Fraudsters are increasingly using cryptocurrencies as a means of money laundering. The anonymity of crypto-tools makes it much more difficult to find and return dirty funds, to say nothing of the criminals, whose identity is limited only to the symbols of the code in the blockchain. Finding them is even harder.
So is there any way out of a situation when a user has been attacked by hackers and lost their assets? It turns out that it isn’t quite so hopeless. This is an extremely difficult task, but when the experts get down to business, there is hope.
Methods used by scammers for withdrawing crypto assets
The practice shows that problems for attackers begin at the moment when they convert cryptocurrency into regular money. A few years ago, this could be done without too much trouble – scammers used large crypto exchanges without worrying about being tracked by someone.
The classic methods of converting funds can be called:
- Bitcoin mixers or tumblers. As you know, a cryptographic transaction is a blockchain of a certain set of data. The tumbler breaks this chain into several dozen and inserts the into “clean” blockchain sequences, thereby confusing the original trace of the operation. The package is then collected back on the wallet specified by the scammer.
- Chap Hopping. In a short period of time, dirty assets are converted into different coins on different sites.
- Online casino. The essence of the method is simple – the money is deposited into the account of the gambling establishment, the fraudster makes several bets, and then withdraws the remaining assets to an external wallet. Recently, this method has become more complicated by the policy of those institutions, but it still occurs.
- Crypto exchanges. One of the main ways. Despite the emerging security principles, scammers still manage to wrap their transactions up.
The introduction of the “Know Your Customer” system made life difficult for attackers, but did not cut off their ability to cash out dirty assets.
What tools are used to search for stolen funds
The method of searching for the stolen cryptocurrency mainly consists in establishing connections: to which address the funds were sent, from which wallet they were transferred to the money changer and the further path of regular money.
However, users may be disappointed – there are very few effective tools for finding and returning stolen assets. Furthermore, there are even fewer specialists who can find the lost cryptocurrency.
There are several reasons for this:
• Users from whom insignificant amounts were stolen often ignore this, considering return of their funds to be obviously impossible;
• The lack of specialists is a very complex problem that requires careful analysis, knowledge and skills in the field of cryptocurrencies to be cured;
• Scammers never use the same method of cashing out, constantly improving their methods.
Quite often, the INFPO DRC DC employees receive calls from their regular users – cryptocurrency holders. Most of them have already become a victim of a fraudster, having lost part or all of their savings. The problem is that most of appeals of this kind are received some time after the incident. This significantly aggravates the situation, because the traces of the desired transaction are decreasing with each passing day.
Indeed, a user is severely limited in direct evidence of the theft from his wallet. All they can see is a set of letters and numbers of a destination wallet and a blockchain.
Search for stolen cryptocurrency by Digital Control specialists
Despite the extreme complexity of such an undertaking, we have a positive experience in finding traces of stolen assets. Our specialists have developed their own transaction analysis algorithm, which most likely allows you to detect lost money. This is a truly unique service that has few analogues.
The essence of the service consists of several stages:
• The client appeals with the details of their wallet and the approximate time of the theft;
• Our experts identify potential addresses that were noticed in the customer’s funds movement;
• We analyze the received data and, based on them, create a visualization of the cryptocurrency movements at the specified address with the end point of their withdrawal.
The client passes this data to law enforcement agencies, which contact the money changer (exchanges) where the conversion took place.
We have the experience, knowledge and motivation to provide you with all the necessary assistance in finding the stolen cryptocurrency. A team of various IT, cryptoindustry and jurisprudence specialists will make every effort to ensure that the funds are returned to their true owner.