Topic: klee's hacked 1170 btc, Part II - page 5. (Read 10876 times)

moderate stash = enough BTC for his blow up dolls and back pain meds from flippin burgers all day....

I just read every post on Part 1 and Part 2 of this situation....

It is amazing to me how little people know about laws in general and what is legal and or not legal...

"The Avenger" is 100% correct...Bitmixer.io participated in the crime once they knew the coins were stolen and continued to process them. In fact, bitmixer's whole concept would be seen as a money laundering facility in any court of law, but the fact that Bitmixer wrote on a public forum that "yes, the criminal did use our service to launder his coins" and "no, we will not give up his identity" is just about the dumbest thing I have ever heard of someone doing...

Klee's contract with the criminal is worthless...any contract where the 'consideration' is based on a criminal activity is automatically void...

If I were Klee I would have 100% taken the deal, and I would secretly be pursuing the criminal and I would still offer up the bounty, but instead I would offer a partial bounty for bitmixer.io's information... With that kind of money at stake, once I found the owner of bitmixer.io, I would break him down by starting with him first and then moving to family members...

As to BurtW, you just dont get it....

Mixers are fine and I support them as well....I don't want people tracking my every move either...but this situation is different, once the mixer has reasonable justification that a crime has been committed and thus funds are being laundered through their mixer, then its their ass on the line...

If bitmixer.io had any common sense, he would publicly say that he will not give up the thief, privately give up the thief, take the reward, and then Klee should dispose of the thief...and I would just let everyone think that the thief got away with...mix the coins back into Klee's possession, pay bitmixer.io the ransom and both can go on happily knowing the real situation and what happened....

Hopefully that scenario will scare the thief (that is, if it hasn't already happened and the thief is even alive at this point)....

Regarding the discussion about mixing services, you guys are forgetting that a mixing service that logs it's users and retains their data so it can be shared is not going to get any business as it defeats the purpose of the mixing service. Even if Bitmixer had records, he has no inclination to share them seeing as he won't gain anything and it will damage his services reputation for maintaining anonymity.

The fear of being caught is definitely there for the thief. A HUGE amount of btc was stolen, so morals are out the window. The 462 btc being returned is not out of good faith but rather the fear being caught. Otherwise, one of the condition wouldn't have been to lock the original thread. He probably already knows of the evidence that has been left behind.

Mixers require proof of ownership for mixes of bitcoin of any size. They require confirmation by the network that coins were sent to their address.

Very sad for your loss klee.  I'm glad all work you put into tracking the hacker paid off somewhat.  Hopefully your able to get the agreed upon amount with the scum that stole your Bitcoin.

I have been reading this thread and the original one with interest. I have to say it has taken an extremely unpredictable turn of events and it's important to consider why. I think the main reason that someone decided to give back some of the stolen funds clearly has to do with the fear of being caught. How would he be caught? Well, that's the point--he can never be sure. I think everyone should know by now that true anonymity on the internet is an illusion. If you want to be anonymous for some mundane tasks, no one will care. But try to be anonymous selling drugs (large amounts) or passing on military information and it's certain that you will be discovered pretty soon. I suspect the same principle applies to stealing 1000BTC. Therefore, once enough attention is brought, the chances that you will be caught by people who actually know what they are doing increase daily. I was actually waiting to read about this case on the front pages of the Wall St Journal. I think it still merits wider publicity.

As for the mixing service, it's clear to anyone that has ever run a business, that you are absolutely incompetent in running that business if you say that your entire reserves are 2000 BTC and you are willing to exchange half of those reserves for a miniscule fee without keeping any kind of records whatsoever--at minimum they should keep the addresses that they forwarded the BTC to. How can you just accept over 1000 BTC with no questions asked? A real business would ask for information and retain records. If you don't want to do that then you would be taking on enormous risk and you should ask for a 30% or 40% fee, which any thief would happily pay. That's why businesses that deal in illegal things have such huge profits--so that they can pay them all to lawyers when they get caught. See at the end of the day, the lawyers keep all the theft proceeds--one way or the other !!

Bj

I find this thread really sad, the amount of stupidity, hate and wannabe security expert off the chart, I'm not saying that everything that was said is wrong, in fact some of it makes a lot of sense but you guys are drifting away from the topic and forgetting the circumstances of the guy that got his BTC stolen, and here is my point of view of what was discussed.

