When I first saw these headlines back when they happened I thought the timing was too convenient. It must be an inside job to hide assets, but I was wrong. It was a pretty involved operation of the indictment is to be believed.

These stories are always useful to keep track of what sites log information and how authorities track people. You need to read the actual indictment though because articles never cover the right detail.

How did authorities crack the case? What was the entry point? Once they know who did it, it’s a lot easier to monitor and get more info.

The perps created fake IDs, went to several states, and tried to do sim swaps on the victims. So there may be security camera footage. The authorities would have known in what stores the sim swaps happened so they could narrow down what phones went to those locations. Perps also used SMS, email, messaging apps, and encrypted messaging apps to talk to each other. But you can’t just grep against all text messages even if you’re the FBI, but they could get phone logs in a radius of the stores. Not clear if they ever used their personal phones.

Right now, we’d all agree the perpetrators were criminals, but later, the definition of criminal may get a little weird and may include owning Bitcoin or using encrypted chats.