So they had full Monero traceability and full search history. Muh crypto. Muh smart contracts.

Huh, how'd he get caught? And how did his search queries get leaked? No VPN? Cookie jacking? Device cache?

It seems very strange that chain and exchange hopping with multiple mixers attempts would be discovered by themselves. Either some had a KYC or the attacker bragged about the spoils.

The indictment[1] mentions that he used a VPN. Given how they seem to have gotten his search history from multiple months he probably made the queries using his google account. I didn't find any mention of what got him caught but I would assume that they either traced the trail of stolen crypto to some exchange where he had traded them for FIAT or maybe the VPN he used was one that kept logs.

1: https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-07/u.s._v._ahmed_indictment....

Why does it have to be about their ex employee ? Is Amazon involved in this?

Seems odd that their ex employer is all they could say about him

It is saying "this person has a promising career and has success a lot of people would kill for, would have retired very comfortably, but got greedy and threw it all away."

It's not specifically about Amazon, it's saying he was basically set up for the American dream already.

They threw it away for 12M.