Basics of Cryptocurrency Investigations
Free online tools for cryptocurrency investigators that will help to follow the money
Despite the ebbs and flows of the cryptocurrency market, it’s here to stay. Crypto is often used in the criminal world for money laundering, terrorist financing, human trafficking, or in scams. Investigators need to know the basics of investigating cryptocurrency transactions and how to find information online.
Chainalysis reported that illicit transaction volume hit a record $20.1 billion in 2022. 44% of the transactions came from sanctioned entities. The graph below shows the upward trending growth.
All crypto transactions are public and available for everyone to see. While the ledgers, that have these transactions, don’t have personal information, it’s still possible to use them to uncover data. Wallets will have transaction IDs, dates and times, amounts, and senders and receivers. No exchange is fully anonymous and there were many examples of investigators solving their cases using this data.
Following transactions is like jumping into a rabbit hole, but a combination of tools, services, and Google search can go a long way.
Transaction Analysis
The easiest way to see all transactions in one place is to use explorers. They all provide similar information and it’s a matter of personal choice which one to choose. Some of the examples of explorers are below:
Blockchain Explorer: the most popular tool that allows to search for wallets and transactions and shows a summary of data.
WalletExplorer: the service pulls a list of transactions that can be downloaded as CSV for easier analysis
Breadcrumbs: a crypto explorer with visualization
MoneroHash: a Monero blockchain explorer
Uncovering the Identity
After seeing the transaction path, it’s time to try and find information about wallet owners. Although there is no direct way to do it, a mix of open-source intelligence and additional tools can help find clues. People report fraud cases involving cryptocurrencies on the websites below and they provide a lot of information, including websites, names, social media usernames, emails, and other data.
BitcoinWhosWho: the biggest website where people report scams involving bitcoins. The tool allows to search for Bitcoin wallets, keywords, names, usernames, and other information. A wallet search shows transaction history, dates, amounts, and details of the scam with the scammer’s username or website, and where it was mentioned on the internet.
Other tools
Cryptocurrency Alerting: a service that sends updates about new transactions in a specific wallet.
Google search is always a good place to look for a wallet address or transactions. It can even show a specific transaction amount on a specific date if both are searched in quotation marks.
Special software like Chainalysis Reactor, CipherTrace, Crystal Blockchain, and similar solutions can help with uncovering more details about wallets including social media, forums, and darknet searches, and helps to trace and track the connections and transactions in a visual way.
Many investigations end at cryptocurrency exchanges or tumblers, which are services that mix suspicious funds with other transactions to obscure the money path. Cryptocurrency exchanges have to comply with financial regulations in the U.S., which means that they have to gather clients' information to fulfill Know Your Customer requirements and it usually involves some form of identification. Having a complete transaction story and wallet data gathered online might be a good start for a potential subpoena from law enforcement.
