Justice Department Bitcoin Case Busts World's Largest Child Sexual Abuse Website
Bitcoin isn't untraceable or anonymous
Francis Scialabba
• less than 3 min read
A big bust has gone down after following a bitcoin trail. Wednesday, the Justice Department announced that U.S. and foreign law enforcement had seized the world's largest child sexual exploitation darknet site by volume, containing over 250,000 unique videos. Authorities apprehended the South Korean ringleader, arrested 336 other site users, and rescued at least 23 victims.
Behind the scenes
The IRS's Criminal Investigation unit used "sophisticated tracing" of bitcoin transactions to locate the site's server and administrator. Officials found over 1.3 million unique bitcoin addresses registered to users so they could pay for content with bitcoin. It's one of the first times a darknet website used bitcoin to monetize child exploitation videos.
Big picture: Bitcoin isn't untraceable or entirely anonymous. And as exchanges employ Know Your Customer checks and analytics firms scrutinize bitcoin's blockchain, more criminal enterprises using the cryptocurrency are getting burned. To adapt, criminals are migrating to harder-to-track digital coins for transactions.
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