Topic: List of Major Bitcoin Heists, Thefts, Hacks, Scams, and Losses - page 5. (Read 87594 times)

You would think that but the fact that they clean drug  dealers and takers coins in an attempt to help them cover their tracks makes me believe they would not care if the coins were stolen or not i maybe wrong of course but i doubt it. If anything they would probably keep the coins them self and that would be the second theft of coins, 'theory' more than likely just clean them for them..

OP that is a well put together post with all the information needed, awesome to see that much effort has gone into it  thanks

While outsiders cannot trace the coins through the mixer, the mixer operators know which inputs were eventually sent to which outputs. They only need to record that information and pass it to law enforcement.  The detectives can then skip over the mixing mess and continue tracing from the output. 

Isn't it possible for a mixer to identify stolen coins once deposited and "seize" the coins temporarily to return them to the rightful owner?

I don't think any mixer would want to give a thief clean coins and get dirty coins in return.

It will ruin their name and make them equally as bad if they know they mixed stolen coins just to scoop up a good fee.

Mixers like Bitmixer usually do the mixing in faster speeds. They could easily use a site to deposit coins to and withdraw directly to the mixer, leaving almost no evidence for the mixer to be able to track that fast.
There are also a lot of other ways they can mix and sell their coins.

But, how can the thieves be sure that the mixer is not operated by, hacked by, or cooperating with the police?

While the cops may not care for the victims' losses, they must be verey interested in identifying any dark market operators.

Thieves probably use mixers, there are much smaller expenses to get hard to trace coins in return. For such a large amount like 130K BTC they will probably have to split in smaller batches before they send it to mixers, no mixer has big enough volume for the coins to be untraceable.

It seems unlikely that the thieves will try to sell the stolen coins directly on an exchange.  (Wasn't there a case of an exchange freezing and returning cryptocoins that had been stolen and deposited there by the thief?)

The thieves could swap those coins off-exchange with some large criminal mafia; say 5 stolen coins for 1 "clean" coin.  The mafia could keep the coins until they "cooled off", or use them for other criminal trades.  Meanwhile the thieves could sell the clean coins on the exchanges, and withdraw the cash to legit bank accounts --- and no one would be able to connect that money to the theft.

Anybody know of evidence these funds have been dumped? I figure the $40 price drop the last day or so is either because the Evolution stash was dumped, or people rushed to sell in expectation it would be dumped, and caused a panic-dump instead.

130,000 BTC were stolen from evolution   

http://www.deepdotweb.com/2015/03/18/interview-with-nswgreat-evolution-staff-member/

I want to know if how many of these guys are still in active operation right now.

And how many shut down after the attack?

This leads to another huge problem: you don't know who is telling the truth and who isn't. This "I was hacked" seems to be the most popular excuse now, and there's no way to prove whether or not it's true. Someone can start up a business, run off with $10m, and then say "oh, lol, I was hacked. Sorry guys but it's all gone" and take no blame.

Bitcoin-Trader is a big example of this. There is more than enough proof showing that they ran with the funds, yet their claim that they were "hacked" seems to be enough for a lot of people to say it wasn't their fault.

Dual-edged is the best way to put it.

It doesn't mean we should just ignore the scams in question and forget they ever happened rather we should remember to try and avoid future ones.
It does hurt the ecosystem to see so many scams and hacks but an awareness is beneficial to try and prevent repeat occurrences.

As for fighting it, to an extent you need to trust others if your using their services exchanges etc as they control your coins same as any bank.

Centralization is where it gets complicated more advanced Bitcoin development is looking to resolve the hacking issue with Triple Sig or Quad sig verification aka multisig, and to my knowledge Ethereum/Maidsafe outside Bitcoin are trying to develop distributed smart contracts that act as virtual companies, with tokens of value etc instead.

So in the future security developments will make it safer, but it could make it easier to run with coins if the operators themselves are untrustworthy, about half of that long list is operator failure the other part is primarily security breaches not including lost coins.

In regards to security breaches solutions can be found, but with a shady operators it's still at present difficult to implement a tracking system that everyone agrees on and will use.

(Bitcoin-OTC and Web of Trust technically exist if your going to argue Mircea's point but not that many people use them, didn't work on Pirateat40 though)

I think it's a dual-edged sword.

On one hand, you're showing potential users the dangers. You're teaching them ahead of time what there is to lose, so they're aware of the implications of using Bitcoin.

On the other, you're right: it puts out the message that Bitcoin is nothing but a scam (which is what I hear non-stop from outsiders I speak to about cryptos).

The only way to fight this is centralization/government interference, which is what Bitcoin tries to steer away from. Essentially, these scammers are screwing over the entire community (including themselves) to get a few extra dollars.

It's a wait and see approach with Friedcat, he delivered a lot of miners and paid dividends to IPO holders
Could just be a failed business due to bad batches of chips

Those happen every day and are much too many to list individually. The fact that people are able to take precautions in protecting themselves when trading means that they have prevented themselves from getting scammed.

I am actually surprised I haven't seen more threads about this. He also has very little negative trust right now because of his scam - he still has overall 150+  positive feedback.

Is there any information how heists, thefts, hacks, and scams have been avoided, fought or resolved?

A list of violations this long doesn't help entice the new user to the Bitcoin system. (Of course the list of violations in cash is endless...so likely will bitcoin.)

This post is really informative thanks for posting this, all are really cool to look at and read

LABCOIN too.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ncckq/labcoin_has_been_outed_as_a_scam_run_by_notorious/

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/labcoin-lawsuit-325431 Labcoin lawsuit
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/labcoin-ipo-btctco-detailsfaq-and-discussion-asic-devsalesmining-263445 Labcoin IPO

Seems the list also needs to add the BTER hack that happened now. Do you add things ,like the bitstamp hack, even through it was later covered by the company ?

I think FiedCat scamming million dollar worth bitcoin in AM hash scam should be a part of it...

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/chinese-mining-mogul-friedcat-has-stolen-more-than-a-million-in-am-hash-scam-974058