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In 2014, the speaker bought one Bitcoin out of curiosity, only to see the price rise significantly by 2017, giving them the financial freedom to quit their job and focus on their podcast. The experience cultivated a special appreciation for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin's perceived anonymity and the ability to trace transactions on the blockchain became a powerful tool in investigating criminal activities. Using a cryptocurrency tracing tool called Reactor, law enforcement agents were able to identify and apprehend perpetrators involved in child exploitation websites.
Law enforcement agencies collaborated to takedown "Welcome to Video," a dark web platform dedicated to child sexual abuse videos. Agents traced Bitcoin transactions, followed the money, unmasked users, and arrested individuals involved in trading and producing child exploitation material.
Investigators trace the money from a dark web market to identify its administrators in South Korea. They find a father-son duo, Sun Jong Wu and an older Korean man, running the site. Meanwhile, they discover that several users are high-ranking officials, including a vice principal and a Homeland Security investigations agent. Prioritizing the protection of potential child victims, investigators focus on arresting these sensitive cases first. They encounter ethical dilemmas and have to use creative strategies to apprehend the suspects, even detaining one at the airport.
After seizing the server of Welcome to Video, investigators gain access to the complete database, allowing them to track the users who paid for and uploaded illegal content. The collaboration between the IRS, HSI, and Chainalysis helps them build dossiers on hundreds of users worldwide. With evidence in hand, they begin arresting the culprits one by one, resulting in the rescue of 23 children and the arrest of 337 people globally. However, the owner of Welcome to Video, Song Jong Woo, managed to evade extradition and served only 18 months in South Korea, sparking public outrage and calls for stricter laws.
Andy Greenberg (https://twitter.com/a_greenberg) brings us a gut wrenching story of how criminal investigators used bitcoin tracing techniques to try to find out who was at the center of a child sexual abuse darkweb website.
This story is part of Andy’s new book “Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency”. An affiliate link to the book on Amazon is here: https://amzn.to/3VkjSh7.
Sponsors
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Support for this show comes from Axonius. The Axonius solution correlates asset data from your existing IT and security solutions to provide an always up-to-date inventory of all devices, users, cloud instances, and SaaS apps, so you can easily identify coverage gaps and automate response actions. Axonius gives IT and security teams the confidence to control complexity by mitigating threats, navigating risk, decreasing incidents, and informing business-level strategy — all while eliminating manual, repetitive tasks. Visit axonius.com/darknet to learn more and try it free.
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