London police have reportedly seized of cryptocurrency from a hacker named Grant West, who was arrested on a train about a year ago. Investigators say Grant West, who used the alias “Courvoisier,” was behind attacks on more than 100 companies, including mobile phone manufacturers, supermarkets, gambling websites and more. West sold the stolen data, which usually included passwords, credit card details and personal information, on the Deep Web, for large sums of Bitcoin.
An interesting piece of information is that the police were able to seize this huge amount only because West had saved the username and password from the gambling sites he used on his laptop.
Many criminals have used cryptocurrencies to “hide” their proceeds from illegal activities such as DDoS attacks, selling credit card details, buying drugs and many more. A Washington lawyer who worked on the case stated that “When it comes to transactions on the Dark Web, almost everyone uses cryptocurrencies for anonymity reasons” and that “The use of virtual currencies for illegal transactions has been hugely successful.”.
Many may believe that cryptocurrencies provide complete anonymity for online transactions. On the contrary, it has been shown that investigators can often detect such transactions using certain currencies such as bitcoin, but they cannot know who they belong to. Of course, in many cases cryptocurrencies are also used for legitimate purchases, but certainly to a much smaller extent.
