zlacker

>>mikeyo+(OP)
> charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to defraud the United States

Do you think there are more charges to come?

If they think they actually laundered money through businesses, why didn't they charge them with multiple counts of money laundering and multiple counts of wire fraud and a violation of the CFAA?

>>vmcept+zl
I’m actually wondering if there are serious doubts here. Especially due to the weaker charges levied, and watching the cringy @realrazzlekhan tiktok page where everyone also has their doubts about these people’s competence.

Darknet markets sell IDs, the DOJ also says the hackers used fake IDs to reintegrate the money. This fairly welloff couple (lives in Manhattan condo, owns bengal cat and jewelry) could easily just be one of the IDs. Both the husband and wife are early crypto proponents but that might just be circumstantial to both the DOJ and the hacker who got their IDs.

Watching this one. Its like they got just enough of data for a charge to get the subpoenas and warrants, but not enough to go for the bigger more damning charges.

>>vmcept+1H
If you read the complaint it is pretty clear they were at least heavily involved. Their personal accounts and businesses were tied up into it.

>>seibel+5N1
I’m still reading it

They definitely had custody of the funds and felt obligated to try and launder it

It seems like the government needs to figure out if they were the only ones with custody, which is proving a negative with private keys, but the government seems to feel like it’s needs a greater proof of the actual heist of bitfinex so they can pin the rest on this couple.

Still reading though, this is just what I’ve parsed so far.

The IRS-CI agent had requested CFAA and Wire Fraud charges.

>>vmcept+sU1
I think pretty damning are accounts tied to their personal identities and emails to exchanges where they lied about the source of funds. How can they explain that away? Their email addresses were hacked? Funds moved to their personal bank accounts and used for expenses was unintentional? It seems like a big stretch.

>>seibel+pb2
okay I finished reading it, it is pretty damning and the report does say that it is just one agent investigating certain specific criminal charges that "doesn't reflect all of the investigations of the government"

Ilya had trouble figuring out how to launder it

Still the outstanding question is whether he is the only one with the encrypted files, or if he was a service provider. not that its a real question to me, its something the government has to prove for stronger charges like the CFAA to be levied and stick.

>>vmcept+7N2
There is certainly the potential for an argument that they didn't do the hack, that someone else was more involved, that they were small players in this, etc. but it's highly likely they were involved in some way.

>>seibel+4e3
there is speculation spreading that they bought the bitcoin at a discount at the time, circumventing the trustlessness by taking the private keys (and hoping the seller doesn't use another copy to move the funds later). this would have been just a few million dollars in 2016.

inspirational in the direction of ideas on this case, and I know people that would trade a private key directly.

would help explain the amateurish laundering.

could be an interesting defense. could explain why they didn't run or do anything when their ISP notified them of the US government snooping back in November.