The news published by almost all of the Italian mainstream press, describing the seizure of 9 million dollars in cryptocurrencies by the Guardia di Finanza's operational unit in an anti-money laundering operation, has caused a stir.
A story that however still has unclear contours, especially regarding the technical aspects described by the media. According to the reconstruction, the cyber criminals would have transferred 9 million in Tether (USDT), a stablecoin with a value anchored to that of the dollar, to an exchange operating legally in Italy.
The account on the exchange, which we recall requires KYC (Know Your Customer) procedures to verify the identity of customers, had been created with false documents.
The exchange wallet would then be used to move the stolen capital, the result of a hacker attack that caused the theft of crypto-assets worth tens of millions of euros. Of the 9 million stolen, over 8 were converted into cryptocurrencies on the exchange and sent to different blockchains to cover the tracks.
The analysis conducted on the blockchain allowed investigators to trace the origin of the funds and link the transactions to a money laundering activity.
Did it really go like this?
This is certainly an anomalous operation, because usually this type of operation is done through De-Fi, decentralized finance, where controls are less stringent.
It would have been smarter to use any crypto wallet like Metamask or a latest generation one like Best Wallet, which does not require KYC procedures and also has integration with TOR and CoinJoin to improve anonymity by obscuring IPs and transaction flows.
Usually these operations culminate with the use of untraceable coins such as Monero or Zcash, which are not coincidentally banned by the main exchanges, and the use of cryptocurrency mixers.
However, it cannot be ruled out that it was an attempt to further complicate things, with a surprise operation, or with other methods that were not described in the articles because they were too technical and therefore not communicated by the GdF.
An exemplary case for the crypto sector in Italy
In any case, this is a significant seizure in terms of size, type of fraud and speed of intervention, which highlights some weaknesses of exchanges with the advancement of artificial intelligence. Many procedures will soon have to be revised to avoid making the same mistakes.
The police operation also demonstrates, as we have long been arguing, that cryptocurrencies are not the Eldorado of scams.
Blockchains are transparent and traceable, and blockchain forensic tools (such as Chainalysis or Elliptic) are becoming increasingly effective at reconstructing cryptocurrency paths.
