Honestly it doesn't even matter because if they could have withdrawn to bitcoin somewhere, if they kept some bitcoins to this day, then they would be still quite rich. Laundering bitcoin is not really "that" difficult, why they end up with this type of problem is beyond my understanding.
Because the theory behind a monitor is different from real life.
There are mixers everywhere and if you really want to do it, just use monero and hide your wealth and you would be able to withdraw small by small.
How do you hide your wealth?
This is not about hiding your wealth from other poeple so they don't whose know house this is, this is about hiding your wealth from the IRS.
You go and buy a 30k car, with what money if you're unemployed? You buy a 300k house, again with what money?
It doesn't matter what you used to launder your money, from monero to mixers, you have solved one problem, the tracing from where the coins originated, but you can't hide the physical wealth and you can't hide real-life purchases.
Nobody really needs a billion dollars anyway, if you could just withdraw 10 million dollars a month, from like 20 even 50 different names which would be people around you basically, and then give them a share, then you could actually do it.
They weren't able to withdraw 178k and 122k in 3 months from an exchange and you're talking about 10 million a month?
Oh, let 50 poeple know that you have billions, and let your family share your prison time.
Do you think Cex and banks and the IRS are stupid? They have reports of poeple withdrawing money from exchanges when they see entire families withdrawing in each of the member's names cash what do you think they will do?
50 different people would be the hard part if you are stuck at home all the time but if you are a popular person you should be able to convince that many people, which makes it only 200k dollars per month and would fly under the radar if you could be careful.
Exactly, contacting stranger after stranger to help you exchange coins to fiat and have that sent to you in a parcel to a PO box won't trigger any flags from them, there won't be anyone ratting you out to the FBI and there won't be anyone blackmailing you after this.