3 ms·

Crypto aside, quite surprising to see home invasions, kidnapping, and torture in middle class american neighborhoods. What I'd like to know, which wasn't in the

by j-bos 2y ago

Crypto aside, quite surprising to see home invasions, kidnapping, and torture in middle class american neighborhoods. What I'd like to know, which wasn't in the release is how did the criminals identify or decide to target these specific victims.

xrd 2y ago
Yes, none of the victims, at least from the sentencing report, sound like they were vocal crypto bros. They sounded more like regular families. If they weren't public figures, I also would really like to know why they were targeted. That's scary.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- macNchz 2y ago
  From the “Dirty Comms” episode of Darknet Diaries, a SIM swapper being interviewed describes how attackers will use breach information from other crypto-related sites to credential-stuff Coinbase. That doesn’t necessarily get you very far because of MFA, but there was seemingly a brief window when Coinbase had a vulnerability for checking account balances without triggering MFA, so attackers were able to identify tons of email addresses associated with large crypto holdings. I imagine this information is available if one were to seek it out. > DREW: I don’t even know if you’re gonna believe me whenever I tell you this, but there was an exploit in Coinbase for about one month where you could check the balance of any valid password and username. You could – no matter what. You didn’t need to have any sort of access except username and password. So, you didn’t need to SIM them to see their balance. So, people just ran millions upon millions of combos, combo list through Coinbase, and just found the millionaires of Coinbase. There’s obviously millions of those. https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/112/ https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/112/
  - 65j65j56j 2y ago
    If those transactions associated with the account leaks, the funds can be followed. This will often means transactions flowing to off-chain wallets of KYC'd owners.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>how did the criminals identify or decide to target these specific victims. They used SIM swapping, which is done by fooling customer service agents using stolen, partial personal information. The victims were also cryptobros, so I am guessing the answer is actually as mundane as it gets: Victims put up their names and addresses on social media and bragged/discussed about their cryptowealth.
- xrd 2y ago
  From my reading I couldn't tell they were crypto bros. That was obvious to you from reading it, or did you know about them prior?
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    I have no reason to presume someone holding crypto isn't a cryptobro. Either way it's irrelevant, the criminals got a hold of their personal information somehow and the most likely cause in this day and age is the victims divulging it themselves.
bnralt 2y ago
One of the reasons why this happens is because repeat violent offenders get away with a surprising amount. For instance, the lead criminal in this case had been charged with attempted murder in a separate case just a couple years before starting the crypto thefts, but the charges were eventually dropped. The crypto thefts seem extremely violent as well[2]: > An elderly North Carolina couple was held hostage in their home by armed men who threatened to "cut off (the) husband’s toes and genitalia, to shoot him, and to rape his wife," before they were robbed of more than $156,000 in cryptocurrency, federal prosecutors said. [1] https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/crime/2018/08/22/update-state-drops-attempted-murder/7796115007/ https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/crime/2018/08/22/up... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/elderly-nc-couple-was-held-hostage-home-robbed-156000-cryptocurrency-rcna97056 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/elderly-nc-couple-...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- devilbunny 2y ago
  Violent crime seems to get far too much of a pass. Not every shoplifter needs to be punished to the ground, but violent crime should be punished harshly.
dmoy 2y ago
Home invasion isn't exactly surprising, it's about 1 million home invasions per year in the US. And violent assault of some sort during home invasion isn't super surprising, that's like O(250k) per year. But the kidnapping and torture, yea that's pretty rare as far as I know.
- WillPostForFood 2y ago
  That data seems wrong, though I have seen it reported on blogs and such. FBI data on total burglaries is under 1,000,000 since 2019 (857k in 2022, the last reported year) Home invasion should be a somewhat smaller subset of that. https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/property-crime https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...
  - secabeen 2y ago
    > In 2022, there were 150,107 robbery incidents ... reported ... by 13,621 law enforcement agencies ... cover(ing) 76% of the total population https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim... That includes all robberies, and home invasion would similarly be a subset of that, so the OP is off at least of by a factor of 10.
    - dmoy 2y ago
      So a few things I'm using Bureau of Justice Statistics data, not FBI. E.g. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/victimization-during-household-burglary https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/victimization-durin... FBI / UCR covers only reported crimes at police agencies that forward data, and is a subset. BJS tend to be better at getting realistic numbers. (E.g. a majority of burglaries aren't reported to the police, and thus don't show up in UCR*) Also robbery is not a superset of home invasion, due to the difference in definition from burglary. Burglary isn't actually about stealing stuff, it's just breaking in with the intent to commit some crime (which is often theft, but not always). Robbery implies theft, but doesn't require it to be in someone's abode. So there's some overlap, but there's robberies that aren't burglaries (because no breaking in is involved), and there's burglaries (even some of the <10% subset of burglaries that are violent) that aren't robberies, because a theft isn't occurring. * For things like homicide, UCR tends to be a lot better, because the reporting rate is quite high.
sfmz 2y ago
Somewhat reminicient of Indian-Americans being targeted due to cultural emphasis on possessing gold https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/us/bay-area-thieves-seeking-gold-target-indian-americans.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/us/bay-area-thieves-seeki...

