Topic: Will police do anything about bitcoin theft? (Read 2373 times)

In the case of a place like SR, sure the cops will investigate that. But I am not aware of anyone who has successfully gotten restitution from the police in a bitcoin scam. Has anyone? 

Most likely, the most beneficial result will be the actual police report which you can use to time-stamp an allegation of theft. You basically use them as a kind of "extra-official" notary service. It's also quite possible you have no use for this time-stamping service since you probably won't be able to take the person to civil court.

Online privacy is still somewhat sacred, but the government is God. If you ask police to do more than time-stamp, where they'll need to violate someone's privacy and serve demands to private companies holding the thief's information, you're SoL without solid evidence of who committed the theft... which you can't obtain without the police demanding private information. Great chicken-egg problem. If the government wants to do that based only on its own allegations, however, it will go right ahead - no problem. Maybe you can also get police to investigate by owning them and relevant people in the judicial system... maybe you are the mafia... this may result in superior performance.

Depending on the size of companies involved in keeping your thief's personal information, they may be willing to divulge solid information, or at least hints, if you privately contact them man-to-man to request information. It's theoretically possible that a company could look into a matter, decide you are very likely right, and provide enough information to take to the police and have them go up chains to finally arrive at the thief's identity. I have never been successful at that, however, and you'll need to present a lot of information which you likely don't have.... I've just taken IP addresses matching time-stamps of unauthorized access on accounts, contacted the owner of the IP address (has always been Amazon AWS), and then AWS Abuse staff tell me "we have not identified the user of that account as a thief. He has registered as a provider of mobile services." Can't really take that to the police.

fuck no

I never said don't report it. OP asked if anything would be done and I gave my opinion, you trying to make out that cops would "use it experts to find them" is just laughable, those experts have bigger fish to fry and aint no way they have resources to chase every stolen bitcoin. At end of day the chances of him seeing is coins again very slim.

So you are saying that you would not go to the police when your wallet gets robbed?

Of course do you go to the cops. Thats what you do.  Even if they "wont investigate"

Just go to the goddam cops. Is that so difficulty?


Just imagine they bust a online drug dealer and check his hard disk. Accidentally they find a bitcoin wallet and this guy has a lot of btc adresses that had been used to receive coins from hacked wallets.

Then they got the hacker and could return the coins. You would  have never believed that they would catch that guy. But they did it on accident.

Well just imagine that you didnt go to the cops 1 year ago. Then you would not receive any coins now.. luckily you did.

You cant loose anything if you go to the cops!!! They work for you not against you.

lol sure dude it's like ya always hearing about small time hackers getting caught stealing wallets all time on news...anyhow you have to be trolling or very naive to believe crap you talk.

You need a grip on reality

What happens if you get a credit card fraud and scammed by 50 bucks? Of course they investigate. And its the same with BTC.

I dont know in which fucked up country  you live.  Most countrys have a lot of it experts in the LE

lol silk road is slightly different to theft of a few bitcoins, do you really think they gonna waste resources on looking for some kid who stole a wallet...think you need to get a grip on reality lol

What do you think happens? What do you want to happen?

Is your dream the following procedure:

You give them the information -  then the cop tells you  60 minutes what he he is gonna do and what kind of information they get?

Of course he is just going to get your information, says thanks and bye.

 Thats it

You will never receive information  about the investigation. But I can tell you they investigate and have freakin IT EXPERTS.
The cop that takes your information has probably no clue about anything, but they have expert and those experts investigate.


Just look at the silk road story. Silk Road was hosted on the tor network and the server was somewhere in sweden or I have never heard about that country- country.

The U.S. LE was still able to decrypt TOR and get the real ip adress of the server. They still managed to get to that country and take a physical copy of that single server!

And now you think that they wont do anything about a bitcoin theft? Of course they are going to investigate because the thief is probably a very good hacker and already a target of the LE.


I dont know in which city you live. If you live in the usa then go to the fucking cops because they can do everything. Just read about the snowden story and youll know what they can do.

when I got ****ed, law enforcement took my information, said thanks and bye.

if you think law enforcement have any ****ing idea how to enforce laws when it comes to bitcoin, you are out to lunch or you are IN law enforcement with considerable strings.  simple as that.

Like they can find h@x0rs they can find Bitcoin thief.

There are cases in my country settled upon Bitcoin crimes.

hope your just trolling lol

stop talking bullshit.

law enforcement is very clever and has experts when it comes to IT. They even managed to sneak into tor and get the silk road server.

Of course they can investigate about bitcoin theft and might find the thief

The problem is the same as other internet crime. You may live in the U.S. but your bitcoins were stolen from Mt.Gox in Japan by some thugs in Ukraine. The thugs transfered them into a wallet running on a server in Saudi Arabia.

Now, if I go to the local police with that story what is going to happen? Will the cop hop on a plane to the Saudi kingdom? Will he call his contacts in Ukraine, or bone-up on Japanese law? Nope. He/she is going to look you in the eye and say "What the hell are you talking about"?

At least for the next few years we are on our own.

I was scammed on eBay (bought a paper wallet which didnt have any BTC on it and was supposed to) and reported it to police, I did have the guys full name and address though.  The detective went to talk to him, but by then I was able to chargeback and get my money back.  I dont know if an IP address will be enough.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/yes-someone-stole-my-coin-i-was-saving-for-when-our-baby-comes-in-july-441040

Email was hacked too

i have actually heard of sellers getting in trouble just for selling bitcoins so it might not be wise to call the police lol

on topic though i would say there is no chance. its like calling the police and telling them your world of warcraft account was hacked. not gonna happen lol

Quit being so damn obscure and just say what happened.

The only proof I have is an IP address and a wallet address

Doubt anything they could do to be honest and wouldn't expect them to put much resources into it :/. Most items that get stolen are never returned or seen again and with bitcoins your chances of seeing them again is even lower