“That was the one path via this darkness,” says U.S. prosecutor Zia Faruqui. “The darker the darknet will get, the way in which that you just shine the sunshine is following the cash.”
In “Tracers in the Dark,” Andy Greenberg, a senior author at Wired, takes a historic take a look at what he calls Bitcoin’s “siren tune: the promise of untraceable cash.” He begins by rigorously tracing again via the historical past of regulation enforcement’s crypto investigations, and finds their very first success. It was 2014, and IRS particular agent Tigran Gambaryan was investigating a DEA agent suspected of getting stolen bitcoin from Dread Pirate Roberts, the pseudonymous founder and administrator of Silk Street, the world’s first darknet marketplace, an internet site the place customers may promote and buy bitcoin and medicines, defending their identities with an encryption know-how referred to as Tor.
On the time, most individuals who used bitcoin believed it to be nameless, an untraceable cost methodology, akin to utilizing unmarked money payments.
“Oh, shit,” Gambaryan remembers saying when he discovered the proof that confirmed the corrupt DEA agent did certainly steal hundreds of thousands in bitcoins from the notorious creator of the darkish internet bazaar. “We broke Bitcoin.”
That is the e-book’s first wow second, and it comes on the finish of Half 1, which is generally spent setting the stage and explaining the know-how behind Bitcoin and the way it was used to facilitate on-line drug trafficking. The e-book really takes off in Half 2 with a collection of tales that includes regulation enforcement brokers from California to Bangkok chasing darkish internet drug kingpins on the internet, on the blockchain and in actual life.
The beat-by-beat story of the takedown of AlphaBay, then the most important darkish internet market in historical past, is maybe the e-book’s most memorable story. It’s informed from the start, when an nameless individual reached out to a DEA agent in Fresno, California with a tip concerning the identification of the AlphaBay administrator, to the tip, when Thai and American brokers lure Alexandre Cazes out of his house and arrest him whereas additionally with the ability to seize his pc open and unlocked. This was key as a result of the brokers had been nervous they wouldn’t be capable of get proof from it if it was shut down and encrypted.
Very like Silk Street, AlphaBay was hosted on the darkish internet, and facilitated the sale and buy of unlawful items, principally medicine and hacking instruments. The investigation into AlphaBay culminates when round 20 brokers from the DEA, FBI, DOJ, IRS and DHS journey to Bangkok to arrest Cazes, who was the founder and administrator of the location. In a scene that might in any other case be onerous to imagine, among the brokers had been hanging out within the lounge of a luxurious five-star lodge, when Cazes himself parks his Porsche on the entrance and strolls proper previous them.
“It was like seeing a ghost,” one of many brokers remembers pondering, as a few of his colleagues panicked. Ultimately, it was all a coincidence, Cazes walked previous, and there was no confrontation. The Thai police, below the supervision of the feds, finally arrested him a couple of days later in a well-choreographed operation. Per week later, Cazes then died by apparent suicide in a Bangkok jail.
Greenberg managed to interview a powerful variety of regulation enforcement brokers, who helped him inform the story of those high-profile investigations from the within. It’s a real detailed behind-the-scenes take a look at high-stakes police operations, such because the AlphaBay takedown, the investigation into the “world’s largest” child sexual abuse website referred to as “Welcome to Video,” in addition to the takedown of Hansa, one other darkish internet market that was briefly run by the Dutch police in an unprecedented sting operation.
The Hansa takeover-takedown combo resulted in a number of arrests all around the world, and — extra importantly — spooked the entire darkish internet unlawful markets ecosystem, exhibiting that even the largest markets might be a sting operation run by the cops.
One of many massive concepts that “Tracers within the Darkish” actually drills into the reader is that it’s not simply that Bitcoin truly isn’t nameless. Nevertheless it’s additionally necessary to do not forget that regulation enforcement investigations take time. Because it turned out, that nameless tipster who cold-emailed a DEA agent in Fresno concerning the identification of AlphaBay’s founder had the suitable man. However the investigators nonetheless needed to pull all of the threads and fingerprints left on the blockchain and the web earlier than going after Cazes.
“Tracers within the Darkish” reveals that there’s hope in stopping drug sellers, darkish internet market kingpins and baby abusers given the sheer variety of profitable busts, takedowns and arrests, from Silk Street to AlphaBay. And it’s all because of the immutable, persistent nature of the Bitcoin blockchain, the proper place to observe the cash.
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