Now they're looking at you from two angels.
Instead of all this jumping through hoops with anonymous VPN and payment methods, why not just do it from Starbucks?
But also starbucks / any shop / cafe / restraunt / apple store - or going for a drive and finding an open WiFi. Kinda wondering now how these places all handle their wifi being abused for crimes ...
I would like the bad people to be caught and you are just giving away free advice to any future thief like him and also kind of encouraging other people which is kind of worrisome.
Privacy is a double edge sword and this is case that I happy that he was caught because of his lack of knowledge.
If you're a criminal reading my comments and learning anything new from them, let me tell you this: if you needed this info, you're not smart enough to evade the FBI. Go find a real job or something.
I'm glad the ass got caught and I hope he'll get what he deserves. However, I believe that the common modus operandi for criminals shouldn't be a secret because it will get out anyway. The "solutions" I propose are obvious and basically handed to criminals by the FBI analysis.
Good opsec for crime is incredibly hard, which is great in cases like these. I don't think I've heard of some super smart hacker that's managed to stay away from the authorities unless they live outside the relevant jurisdiction. Even then the FBI will find ways to get you into a country where they can arrest you, legally or otherwise.
A lot of "crime" in some countries, like China or Russia, is just doing the right thing in my opinion. You might very well need this kind of opsec if your goal is to help teenagers learn about homosexuality in many of the more bigoted countries, for example, or get the truth out about COVID without suddenly finding yourself falling out of a window.
I don't think the "true crime" style comments help criminals in any way. Documentaries about how murdered got caught aren't very good manuals and the advice of random people who've been in contact with the police aren't either. If they're dumb enough to follow the advice of some random guy here on orange reddit, their criminal career won't last very long.
He was probably just overconfident in his knowledge; you kind of have to be somewhat nuts to try to pull this off so it's not too surprising.
Had he put in a little more thought and preparation then I still don't know if he would've gotten away with it, but at least he'd be in a better position. He wouldn't have to lie to the FBI agents and they probably would've had to catch him by going after the source of the place where the data was leaked instead.
Opsec is hard, but this is just embarrassing for someone in the know trying to steal 50 bitcoin. I'm also not sure why he did it. Suddenly owning a few million in crypto would be noticed, unless he didn't spend any of it, ever. What was his plan, just quit his job and move away right after the hack?