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NEW DELHI: In the winter of 2021, Delhi Police's Special Cell was investigating a case of cryptocurrency theft of around Rs 4 crore from the wallet of a west Delhi businessman. Though the cops managed to 'deep trace' a few recipient wallet IDs, tracking the end users appeared difficult. Just at the time, Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad, communicated - as part of routine intelligence exchange with their Indian counterparts - information about some suspect wallets operated by terrorist groups for terror funding.Many of the wallet addresses on the list were being operated by the al Qassam brigades of Hamas, the Palestinian terror group, and had been 'seized' by Israel's National Bureau for counter terror financing.Also See: Israel Palestine War LiveA breakthrough arrived when the Special Cell's Intelligence Fusion & Strategic Ops (IFSO) unit ran a match on the wallets: several wallets that had received the Bitcoin and Ethereum assets from Delhi were operated by the cyber terrorism wing of Hamas.While Israel has hit back strongly at Hamas for Saturday's attack, sources said the intelligence agencies have their antennae up about renewed efforts by the terror outfit to collect funds by hacking in pro-Israel countries.Even on Tuesday, the cyber unit of Israel Police froze a large number of cryptocurrency accounts held by Hamas for fundraising. Israel Police said on X (formerly Twitter) that Hamas had launched a crypto fundraising campaign after the start of the latest terror attacks. Israeli authorities also urged crypto exchange Binance to transfer the seized funds to that country's state treasury.The case in Delhi was the first instance of Hamas' activity in India. Special Cell officers said that the probe details were communicated to the relevant authorities at the time. Former DCP (Special Cell) KPS Malhotra's team had investigated the case. "Yes, our investigation had led us to several wallets linked to the al Qassam brigades," Malhotra confirmed on Tuesday.

The matter, cops said, was first reported in 2019 at Paschim Vihar police station and the investigation was later transferred to the Special Cell on court orders, cops privy to the investigation recalled. After the Hamas link was unearthed, technical analysis revealed that one of the seized wallets belonged to Naseer Ibrahim Abdulla in Gaza and to Hamas operatives like Ahmed Marzooq in Giza and Ahmed QH Safi in Ramallah in Palestine. "The cryptocurrencies were routed through various private wallets and finally landed in these suspected wallets," a police officer revealed.

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Cryptocurrency stolen from Delhi lands in Hamas wallets - IndiaTimes

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Sam Bankman-Fried is accused of fraud and money laundering

A thief who stole more than $470m (383m) in cryptocurrency when FTX crashed is trying to cash it out while the exchange's founder is on trial.

After laying dormant for nine months, experts say $20m of the stolen stash is being laundered into traditional money every day.

New analysis shows how the mystery thief is trying to hide their tracks.

FTX was once one of the biggest exchange platforms in the world allowing crypto investors to buy, trade and store digital currencies. It went bankrupt on 11 November 2022, with billions of dollars of customer funds missing.

Mr Bankman-Fried is pleading not guilty to misusing customer funds and money laundering while bankruptcy lawyers are trying to locate the missing billions.

On the day FTX collapsed, hundreds of millions of dollars of cryptocurrency controlled by the exchange were stolen by an unidentified thief that is believed to still have control of the funds.

No one knows how the thief (or thieves) was able to get digital keys to FTX crypto wallets but it is thought it was either an insider or a hacker who was able to steal the information.

The criminal moved 9,500 Ethereum coins, then worth $15.5 million, from a wallet belonging to FTX, to a new wallet.

Over the next few hours, hundreds of other cryptoassets were taken from the company's wallets, in transactions eventually totalling $477 million.

According to researchers from Elliptic, a cryptocurrency investigation firm, the thief lost more than $100m in the weeks following the hack as some was frozen or lost in processing fees as they frantically moved the funds around to evade capture.

But by December around $70m was successfully sent to a cryptocurrency mixer - a criminal service used to launder Bitcoin making it difficult to trace.

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Are crypto-currencies the future of money?

Without using a mixing service to hide the illicit origins of their Bitcoin, criminals risk being caught or having their funds seized by cryptocurrency exchanges.

Cryptocurrency exchanges allow people to exchange coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum for traditional cash.

Although mixers make it difficult to trace Bitcoin, Elliptic was able to follow a small amount of the funds - $4m - that was sent to an exchange.

The rest of the stolen FTX stash - around $230m dollars - remained untouched until 30 September - the weekend before Mr Bankman-Fried's trial began.

Nearly every day since then chunks worth millions have been sent to a mixer for laundering and then presumably cashing out.

Elliptic have been able to trace $54m of Bitcoin being sent to the Sinbad mixer after which the trail has gone cold for now.

Experts say the activity is strange and goes against the norm for cryptocurrency hackers and thieves.

"Crypto launderers have been known to wait for years to move and cash-out assets once public attention has dissipated - but in this case they have begun to move just as the world's attention is once again directed towards FTX and the events of November 2022," said DR Tom Robinson Elliptic's Co-founder.

Another finding from tracing the funds points to a potential link to Russian cyber crime.

Some of the stolen Bitcoin successfully laundered last year has been traced to a wallet known to be used by Russian-linked criminal groups. Elliptic says this could point to the involvement of a broker or other intermediary with a link to Russia.

