Topic: Bitcoin stolen - what next? (Read 248 times)

Whereever you have the information that your coins ended up in some wallet of HitBTC, you might try to have the receiving account frozen, it it's not already too late.

You've filed a police case, so a compliant exchange should respond to freeze requests by legal entities (or so). Though, as I've never cared much about HitBTC, I don't know how and if they comply to such inquieries. I've fuzzy memories that HitBTC could be one of those less compliant exchanges, but my vage memory could be totally wrong here.

User accounts on exchanges usually have a receive address to send funds to your account. These are addresses of the exchange's hot wallet. Once funds have been received and confirmed, the exchange usually uses some internal database for bookkeeping.

Excessive funds on hot wallet are transfered to exchange's cold wallets for security reasons. In your example those three 20BTC chunks could've been UTXOs of the cold wallet. User's balances of funds in the exchange's internal database don't show up on the blockchain in a transparent way or at all. You only see in- and out-flow from the exchange on the blockchain at least.

Curiosity: Ordinals try to achieve this, telling which output came from were. This is who they determine if you have rare sats or not. You can see if you have sats from the 10k bitcoin pizza, mtgox, etc etc...

They even created a documentation explaining how to do that
https://docs.ordinals.com/overview.html

This is just a curiosity. They created a BIP, but it was not merged into bitcoin.

That makes it look like the thief already "mixed" it with his other funds, which makes me think they're also stolen.

Once multiple Bitcoin inputs are coin joined in one transaction, there's no telling which output came from which input. It's all the same at that point.

Some resources listed in this article may help you track the movement of your stolen crypto

https://medium.com/coinmonks/tools-for-tracking-stolen-crypto-b4e1edd50855

Just to make it clear: i never had 61 BTC

In this 61 BTC were my pro rata BTC. By comparison just a very small amount, but big enough for me.

The way was:

1. My Exodus --> 2. BTC wallet1 --> 3. BTC wallet2 ---> 4.HitBTC

On that HitBTC were 61BTC (not all mine )
In a next step, this 61BTC were divided: 20/20/20/1
20 BTC each were send to Union Chain
1 BTC was send back to HitBTC.

The big question is: where is my pro rata BTC.

Does anybody know, whether it is theoretically technical possible to find this out? Is there any reputable (purchasable) software?

I know, tts getting strange more and more. But i seriously want to gain as much as possible information...

I know you asked not to be lectured, but DAMN! 61 Bitcoin in a hot wallet with an online backup.... Could it have been a targeted attack? Is it possible someone knew you owned Bitcoin? If that's the case, you may find a lead there.

I've never used HitBTC, because I don't trust them. I have no idea if they ask for KYC.

Please note my edit at 11:55:29 AM Posted by: zkpzkp

I have changed everything at my current accounts and monitore them in regular intervals.

If you go via the legal route, the casino BC.game might able to do some tracing about the person involved here. Subpoena on the casino and they will give information in case the scammer left any trails. However I am not sure about how this actually works.

I dont recommend stopping at this point, a little digging might help or at least provide you some sort of closure. Legal fees are indeed an issue.

I hope you have already taken measures to secure your current accounts.

It's a bit ironic coming from me but yes, BC.game is a casino. However, pretty much all crypto casinos prohibit the usage of their service as a "mixer" in their Terms of Service. Basically you cannot just deposit and withdraw coins at a casino, you have to wager most of it first before you can withdraw.

So you need to report this incident to them - they can't get your BTC back but they can freeze the accounts involved as a ToS violation.

I did a little research meanwhile and found a path of my coins:

First from my Exodus to another wallet, then to the next wallet and finally here:

bc1qdfl3dfnwwvlqa5jpckh0ccwpjczh5y566c4g76

Transaction-ID: 6f8d2a70ab5e345f6164a374644884c6729a28f505115dedfa61bdeb70d55119

EDIT: Behind this is BC.game. Probably some kind of online casino.

It is not BC.game but HitBTC. There were around 61 BTC at this time, splitted in 20/20/20/1 BTC

6f8d2a70ab5e345f6164a374644884c6729a28f505115dedfa61bdeb70d55119

So my BTC are mixed up in this 61 BTC. Now i have no chance to follow the trail, at least there exists any software to unravel the mixup.

Does anyone know this platform (BC.game)?

My research shows, that HitBTC is not the best wallet for Crypto but maybe good enough for burglars.

Sorry for the circumstances

You need to consider many things, first cost you have to pay to the lawyer, second is it worth to do by taking into account that how much your stolen bitcoin is?

If the cost for a lawyer is high, or higher than value of stolen bitcoin, you have to move on, learn from this lesson to have better practice.

