is possible.
taylorfinley 5y ago
The article says the FBI intervened before the hit was executed. They were apparently tipped off by the BBC. It's far more likely, in my opinion, that a BBC source would disclose his scam taking bitcoins from would-be hirerers of contract killers, than it is that an actual hitman would have bad enough opsec that the BBC would be the ones to discover his clients.
whymauri 5y ago
Kinda crazy. Most DarkWeb 'hitman' sites were just FBI honeypots or good samaritans reporting sketchy individuals to the FBI. I doubt this guy found the services through the 'dark web' or even the Internet. Probably met them through personal connections.

chelmzy 5y ago

Should have used Monero.

donkey-hotei 5y ago
He should not have hired a hit man to murder his wife also.
capableweb 5y ago
Would not have mattered since this guy was stupid enough to use Coinbase in the first place.
meowster 5y ago
That's not an appropriate use of "SHUM".

twostorytower 5y ago

Bitcoin is a dream come true for the FBI/CIA. There are companies building sophisticated software to track the routing of shady payments through the blockchain (wouldn't be surprised if Palantir does this). Eventually, crypto finds it way towards a tangible asset that can be tied to somebody and it's just a matter of a paper trail.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
> There are companies building sophisticated software to track the routing of shady payments through the blockchain https://www.chainalysis.com/ https://www.chainalysis.com/ (no affiliation)
xgulfie 5y ago
Serious question, I thought BTC's only usefulness came from its usefulness in laundering money. Is this not true?
- strombofulous 5y ago
  bitcoin works by distributing the entire history of all bitcoin transactions among a distributed pool of nodes. Anyone can look at any transaction at any time with only a small amount of effort. there are services that will "mix" your coins with a bunch of other people's, but you can see all the coins that went into the service and the addresses they were all sent to so it's not foolproof. I've heard that monero is a coin that can be used for laundering, but I've never looked into it so I can't say for sure
- hackinthebochs 5y ago
  Bitcoin's usefulness comes from being able to transact value without a centralized authority. There are no gatekeepers to determine who can transact with whom, to assign value to a medium, or to take that value away. It is democratization of financial power.
  - xgulfie 5y ago
    I mean pragmatically not abstractly. Bitcoin transaction fees were >$50 recently, so it's useless as a form of payment, and nothing is keeping it from being worthless tomorrow so it's a poor parking spot for money.

rob-olmos 5y ago

What's the CoinBase method for connecting via ACH or is it only wires? Funding via ACH would just be two numbers, at the easiest.

weeweww32 5y ago

Should've used Monero

hhjj 5y ago

So Internet was demonized at first, saying it allowed pedophiles to share child pornography with impunity from their home. Then we learned that internet allowed to catch more pedophiles than ever. Looks like this scheme finally applied to bitcoin. It was very easy to predict though.

theshadowknows 5y ago

I am morbidly curious how much being a hit man pays. I don't want to look it up for fear of finding myself 'on a list' :) but it's such a high risk occupation that one assumes it's pretty profitable. In the US, anyway. This brings me to bitcoin. Would it be smarter as a murderer-for-hire to ask to be paid in a less-expensive (for now) but growing currency such as Etherium or Litecoin? I mean, ask the 'client' for X dollars worth of that coin and then let it appreciate over time. Maybe that's missing the mark. But I sort of feel like you'd be better off going for the long term gains and, potentially at least, being able to cash out earlier?

capableweb 5y ago
Seems to go for less than $100K USD, which surprised me (source is Australian though http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/02/05/australia.killings.offbeat.reut/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/02/05/australia.ki...) The Wikipedia page has more info on "contract killing", won't put you on a list to just read that :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_killing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_killing Since this murder-for-hire chose to use a global and transparent ledger that will have that transaction until either the world disappears or the ledger somehow disappears from all nodes, I don't think "smarter" should come anywhere near this. Using blockchains like Bitcoin for crime is far beyond stupid.
- theshadowknows 5y ago
  That’s a great point. And it brings up a question I’ve never had before :) What would it take for the Bitcoin blockchain to atrophy enough so as to be unusable?
jstanley 5y ago
> Would it be smarter as a murderer-for-hire to ask to be paid in a less-expensive (for now) but growing currency such as Etherium or Litecoin? No, because the efficient market hypothesis. If you know that some asset is definitely going to significantly appreciate in value why don't you just buy it and skip out the hitman thing? The answer is that almost noone has any better idea of what the correct price should be than whatever the current price is.

asimjalis 5y ago

How did the BBC know about this plot? This is something that the story does not explain.

yownie 5y ago

Seem's like a pretty obvious use of Parallel constructions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction) going on here for the BBC -> FBI tipoff

doggodaddo78 5y ago

The crypto demonization FUD is always going to be there. "Naughty currencies are bad for you. Trust us, we're the real, old, stodgy currencies who are defending our fiefdoms with mass-media hitpieces."

jl2718 5y ago

Publish the addresses, and criminal use of Bitcoin will end immediately. Offer bitcoin address clemency, and the criminals will be delivered on a silver platter by whomever they cashed out with. Yes; I realize the dystopian possibilities. But if we trust law enforcement, and we believe that the laws are and will always be just, then we should want to help them. Either way, it’s already happening in secret. The question is really whether it should happen in the open.

syspec 5y ago

> Agent Anderson got wind of the scheme, set out in this court filing, from the sheriff in Knoxville, TN, who told him about it after receiving a tip from staff members at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The heck?