Panorama explores the breakneck rise and sensational fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, the maths genius who set out to transform the world of crypto but ended up being its biggest loser.

See the original post:
FTX thief cashes out millions during Bankman-Fried trial - BBC.com

Were about a week into the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF. Hes the one-time cryptocurrency wunderkind, now fighting charges that he stole billions from customers of his now-defunct crypto exchange, FTX.

A lot of hopeful investors got burned by the collapse of SBFs empire last November. FTX is currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Marketplaces Lily Jamali spoke with Vicky Huang, a crypto reporter at The Wall Street Journal, about how the trial is affecting perceptions of the industry.

The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Vicky Huang: People definitely lost faith in crypto companies after the collapse of FTX. It was considered one of the safest places to park your money, and Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, was the darling of the crypto industry. He was loved by Silicon Valley venture capital investors. So when FTX collapsed in November, that really hit the industry hard. Not only did customers lose faith in crypto companies, but also prices of major cryptocurrencies fell sharply and then became very stagnant. Even though this year, the price of bitcoin has rebounded a little bit.

Lily Jamali: This is what I find so fascinating: The price of bitcoin is actually higher now than it was when the FTX scandal happened.

Huang: Yes, I think that has something to do with what happened in 2023. One thing about bitcoin is that its sort of a symbol for people who dont like big government and dont want to conduct their financial transactions through a middleman like the bank. So, when the banking crisis that started with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank happened in March, that kind of helped bitcoin from a narrative standpoint. A lot of these big bitcoins companies in the United States said, This is why you need to own bitcoin, because you cant trust the bank with your money. When it collapsed, it really scared a lot of depositors.

Jamali: Thats a great point. Its important to remember that cryptocurrency emerged from the great financial crisis 15 years ago and was a response to the fact that so many peoples faith in the traditional financial system was shaken.

Huang: Yeah, exactly. Thats exactly what a lot of these bitcoin supporters go back to again and again when they talk about the resilience of bitcoin throughout all these crises. And its true that a lot of crypto companies, especially crypto exchanges, have failed throughout the history of bitcoin, starting with Mt. Gox in 2014 to FTX in 2022. Bitcoin has indeed survived all of these large-scale scandals and frauds. I dont know what that says about bitcoin exactly, but it has survived.

Jamali: Were about a week into the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, and as we watch that play out, does it feel to you like crypto is on trial too?

Huang: It definitely feels like crypto is on trial, even though the crypto industry really wants to move on from this. Since the collapse of FTX, regulators have waged a sweeping crackdown on the crypto industry. They have sued the largest crypto exchange in the world, Binance, and they have sued the largest crypto exchange in the U.S., Coinbase. Government officials have also cut off some services such as banking services and other products that are really vital to the crypto industry.

Jamali: But theyve had mixed results, right? Regulators have not succeeded in all of the attempts that theyve made to crack down on crypto.

Huang: Yes, it appears that regulators have kind of struggled to regulate the crypto industry. One of the reasons is that many crypto companies think there needs to be new regulations and new laws to help regulate the industry, whereas a lot of regulators think that there are already existing securities laws that can regulate the industry. So, theres a lot of tension between regulators and the crypto industry in general. So far, there is no existing law that has been successfully applied to kind of regulate the industry.

Jamali: Where does Congress stand with this? The House is out of commission right now, but there seemed to have been some movement toward legislation before the speaker of the House was ousted.

Huang: Yes, there are two bills in Congress right now. One is the bill to regulate stable coins, which are crypto currencies pegged to the U.S. dollar. And another bill focused on market structure. From talking to a lot of people in the industry, I dont think the hope of a bill being enacted into law is very high right now, just because theres a lot of other things going on in the government, and we are in the midst of the SBF trial. So, while theres a lot of hope, the progress on that is not very fast right now.

Jamali: What are you hearing from people in the crypto industry now? How are they painting the SBF trial in your conversations with them?

Huang: A lot of people in the crypto industry are definitely watching the trial very closely. Because FTX was such a big part of the crypto industry, Sam Bankman-Fried was kind of omnipresent. He was everywhere, in every transaction and every deal. But now, I think for people who still believe in crypto and are working in the crypto industry, they dont want the public to lump FTX and SBF together with crypto. Even the current CEO of FTX, John Ray, whos this corporate turnaround expert in charge of FTXs bankruptcy proceedings, has said that this is just old-fashioned fraud, and it could happen in crypto or in any another industry. I think thats what a lot of people in crypto want the public to think of this as well, that this more has more to do with a bad actor committing fraud on his customers, rather than this is acrypto-unique situation.

Vicky Huangs colleagues at The Wall Street Journal are reporting from the court room in New York each day. The trial is expected to last around six weeks.

And as Huang mentioned, the crypto industrys response to this legal circus is pretty negative. The phrase bad apple comes up a lot when they describe SBF. One crypto analyst told Wired shes not the only one who thinks this is all just one very big distraction and calls the saga the galactic embarrassment of FTX.

SBFs parents are also under legal scrutiny. Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried are Stanford Law School professors and were highly respected in Silicon Valley. They both now face a civil lawsuit alleging they helped run their sons empire and were rewarded handsomely.

See the article here:
As SBF sits in court, is cryptocurrency on trial too? - Marketplace

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