Are you arguing that the attacker would have to eventually exchange XMR for something they could purchase goods with, like toilet paper? Because I think that's shifting the original argument a little. The point being made is that had they had the victim(s) buy XMR on an exchange and send it directly to their XMR wallet and maybe cycle it through a few wallets, it would not have been traceable, which still holds true.

How the attacker would actually use that money is a separate discussion. I've never looked into it but I'd guess there are illegal/grey services that would provide this service for a fee.

A few sites you can buy $500+ gift cards with them for low fee

original argument: In this instance police was able to trace Modero payment trough with statistical analysis. Monero is technically safe, not necessarily in practice.

>and maybe cycle it through a few wallets,

Your argument: Monero + extra protocol is safe.

The general pattern of these arguments:

Argument: Technology X is not necessarily 100% safe.

Counterargument: there exist way to use technology safely so it is.

Cycling through a few wallets is unnecessary, that is mostly applicable to bitcoin users trying to make their transactions harder to follow.

In monero there is privacy on each transaction. Of course it isn't complicated to match public transactions if you transfer 100k EUR from binance to monero and then magically 99k EUR are credited into your personal bank account within 1~2 days. Finland is a small country, deposits from bank accounts related to crypto exchanges are easy to find.

Not even monero could save a person with such awful practices.

You may or may not be correct that Monero is not untraceable but this example doesn't prove or disprove anything because the transaction wasn't entirely in Monero. Your argument seems to be about the traceability of the whole extortion process rather than the tech, which I think everyone agrees leaves a lot of room for error.

If the person would have made 2~3 payments to his account with different values or waited a year, binance records wouldn't look so suspicious. In fact, why the heck was that dumb guy even using binance to begin with.

Anyways, you can pay toilet paper with monero quite OK. Just convert some value into a government-approved currency like bitcoin or BNB and buy stuff with a mastercard at grocery stores.

Easily possible, here for example: https://shopinbit.com/Toilet-Roll-Seda-PH-Neutro-Foxy-6-uds/...