1- I find it sad that people blaming the guy for not being extra cautious with his money, I'm sure that he is kicking him self for it and he doesn't need people to add salt to injury (I don't own and will probably never own as much btc and to my scale I can understand the feeling of losing too much of you money especially if it is funds related to your work), and he apparently had some level of security and I guess using cloud based storage with a password was more or less a backup plan for him and the person that target his account has either the information (inside job) or been tracking him for a long while.

2- Instead of blaming the owner, the blame should definitely be forwarded to the thief, that not only stole the BTCs but is blackmailing as well.

3- As for mixing service, while I believe such service is necessary to preserve the anonymity of it users and their BTCs, I believe that there should be a minimal of work ethic here, if a service knows and been informed that they are dealing with stolen funds or crime related funds with definitive prove they should freeze the BTCs till it cleared out, We all know that while such services are mainly to preserve anonymity, they will attract for this same reason a lot of criminals/money launderers, hence they should be careful, and they'll probably get in trouble for such service if they are not careful and trading money that has been flagged like this.

I just hope that the community will help Klee especially those who have the resources to track and found the culprit, because such actions will only render the bitcoin community stronger and will prevent crime, and I'm pretty sure that Klee will be extra careful next time with his bitcoin

I feel for Klee he wanted his money back and saw that he probably would never get it back so settled for a small portion of it. Better than nothing. Now Klee can't really make a big deal unless the 2nd payment is sent. So we should protest and continue the investigation further.

Agreed.

The scammer doesn't want anybody to talk about it, for it to go away.

He might go so far as to try to kill the conversation by aiming the blame at people discussing it


Sydboy 

It was certainly not the right decision by klee to close the bounty thread.
The second payment will never be sent.

It's typical scamming behavior. The scammer just wants to gain time and hide from public attention.

it sounds like bitmixer should have a tick box "do you pinky swear the funds you are sending are not stolen"

why blame a service that does not check the source, and why should they. a bank does not ask if the funds are stolen when you deposit, or does a cafe or anywhere.  yeah it is terrible that someone stole that many bitcoins, but as others have said they should of been looked after better. im not saying he deserved to be hacked but everyone is running around looking for stupid things to blame when their is 1 person who made a huge mistake, unfortunately

and why are some of you going on about this so much. it is suspicious is what it is.

I said "I'd think again for sure", I didn't say I'd change my mind. It's just you putting words into my mouth, again.

It's pretty tiresome most of my replies here are now me pointing out I didn't say something.

Thinking about something and changing your mind are two different things - do you get that?  

Can't you make an argument without changing what I've said to something I did not say?

It's just a bit pointless to continue to reply if you can't keep your arguments about what *YOU* say or think, rather than your replies telling me what *I* think or said when it's not what I think or said.

N.B. Accept my challenge above - send me all your bitcoin. It'll change your life and opinions, well worth it! 

I understand most of that with the exception of it having to be free.

Why?

What if it did everything you asked for but charged a fee?

Anyone who comes up and says

"My name is XYZ, from country XYZ. You can see my identity here.

I am running a mixing service to protect peoples privacy. There are no fees, I am providing a service I feel is essential for the bitcoin network.

The mixing service takes (for example) one week to spit out your coins at the other end, so I can be sure they are not reported stolen. After a week where no claims of theft have been made and evidence provided, they will be returned mixed."

I'm down with that.

Are you kidding me?   You just got done ranting on for pages about how bad/evil/illegal bitmixer is because they washed stolen coins and now you are turning around and saying that, well, it might be ok for them to do it as long as they do it for free?

Are you taking a moral position or not?  Why the sudden change of heart just because the service is free?  How does that make it any less evil in your eyes?  Do you believe profit in and of itself is evil?

That's interesting. Without the incentive (no fees), but with the risk (that they could be caught for laundering), I doubt anyone would provide the "service".

But if they did, then I'd think again for sure.

At this point in time though, it pretty clear what the motive of this "service" is.

Yes, coin mixing should be a standard part of the protocol and used on every transaction.  Sending a direct transaction that can be traced should cost a lot extra, maybe even 10x or more of the cost of a mixed transaction.

That would be ideal.  We must work toward that goal.

Idea..
How about mixing service without a fee? How all you would react if bitmixer did not charged anything in this case?
But maybe we are getting to off topic here.