by j-bos 2y ago

xrd 2y ago

Yes, none of the victims, at least from the sentencing report, sound like they were vocal crypto bros. They sounded more like regular families. If they weren't public figures, I also would really like to know why they were targeted. That's scary.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
macNchz 2y ago
From the “Dirty Comms” episode of Darknet Diaries, a SIM swapper being interviewed describes how attackers will use breach information from other crypto-related sites to credential-stuff Coinbase. That doesn’t necessarily get you very far because of MFA, but there was seemingly a brief window when Coinbase had a vulnerability for checking account balances without triggering MFA, so attackers were able to identify tons of email addresses associated with large crypto holdings. I imagine this information is available if one were to seek it out. > DREW: I don’t even know if you’re gonna believe me whenever I tell you this, but there was an exploit in Coinbase for about one month where you could check the balance of any valid password and username. You could – no matter what. You didn’t need to have any sort of access except username and password. So, you didn’t need to SIM them to see their balance. So, people just ran millions upon millions of combos, combo list through Coinbase, and just found the millionaires of Coinbase. There’s obviously millions of those. https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/112/ https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/112/
- 65j65j56j 2y ago
  If those transactions associated with the account leaks, the funds can be followed. This will often means transactions flowing to off-chain wallets of KYC'd owners.

Dalewyn 2y ago

>how did the criminals identify or decide to target these specific victims. They used SIM swapping, which is done by fooling customer service agents using stolen, partial personal information. The victims were also cryptobros, so I am guessing the answer is actually as mundane as it gets: Victims put up their names and addresses on social media and bragged/discussed about their cryptowealth.

xrd 2y ago
From my reading I couldn't tell they were crypto bros. That was obvious to you from reading it, or did you know about them prior?
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  I have no reason to presume someone holding crypto isn't a cryptobro. Either way it's irrelevant, the criminals got a hold of their personal information somehow and the most likely cause in this day and age is the victims divulging it themselves.

bnralt 2y ago

One of the reasons why this happens is because repeat violent offenders get away with a surprising amount. For instance, the lead criminal in this case had been charged with attempted murder in a separate case just a couple years before starting the crypto thefts, but the charges were eventually dropped. The crypto thefts seem extremely violent as well[2]: > An elderly North Carolina couple was held hostage in their home by armed men who threatened to "cut off (the) husband’s toes and genitalia, to shoot him, and to rape his wife," before they were robbed of more than $156,000 in cryptocurrency, federal prosecutors said. [1] https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/crime/2018/08/22/update-state-drops-attempted-murder/7796115007/ https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/crime/2018/08/22/up... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/elderly-nc-couple-was-held-hostage-home-robbed-156000-cryptocurrency-rcna97056 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/elderly-nc-couple-...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
devilbunny 2y ago
Violent crime seems to get far too much of a pass. Not every shoplifter needs to be punished to the ground, but violent crime should be punished harshly.

dmoy 2y ago

Home invasion isn't exactly surprising, it's about 1 million home invasions per year in the US. And violent assault of some sort during home invasion isn't super surprising, that's like O(250k) per year. But the kidnapping and torture, yea that's pretty rare as far as I know.

WillPostForFood 2y ago
That data seems wrong, though I have seen it reported on blogs and such. FBI data on total burglaries is under 1,000,000 since 2019 (857k in 2022, the last reported year) Home invasion should be a somewhat smaller subset of that. https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/property-crime https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...
- secabeen 2y ago
  > In 2022, there were 150,107 robbery incidents ... reported ... by 13,621 law enforcement agencies ... cover(ing) 76% of the total population https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim... That includes all robberies, and home invasion would similarly be a subset of that, so the OP is off at least of by a factor of 10.
  - dmoy 2y ago
    So a few things I'm using Bureau of Justice Statistics data, not FBI. E.g. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/victimization-during-household-burglary https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/victimization-durin... FBI / UCR covers only reported crimes at police agencies that forward data, and is a subset. BJS tend to be better at getting realistic numbers. (E.g. a majority of burglaries aren't reported to the police, and thus don't show up in UCR*) Also robbery is not a superset of home invasion, due to the difference in definition from burglary. Burglary isn't actually about stealing stuff, it's just breaking in with the intent to commit some crime (which is often theft, but not always). Robbery implies theft, but doesn't require it to be in someone's abode. So there's some overlap, but there's robberies that aren't burglaries (because no breaking in is involved), and there's burglaries (even some of the <10% subset of burglaries that are violent) that aren't robberies, because a theft isn't occurring. * For things like homicide, UCR tends to be a lot better, because the reporting rate is quite high.

sfmz 2y ago

Somewhat reminicient of Indian-Americans being targeted due to cultural emphasis on possessing gold https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/us/bay-area-thieves-seeking-gold-target-indian-americans.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/us/bay-area-thieves-seeki...