It's a first step you have to do, tracing bitcoin transactions and identify who is hacker behind this. If you can not find any hint, it's non sense to hire any lawyer because they're not expert in Bitcoin technical problem and on-chain tracing.

Whether you can find hackers and their traces depend on their practice before and after your hack. No guarantee that you can find the hackers if they are professional and careful with their practice, and if they don't deposit your bitcoin to centralized exchanges, you will have no way to catch them. Not all hackers are stupid enough to deposit stolen bitcoin to CEX where it can be seized easily.

Not trying to lecture you but I think it's same repetition once again that you don’t need to spend money to get that done  , you can do it yourself..all you have to do is use a block explorer.

You've made the right choice but before you invest anything make sure you learn about the safest way of store your Bitcoin, don't wanna lecture you still but if you don't mind, you can learn how to setup a cold storage with maybe a watch only wallet (your bitcoin is much safer in a cold storage) or you can just get a hardware wallet.... .

Thanks @all.

Well, i 'd rather safe my money to buy new BTC then, than wasting it in an useless blockchain analysis...

I have definitely learned my lessons and will be more carefull in future!

Sorry for your loss. 

It doesn't make sense to involve a lawyer if your goal is to trace the money.

Slim, but if you lost a significant amount, then I'd consider informing the authorities and the exchanges. Perhaps the person who stole them from you is dumb, but he most likely isn't, and you'll have to move on.

Never, ever use Exodus again. Use open-source software like Electrum, and don't store your seed phrase electronically.

You can trace "your" Bitcoin online on any block explorer for free. I wouldn't trust a lawyer who offers such a "service".

You may trace it to an exchange, but:

Don't expect the thief to have gone through KYC, so this is where your trail ends.

Microsoft account should get secured by 2FA in addition to password, if you have not done that already.

Use the login information on microsoft to tract the scammer and blockchain forensics might help with locating the exchange which may have been used if the coins are already spent.

Another thing to do would be to contact the German local bitcoin community here to get a lawyer who has proficiency in bitcoin related crimes from your country. They have a local board, check the main page of this forum, scroll down.

However dont get your hopes high, you will likely not recover any but security measures should be taken from your side.

One more thing: DO NOT entertain any cold PMs you might have already received regarding "Bitcoin Recovery" - these are scammers trying to scam you by fake services, who usually lurk this forum.

You will have better luck trying to find if the breach was a fault of Microsoft and suing them for damages than trying to trace the person who stole the funds except you suspect it is someone you currently know.

Best case scenario is you can track any of the address used to a social identity which has shared it at some point and use that to get the real life identity, but bitcoin analytics alone will lead you to an exchange address and you will need to subpoena the exchange to provide identity of the user.

Best of luck and sorry for your loss.

- Jay -

Hey, I'm sorry about your situation...

Of course, you can track the btc if you pay enough money, but then what? You will spend a lot of money on this and it turns out that the thief is sitting somewhere in India or Uzbekistan (example)
And most likely by the time you get to him, he will have absolutely nothing left, so this is another risk of losing more money than you have already lost..

Cryptocurrency is not insured and no one compensates for it.
The attacker will receive a real or suspended sentence, depending on the legislation.

The only positive thing about your story is that you've learned your lesson and it won't happen again...
And buy yourself some kind of Ledger or Trezor already..

GL

Hello community,
I used to have my BTC (& ETH) on my Exodus wallet. Unfortunately, my Microsoft account was hacked in August. The perpetrator also had access to my Onedrive account and, unfortunately, I had saved my seed phrase for Exodus there via my old PC and completely forgot about it. Everyone here can guess the rest of the story, the wallet is empty. Please don't lecture me, I know that was totally stupid, you don't do that. I've learnt enough.
I assume that the perpetrator is a professional. He was able to bypass all of Microsoft's security measures. According to the login history, the perpetrator must have been trying to access my account for a long time. However, I didn't receive a notification email from Microsoft, let alone my account being blocked due to too many failed login attempts.
Unfortunately, I only noticed the theft last weekend as I don't check my wallet regularly. All I do is park my purchased coins there every holy day.
I've reported it to the police, but I'm not fooling myself, it's unlikely that they really have the capacity to check it.
I wanted to get help from a lawyer, but he charges a low 4-digit upfront fee for bitcoin tracing plus legal advice.


Hence my question:
Does it even make sense to involve the lawyer? What are the chances of success with bitcoin tracing? Especially if the perpetrators are based abroad? Will they really be found in case of doubt?
Are there perhaps inexpensive alternatives or companies in Germany that offer tracing & whose results I can pass on to the police? My Google search was unfortunately not very successful.
Thank you in advance for your ideas.